Business

Finally got that hot new cheetah-print skirt that’s all over TikTok? Too late, it’s already old news.

Social media is spawning fashion microtrends faster than teens can adopt them — sometimes several a week, said Callie Holtermann from The New York Times style desk, who wrote about it. Pair that with fast fashion’s ability to spit out products, and the cycle can be dizzying.

Young people know they are being targeted by marketers, Holtermann said. But they find it hard to step away, even while feeling burdened by the overconsumption.

Holtermann talked with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal about the pressure kids are feeling to keep up with the latest trend. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: So, trends, I get in fashion, right? That’s been a thing forever. Microtrends — help me out.

Callie Holtermann: Yeah, I hate to come with the news of microtrends to you. Which, of course, I’m slow to bring you. But in recent years, especially since COVID, there have been all of these things that seem kind of like fashion trends. Perhaps it’s a type of top or a print like cheetah print, or even a little phrase like the mob wife aesthetic. But the young people I talked to said they kind of rise and fall in a matter of months, or even weeks.

Ryssdal: The really interesting part about it, well, many parts about it, which were, by turn, interesting and horrifying, is that the younger kids, because these are teenagers, right, getting absorbed by all this, and they know what’s happening.

Holtermann: Totally. I spent the past few months talking to a lot of teenagers and people in their 20s about what the trend ecosystem feels like to them right now. And over and over, they sort of gave me these kind of sobering monologues about how they know that their attention is very valuable. They understand that things like short-form video platforms, like TikTok, and fast fashion are kind of working together to speed up the trend cycle. And yet, at times, they can still feel caught up in it, and that can feel like a kind of confusing and trapped place to be in.

Ryssdal: I bet. It is also, and they know this too, being more environmentally aware, I suppose, than older generations, by and large, they feel bad about it. They know it’s all about consumption, right? It’s about buying things quickly and then turning around buying more things.

Holtermann: Absolutely. Yeah. A trend is, at its core, a structure for advertising and selling something. It also can be a kind of more fun mode for self-expression, but I think the consumption aspect of trends is really heavy on the minds of a lot of young people right now. And you hear the word consumption, and it’s kind of opposite, overconsumption, all the time when you get onto a platform like TikTok or Instagram.

Ryssdal: And while acknowledging that social media, you know, has done a lot of good for a whole lot of people, this is Reason 3,972 that social media can be bad.

Holtermann: I heard from a lot of young people who sort of said that the proliferation of microtrends every year or couple of years — the way that might have been the case when I was in middle school — there can be several a week, and it ratchets up the feeling of insecurity or inadequacy, or if you don’t have and can’t afford that item, right?

Ryssdal: So, on the whole can’t afford thing, I mean, fast fashion is cheap and a lot of these things are not incredibly expensive, but they add up, and it’s not nothing.

Holtermann: I spoke to one young woman who talked about, in middle school, really like begging her parents, saying she just started at a new school, she really wanted to fit in, and she mentioned the fact that she went to school and saw every girl at school had scrunchies. And then she went home and scrolled through TikTok and saw another 20 videos of girls with scrunchies. And it, I think, ratcheted up that feeling for her of, “Oh, I’m not going to fit in without this.” But as our conversation went on, she was one of several young people who expressed to me, “I can feel that this is happening, and I am really trying to take a step back from it.” And so many of these young people who, again, know what is going on are trying to take steps backwards from the trend cycle. Although sometimes, they are finding that difficult to do.

Ryssdal: So where do you land on this? Is this going to keep going, and will it get faster and faster, or is it eventually going to die out because teenagers just go, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Holtermann: It’s funny. I’ve posed this question to so many experts, and I heard a lot of really conflicting things. On one hand, there are people who think that, you know, TikTok is in jeopardy right now. On the other hand, one person I talked to who writes a daily trend newsletter said, “I do think [Generation Z] is growing up and they’re wising up to trends. But coming up right behind them is [Generation Alpha], and she thinks that members of Gen Alpha will be even more clued in to trends than the generations that came before.

Ryssdal: I had such hope there, and then you got to Gen Alpha.

Holtermann: Sorry about that.

Productivity in the U.S. has been on the upswing recently after a long period of slower growth. It’s calculated roughly by dividing gross domestic product by labor hours. If we can get more economic growth out of the same amount of labor, that usually means wages rise — without causing inflation.

Most of the big jumps in living standards we’ve seen throughout history have been driven by jumps in productivity: the introduction of the steam engine, electricity, computers — these all brought productivity booms. And a lot of economists are hoping that what we’re seeing right now might be the start of another one, driven by artificial intelligence.

Productivity rose by 2.7% last year, according to the Labor Department. That’s well above the 1 to 1.5% we’ve averaged since the early aughts, and approaching the levels we saw during the last boom in the 1990s.

Two economists made a friendly bet a few years ago about how much productivity will grow this decade. Erik Brynjolfsson and Robert Gordon registered their wager on the prediction website Long Bets. The stakes are $400.

“But I think it’s more of a reputational bet,” said Brynjolfsson, who’s a professor at Stanford, where he directs the Digital Economy Lab. He’s bullish on productivity. 

His own research on customer service agents who started using an AI large language model showed their productivity improved as much as 34%. And other recent studies on software development, business consulting, writing and sales showed similar results.

“These are the biggest gains I’ve ever seen,” said Brynjolfsson. “I mean, to see double-digit gains just within a few months is almost unheard of.”

In the other corner: Robert Gordon, professor at Northwestern and author of “The Rise and Fall of American Growth.”

“It’s not going to be a revolution,” Gordon said of AI. “It’s not going to blow out human nature. I think that’s all greatly overblown.”

He believes AI will raise productivity, but not in the transformative way that electricity or computers did. He points to the last 20 years or so of modest gains, despite high tech innovations ranging from smart phones to the app economy.

“Those things really are minor compared to the difference it made to have trucks instead of horses, to have airplanes instead of trains,” said Gordon, who doubts that the share of tasks AI can currently automate in the workplace will be enough to significantly move the needle in the broader economy.

For now, Brynjolfsson has pulled to the lead, though it’s not clear yet if the bump in productivity we’re seeing is evidence of the start of a durable AI boom.

Joseph Briggs has been searching for signs. He’s a senior economist for Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research.

“If we look at an economy-wide basis, the impacts still look quite negligible,” he said.

Goldman Sachs has forecast that once generative AI has been widely adopted, it could raise productivity in the U.S. by 15% over 10 years. 

Briggs is watching for signals from the labor market that would indicate AI adoption is slowing job growth. He sees limited evidence in certain industries like computer programming, customer service, management consulting and legal services, where AI has been more aggressively adopted.

But Briggs thinks it will take a couple of years for AI to show up in federal productivity data. Goldman Sachs estimates only about 6% of U.S. companies are using the technology.

“You need to restructure workflows, you have to have workers comfortable using it, and all of these things take time,” Briggs said.

He does, however, see plenty of evidence that companies are making big investments in AI, especially in industries like law.

Annie Datesh is the chief innovation officer for Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini, which works with a lot of tech startups. The firm developed an AI tool to help review agreements for cloud services, which many tech companies frequently require.

“You’d be negotiating them a lot. It would be high volume, but a standard form, and suddenly automation and AI start to make sense,” she said.

Wilson Sonsini uses AI, trained on its own best practices, to customize the agreements. Then a human lawyer reviews and finalizes them. 

The tech should eventually help the firm serve more clients, faster. But it’s not quite there yet.

“Well, think about when you hire a new person, right?” said Datesh. “They’re always going to kind of slow you down at first, but then they get trained up, and then they can take over tasks.”

Right now, she said, the AI is still kind of green. “And so you’re still monitoring it and supervising it like it’s that new person, which will theoretically slow you down.”

It’s a pattern you often see when a powerful new technology diffuses through the economy said Stanford’s Brynjolfsson — at first it looks like nothing is happening, until suddenly productivity takes off in what he calls a J-curve.

“With the steam engine, with electricity, with the internal combustion engine, when we measured that, it often took literally decades,” he said. “It took about 30 years for electricity to really have its full payoff.”

Brynjolfsson expects AI to deliver productivity benefits much faster, since it doesn’t require specialized hardware or skills to use. He’s got until 2029 to win the bet.

Roberts at Northwestern said he’s still skeptical, but he’d be glad to be proven wrong.

“I’m happy for the economy if AI surprises me, because don’t we all want more growth?” he said.

Though: whether a productivity boom from AI will necessarily be a win for most workers? That they’re not so sure about.

The stock market, bond market and housing market are all kind of in flux these days with everything going on tariff- and inflation- and interest rate-wise.  

On housing, the National Association of Realtors’ report on existing home sales for February came out better than economists expected, up 4.2% from January. But for context, January had been down 4.7% from the month before. January was also the month that pending home sales, a leading indicator of existing-home-sales-to-come, fell to the lowest level on record.  

Housing numbers can bounce around — weather, mortgage rates, just noise in the data. Right now, heading into spring, the market’s looking slightly rosier than it did earlier this year.  

But we also know housing markets can also vary, a lot, depending on where you’re looking.

I’ve been doing a kind of round-robin of calls to brokers and real estate agents across the country recently. And some of what I heard could have been copied-and-pasted from one place to another:

“We’ve had a shortage of inventory, so it’s a good market for sellers, a difficult market for buyers.” – Mike Frank at Keller Williams in Chicago, Illinois.

“Less inventory, prices going up. Buyers competing for properties.” – Debbie Kallfelz with Coldwell Banker in Syracuse, New York.

“We’re seeing a frenzy of activity, very limited inventory and multiple offers.” – Israel Hill at John L. Scott in Portland, Oregon.  

Kallfelz pointed out we’re not seeing such low inventory everywhere.

“Real estate’s always local, we always say that. Other parts of the country, Florida’s an example — condo market, a lot of listings there, for a variety of reasons, insurance and condo fees,” she said.

While Portland’s got a ‘frenzy’ of housing activity, Kallfelz said in the Syracuse area listings are slowing — down about 10% year-to-date.  

It’s a similar story in Charlotte, North Carolina, said real estate agent Steve Scott: “It’s a little slow, even with all the incentives that the builders are putting out,” he said.

Meanwhile, the area has a wave of new buyers coming in.

“We have a lot of retirement — people moving here from the north, and some return from the south because they didn’t like Florida,” he said. That’s making it hard for first-time buyers to compete.

But head south to Texas?

“I’m still seeing affordable houses, $300,000s for my first-time homebuyers,” said Mollie Yarborough Steele at Compass Real Estate in Houston.

She said plenty of new starter homes are going up in the suburbs. The fiercest competition is for homes over a million dollars, where she’s seeing a lot of cash offers.

“Which is so amazing to me, that this many people have this much cash,” Steele said.

But with financial markets down sharply in recent weeks, some of that ready-cash may start to dry up.

One of the many justifications President Donald Trump has deployed on behalf of his new tariffs is that they’ll reduce the trade deficit over time. The argument is that taxing imports will boost domestic production, so American consumers buy more American goods, and American producers can sell more to consumers overseas.

But a big problem with that argument is that tariffs will have unintended consequences for the value of the dollar.

If an importer wants to buy goods from another country, the importer typically has to buy them in that foreign country’s currency.

“So if we want to buy some cheese from the Netherlands, we need some euros to buy the cheese with because that’s what they sell it in,” said Ed Gresser, vice president and director of trade and global markets at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Gresser said if the U.S. government slaps a tariff on that cheese, it becomes more expensive. Consumers buy less of it, which means grocery stores will stock less.

“The demand for euros has gone down relative to the dollar,” Gresser said.

And lower demand for euros pushes down the currency’s value relative to others. “That would then lead to a stronger dollar,” said Kathryn Dominguez, an economics professor at the University of Michigan.

So far this year, the dollar’s value has been ticking down. Dominguez said that’s in large part because importers have been trying to bring in extra goods ahead of the president’s tariffs.

“We’ve actually been buying more imports, therefore needing more foreign currency, therefore driving up the value of foreign currency relative to the dollar,” Dominguez said.

But once new tariffs start taking a bite out of imports, the dollar’s value is likely to strengthen again. And that will make American exports more expensive for foreign buyers.

“Meaning that now, U.S. goods, denominated in dollars, would be less competitive relative to goods denominated in other currencies,” Dominguez said.

That’s when American companies are likely to turn their attention to selling more goods to domestic consumers. They might even open up new factories and create new jobs.

But there’s a big tradeoff to keep in mind, said Oleg Itskhoki, an economics professor at Harvard University. “Some jobs would be lost because it will be unprofitable to export because of the stronger value of the dollar,” he said.

Meanwhile, other countries that follow the U.S. lead and slap tariffs on American goods will end up turning inward too.

“The Canadian factories will turn to service the Canadian consumers, instead of exporting to the United States, but the U.S. will be able to export less goods all around the world because of the stronger dollar,” Itskhoki said.

Itskhoki said what we’re talking about is a less efficient global economy.

“We started in equilibrium, when it was efficient to produce in Canada for the American market,” Itskhoki said. “You lose efficiency as a result. And that’s the tax that consumers are paying at the end of the day.”

That’s a tax that causes prices to rise and economic growth to stall.

There was a time, back in 1988, when Alaska produced more crude oil than any other state.

That’s not the case anymore. Production there has dropped by around 75%.

But a report out this week from the Energy Information Administration is forecasting growth in Alaskan oil output next year, predicting it’ll be the biggest production increase in decades.

Oil production in Alaska first took off in the 1970s, after a series of global energy price shocks. 

Jeff Kralowetz with market intelligence firm Argus Media said that growth was helped along by the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, “which was able to take all of this crude from the northern part of Alaska to the port of Valdez in the southern part of the state and sell it.” 

Now though, a lot of those northern oil fields are, what they call in the business, “mature,” said Charles Mason, an economist at the University of Wyoming. 

“So you get a certain amount of production early on, and then it tends to taper off. And the only way you arrest that is by having more wells drilled,” said Mason. 

Mason said that’s been happening less lately in Alaska, in part because of conservation measures. But also because the arctic tundra isn’t an easy place to do business, said Ellen R. Wald of the Atlantic Council. 

“If you’re going to need to build pipelines, you can only transport those pipelines to where you need them to be during the winter because you have to use ice roads,” said Wald. 

Cheaper fracking has helped some other states surpass Alaska’s output. But two new oil developments in Alaska are expected to boost production. Not to anywhere near peak levels, said Wald.

“But I do think this is meaningful, because they’ve put in all the investment and infrastructure,” she said. 

This could make future expansion easier. 

Jeff Kralowetz of Argus Media said the changes could also be felt elsewhere in the domestic oil economy.

“A lot of the new refineries or the refinery modifications in California were designed to run Alaskan crude,” said Kralowetz. 

Because as California’s own production of crude has fallen, refineries there are now more reliant on oil from the Arctic.

General Mills told investors Wednesday that it expects its sales to fall as much as 2% this year. It’s the latest consumer food company to lower its sales outlook for the year. Campbell’s and Kraft Heinz expect business to slow down, as well. All this comes as some consumers continue to pull back on grocery store spending.

Inflation over the past couple of years has made trips to the grocery store a lot harder for many Americans — and a lot of folks expect prices will keep going up.

That’s influencing the choices they make when they shop for food, according to Ed Johnson, who focuses on consumer industries at Deloitte.

“The places where we’re seeing that choice manifest is only buying essentials, right, so maybe that’s — think about categories in the grocery store that are maybe seen as simple indulgences or as nice to haves,” he said.

So things like snacks or soda — some shoppers are skipping those, he said. Or they’re trading down from name brands to generic versions.

But those store brands aren’t immune either, cautioned executive editor of Supermarket News Chloe Riley. That’s because lower-income consumers are getting pinched by rising prices for basics like coffee and eggs.

“Consumers are cutting out even many of the cheaper items as well,” she said.

All these consumer choices are trickling up to corporate offices, per Craig Rowley, who consults with retail companies at Korn Ferry. He said that his clients are starting to ask, “What do our expenses look like? If our sales are going to be a little bit slight, what can we do to reduce our expenses?”

They could cancel planned investments, leave open jobs unfilled or even lay off workers. Rowley added that his clients aren’t making any of those moves just yet, but they are exploring their options.

In long rows of booths at this week’s Seafood Expo North America in Boston, seafood producers dole out samples of oysters, caviar and fish sticks — even alligator and something called lobster oil at one booth.

Guillermo Aceves takes a bite of defrosted salmon sushi. “Oh yeah, I really like it,” he said.

Aceves distributes shrimp and octopus in the U.S. and Mexico for Arli Foods. He came to the Expo to add to his product lineup, and he thinks he could hook his customers on this frozen sushi from Japan.

“This is a very nice product, the sushi,” he said, “because you can keep it for one year frozen and it’s still fresh.”

Elsewhere on the floor, Rob Black, VP of sales with Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation, shows off his selection plucked from lakes in Canada.

“The big one at the back is an inconnu. That’s harvested really in the Arctic waters,” he noted. “Walleye, which you’ll see in the case here, is our most lucrative species.”

Black was one of many vendors I spoke to who were worried about more than just the quality of their product. “Everybody’s concerned about the tariff situation,” he said.

A selection of seafood products at the Seafood Expo North America in Boston on March 17. (Daniel Ackerman/Marketplace)

Black earns 70% of his revenue from U.S. importers, and it’s hard to tell if, when and by how much the Trump administration will tax those sales.

So, Black said, there’s not much he can do to protect himself — “because it changes. It can change daily, and there’s no sense in expending a whole lot of time or money on something that’s going to change in 24 hours.”

Other companies are taking action. Bakkafrost farms salmon in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, CEO Regin Jacobsen says the U.S. market accounts for nearly a third of its revenue.

“We even have our own Boeing 757, where we can fly directly from the Faroes, the fish which was alive in the morning can be all ready the next day all over the U.S.,” he said.

Even though he specializes in fresh, Jacobsen said that in an unstable trade environment, he’s leaning into shelf-stable forms of salmon.

“These days, where the tension in the world is getting higher, canned products are good because they don’t need the refrigeration or anything, and they can be stored for five years at least.”

In other words, if you can’t beat uncertainty, maybe you can outlast it.

We call ourselves Marketplace, so part of our job is exploring how marketplaces work, in all their forms. David Brancaccio and the “Marketplace Morning Report” team are setting out to visit in-person places of commerce, in a world where so much buying and selling has gone remote and digital. None are financial markets in a formal sense, but all markets are financial markets in a way, right? The goal is to learn the right and the wrong moves with experts.

This week: “A Business Reporter Goes to the Rodeo.” Today it’s tips from the next generation of agriculture industry leaders.

While bull riders and calf ropers vie for cash in the NFL-grade stadium next door, there’s another competition happening amid more workaday grandstands and piles of hay dyed green. Young people from across the state show off in front of judges the best of the chickens, pigs, lambs, goats and cows.

Laura Cooper, a high school senior from Paris, Texas, is among them. She drove about five hours to show a Brahman heifer at the rodeo.

“You definitely look for their structure,” Cooper explained. “Are they able to walk? Will they make it out and thrive in the real world? You also check their temperament. It would be awful if I had a crazy cow, and would make it a really long day we’re showing. So thankfully, she’s super gentle.”

Cooper was showing Dally, who won several trophies at this year’s events. What makes Dally worthy of show?

“Her color, that red tinge, is just something that’s super flashy in the show world,” Cooper said. “She puts her ears forward, makes her look like a real lady.”

Cooper, left, and her mother, along with Dally. (Alex Schroeder/Marketplace)

Raising and showing livestock is an investment business.

“I had to get an ag loan through the FSA, so the Farm Service Agency, to buy my own calf to start out with in the very beginning,” Cooper said. “From then, I learned, ‘Wow, this is an awesome opportunity. I get to build credit before age of 18.’ I was able to sell their offspring. So when they had calves after their show career, I was able to sell those, make a little bit of profit. From then on, it just seems like it was just a repetitive cycle.”

Cooper herself now owns nearly 40 cattle in total. She’s finishing up both her high school degree and an associate degree in agribusiness at the same time. Her career goal is to become a loan officer, to give other farmers and ranchers the same credit opportunity she was given.

“I do have somewhat of an idea about the worth of some things and assets and appreciating value,” Cooper said. “It is something you still continually learn every day, especially with the new current market trends.”

She’s even checking interest rates these days. But it’s not just Cooper. The young business aces abound at the junior livestock show.

Baxter Whitworth, 14 years old from Henderson, Texas, has a ranch called Top Notch Cattle. He also shows Brahmans, and he’s taking home trophies, too. But meanwhile he’s building a media business. It’s a podcast: Cattle Innovation Station.

“Sometimes we’ll talk about ag policy, but mostly it’s nutrition, genetics, breeding, herd management,” Whitworth said.

Whitworth speaks with Brancaccio. (Alex Schroeder/Marketplace)

His trick of the trade for showing cattle is something that will also serve him well as a podcast host — it’s about showmanship and presence.

“Being aware of what’s going on in the ring, where the judge is at, where other cattle are at, kind of how much space you have,” he explained. “To kind of be engaging and looking where everything is, to make sure everything’s all right.”

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA, has pushed for an animal-free rodeo. The group alleges “animals used in rodeos suffer from extreme stress and often sustain agonizing and even fatal injuries.”

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo says in its animal welfare policy that it’s “committed to the humane treatment of animals and works with various organizations and associations to monitor industry best practices, as well as ensure the ongoing maintenance of our competition rules to create and maintain an environment that results in the respect and care of our animals.”

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he “fired” two members of the Federal Trade Commission, both the only Democrats serving on the regulatory body. We’re putting “fired” in quotation marks because a the Supreme Court ruled in 1935 that the president can’t fire commissioners of independent agencies simply because he feels like it.

Trump’s action could pave that way for an attack on the independence of other federal agencies like the Federal Reserve, and that, in turn, could have a monumental effect on the country’s rule of law and the economy.

Leah Litman, a University of Michigan law professor, spoke with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal about what the administration’s attack on rule of law could mean for the economy.

The stock market has lost trillions of dollars in the last few weeks “because of the president’s economic erratic behavior, and if he could do that with the Federal Reserve Board, that would be catastrophic,” said Litman, who co-hosts the podcast “Strict Scrutiny,” and wrote the forthcoming book “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes.”

The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: Could you give us the layman’s version, please, of the case at issue here, Humphrey’s Executor?

Leah Litman: Humphrey’s Executor is the famous case that established the constitutionality of independent agencies. Independent agencies just refer to agencies that are led by people who cannot be fired at will by the president. Basically, they can’t be fired if the president disagrees with them about policy priorities and how to implement federal law.

Ryssdal: OK, so the reason obviously that I’m interested in Humphrey’s Executor is because of what it might mean for the Federal Reserve. And here I should say that you and I are buddies on the socials, and we had an exchange, I don’t know, like a month, two months ago, about what Humphrey’s Executor might mean for the Fed. And you said, “You know, the Supreme Court could carve out a space for the Federal Reserve if they wanted to.” And that leads me to to believe that, as you lay out in this book, the Supreme Court might not understand the society at the moment, might not understand the politics of this moment, [but] they are very finally attuned to the economic challenges of this moment.

Litman: Yes, they have investments, they have billionaire friends. I don’t think any of them want a global recession, and I think endangering the independence of the Federal Reserve Board would do just that. Imagine if the president could threaten or jawbone or pressure the Federal Reserve Board to adjust interest rates or other kinds of monetary policy in order to be politically convenient. I mean, over the last, I don’t know however many weeks, the stock market has lost something like $3 billion, you know, a billion dollars a week, because of the president’s economic erratic behavior, and if he could do that with the Federal Reserve Board, that would be catastrophic.

Ryssdal: Yeah, I think it’s actually trillions of dollars lost.

Litman: Right.

Ryssdal: But you know, what’s a couple of billion between friends? The thinking about this economy and the law has been that, you know, the infrastructure that holds up this economy is the free market, right? The free market rules. I would suggest, and I have on this program suggested, that actually it’s the rule of law, right? And that’s what establishes, for example, private property rights. And I wonder if, once Wall Street figures out that maybe private property rights are at risk here, it would kind of be, “Katie, bar the door.” What do you think?

Litman: I am hoping there will be some concerted pressure to force the administration and the Supreme Court to recognize the importance of independent monetary policy. I mean, if you think about, for example, what the federal government is doing when it is defunding federal agencies, basically canceling contracts and grants that the federal government has made, they are basically reneging on the federal government’s word in honoring contracts. And that is, as you say, a threat to the rule of law, and that also very much endangers the economic stability of the country if you can’t count on the federal government to basically pay its debts and pay what it said it’s going to.

Ryssdal: Well, look, let me get it down to brass tacks. You’re a professor of law, obviously, but you’re also a consumer in this society. As you look at what’s happening with the Trump administration deliberately taking apart this economy and challenging, in the very kindest sense, the rule of law, in your spare time, what do you think about that?

Litman: It is pretty terrifying, I have to say. You know, the idea that the president and the administration can, for example, just summarily deport people without due process of law or any judicial review, is, I think, pretty definitionally authoritarian. The idea that a president can just refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated is upending the constitutional system and, I think, antithetical to our constitutional democracy because it eliminates a key check on the president’s power and the executive branch’s authority, which is Congress’ spending power. It is, in many respects, unprecedented, just the systematic disregard for the rule of law, and I think I would be a fool and naive if that didn’t worry me.

Ryssdal: People who listen to you on [your podcast] “Strict Scrutiny” will know that you and your co-hosts have some issues, shall we say, with the Supreme Court.

Litman: Not issues in general. We don’t have issues, we have issues with the court.

Ryssdal: That’s right. Are you at all surprised at the turn that the law has taken, and since this is a program on business and the economy, how that might affect the economic future of of literally everybody living in this economy?

Litman: I think I am not surprised with the quick pace at which the Supreme Court has changed the law in pretty radical ways. Now, I don’t consider myself naive or an optimist, but I do hold out some hope, as we were talking about, that one constraint on what the court might do is the prospect of a catastrophic economic recession. But that is one of the few possible checks that remains right now in a world where the political branches, the Democratic Party have shown little appetite for challenging the authority of the court, even when the court is behaving in pretty bad ways.

Ryssdal: Not to be all doom and gloom on the way out here, but that’s a thin reed.

Litman: It is a thin reed. One other reason for optimism, just because I don’t love leaving things on notes of doom and gloom, is I have taken heart at seeing some of the protests. For example, the Tesla takedown protests. I think the evidence suggests that’s working, that one big pressure point on the administration and Elon Musk is their pocketbooks. And that’s part of why I continue to hold out hope that the administration, the Supreme Court, they don’t want an economic recession. I am hoping that they will be convinced that what they are doing is pushing us too far in that direction, and in any event, the Supreme Court won’t take the next step by undoing the independence of the Fed.

Though proposed 25% tariffs on some Canadian products have been delayed, businesses that rely on cross-border trade have had a chaotic few weeks trying to understand the implications of President Donald Trump’s trade wars. 

“It’s a mess,” said Johanna Dominguez, owner of Put a Plant On It, a plant and gift shop in Buffalo, New York. “I try not to get too freaked out each time a new announcement comes out because it seems to be like, ‘One minute, oh, he’s implementing them, next minute he’s not,’ so it’s just, honestly, just trying to wait and see.”

The Buffalo-Niagara Falls border crossing is among the busiest in the nation. It handles roughly 15% of incoming trucks from Canada and 20% of incoming personal vehicles. However, the Canadian Broadcasting Company recently reported that the number of drivers crossing the U.S. and Canadian border dropped last month to levels not seen since the peak COVID-19 era. 

Johannah Dominguez said she and many of her neighbors in Buffalo do not see Canada as a separate country. “We’ll hop over the border and have dinner,” she said. “It’s just another town.”

For her business, Canadian trade is crucial. “When I say ‘I get plants from our local suppliers, I mean Canada because they’re only 30 minutes away,” she said. Typically, she said the shop gets one or two shipments a week from growers across the border. 

Though one supplier has communicated plans to share the cost burden if 25% tariffs on plants go into effect, others have not. “We would probably have to raise prices for like, the first time ever in order to be able to cover those costs,” Dominguez said. 

Use the audio player above to hear her story. 

There was some inflation data out this week that didn’t get a lot of attention. Not the consumer price index, not the Federal Reserve’s go-to personal consumption expenditures report, but import and export prices.

Higher energy costs sent import prices higher in February. Export prices rose too, driven mostly by agricultural products like corn, soybeans and meat.

Part of what’s going on has to do with demand, said Glynn Tonsor, an agricultural economics professor at Kansas State University.

“Each month I put out something called the export demand index. And that particular index has been increasing basically throughout calendar year ‘23 and ‘24,” he said.

Tonsor said that was mostly thanks to a decent global economy. 

But these days, he said the uncertainty around tariffs has also been pushing up demand, especially for American beef, pork and chicken.

“If you think we’re moving towards a world where there’s going to be less trade, then yes, it makes sense to kinda proactively buy some of those, get your hands on those items,” he said.

But along with demand, supply has been pushing up prices too.

Back in January, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that the fall harvest wasn’t as big as anticipated.

“That was the prompting reason why corn and soybean prices then raced higher in January and early February,” said Naomi Blohm, senior market adviser with Total Farm Marketing.

She said higher export prices can be welcome news, especially for corn growers.

“There’s not a lot of places that the world can get corn from. It’s the United States. We grow about a third of the world’s corn,” she said.

But American soybean farmers have a lot of competition from Brazil and Argentina, Blohm said.

And the concern is that if soybean prices get too high, buyers will look elsewhere, especially as the trade war continues.

“The risk going forward would be: So we lose export demand because of the trade and tariff issues potentially coming,” Blohm said.

That means a lot of farmers wouldn’t benefit from today’s higher prices, said Aleks Schaefer, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University.

“We have to make decisions today about how many animals we’re raising, how much meat we’re going to produce in six months, based on what prices are going to be tomorrow,” he said.

If those tariffs reduce demand for products like soybeans, which have a lot of competition, farmers might cut back on production.

Tonsor at Kansas State said that could also happen to pork or chicken producers, who also have a lot of global competitors.

“That’s the concern on when you disrupt trade: You encourage somebody to build a new business relationship, and if and when they do, they may not come back,” he said.

When corporations need money, they sometimes turn to the bond market — issuing corporate bonds and selling them to raise some cash. It has been getting more expensive for them to do that. Investors have gotten a little more reluctant to hand over their money. That’s not an alarm bell, but it’s not a great sign either.

Out of all the different nooks and crannies in this whole wide economy where you could put your money, one of the safest places is in a government bond.

“Because the U.S. Treasury in theory will always pay its bills,” said Eric Jacobson, a senior principal with Morningstar. 

Corporations also sell bonds — corporate bonds — to raise money. But they don’t, in theory, always pay their bills. Companies come and they go. Companies default.

“The bond market uses the U.S. Treasury market as a baseline,” Jacobson said. “Everything else in the bond market pretty much is compared to the Treasury bond.”

So whatever interest rate the U.S. Treasury is offering people to invest in the government, McDonald’s or John Deere or Walmart have to beat it to convince anyone to lend them money.

“So a bond trader might say Treasurys plus 1%,” Jacobson said.

And the shakier the company, the more interest it has to promise compared to the government. That difference is called a spread.

“And that gives you an idea of the market’s estimation of how much more credit risk there is,” Jacobson said.

The spread is kind of a measuring stick for shakiness. Which brings us to now. The spreads are the widest they’ve been in six months, especially for riskier companies. The level of general shakiness has increased just a tad.

“There’s a lot more uncertainty that the market is having to confront,” said David Hamilton, head of research for asset management at Moody’s. “Not the least of which are the uncertainty around the impact of tariffs and trade wars breaking out all over the place.”

Bottom line, more vulnerable companies, medium-sized companies, companies with floating interest rates — they are having to pay more interest on their debt. That means more stress for already stressed companies.

“For these middle-size and small-size borrowers, economic growth has been positive, but the burden of the cost of their debt has sort of swamped that positive effect,” said Hamilton.

The good news is that the moves in corporate bond spreads so far have been small by historical standards, and many larger companies are prepared.

“They’ve had very low leverage, balance sheets are in a very good spot, they’ve been cautious,” said Leslie Falconio, head of strategic taxable fixed income at UBS. “The word recession has come back into the picture. It’s not our view that we go into a recession, but we do think growth slows.”

The odds of recession, though, did get bumped up to about 30%, Falconio said. 

We are in a different economic environment than the one the Federal Reserve thought we’d be in less than a year ago. Back in September, the Fed projected four interest rate cuts in 2025. Then in December, it changed rate cut projections to two.

On Wednesday, the Fed kept rates as-is. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said policymakers still project two cuts this year, but tariffs could delay overall progress on lowering inflation.

That means we’re likely to see the federal funds rate hold at or around where it currently is for some time. And that would impact businesses, the housing market and consumers.

The future of interest rates feels fuzzy, because the future of the economy feels fuzzy. David Wilcox, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Bloomberg Economics, and a former staff member of the Federal Reserve Board, said all the fuzziness may stick around for a while.

“My own guess is that we won’t get clarity on the direction of the economy before the middle of the year. I think the earliest we could see another interest rate move is in June,” he said.

More likely toward the end of the year, he said. By then, tariffs’ effects on inflation may be clearer, and trade policy itself may be clearer. Regardless, one thing is clear to Wilcox right now: “We’re not going back to the situation that we had immediately pre-Covid.”

The situation being around a decade of low interest rates. Problem is, that period of affordable borrowing makes today’s federal funds rate feel sky high, even though it’s currently lower than the historical average.

“I would anticipate that consumers and businesses will be stuck in that mode for the near future,” said  Linda Hooks, an economist at Washington and Lee University.

That mode — or mindset — affects how businesses and consumers spend.

“Businesses are less likely to get financing that they need to expand their business or invest in new technology or train employees,” Hooks said.

Consumers might put off big purchases, too, like buying a house.

Many would-be buyers have been holding their breath for lower mortgage rates. Laura Veldkamp, an economist at Columbia University, said if there’s a clear signal to buyers that interest rates won’t budge, it could convince them to stop waiting.

Which could jumpstart the housing market again. Though it would likely be a housing market that looks different.

“It may be that we have to reset expectations for what a normal house looks like,” Veldkamp said. 

Something smaller, with more basic finishes. In other words, homebuyers might need to compromise.

Changes to the application process for Social Security benefits will force more people to make in-person appointments at already crowded field offices. The new policy, announced Tuesday, is intended to limit fraud.

The Social Security Administration says that there will be additional identity requirements for people applying for benefits or changing their direct deposit information by phone starting March 31. They’ll have to use what the agency calls Internet ID proofing.  

If applicants don’t have access to the internet, they’ll have to make in-person appointments at field offices. That could be difficult, per Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works.

“People who are seniors, people with disabilities often have mobility issues. They may live in rural areas far away from a field office,” she pointed out.

For those who can travel, Altman said the new ID system will lead to as many as 85,000 additional in-person visitors per week to field offices that already have long wait times. Acting Commissioner of Social Security Lee Dudek said the new ID policy is not intended to hurt applicants.

“We’ll monitor the situation closely, and if it is to the detriment of the citizens that we serve, then we’re going to take necessary actions to improve those services,” he said.

As for fraud? An inspector general report last year says Social Security estimates it did make almost $72 billion in improper payments from fiscal years 2015 through 2022. But that’s less than 1% of all Social Security benefit payments during that time. 

This story was produced by our colleagues at the BBC.

The biggest sports teams are fashion brands in their own right — with people all around the world wearing merch from the likes of the New York Yankees, The Dallas Cowboys or Real Madrid. But how do you tap into that market when your team isn’t even fully pro?

In terms of glitz and glamour, soccer team Maltby Main FC, in the north of England, is about as far from the Super Bowl or the World Series as you could imagine.

Based in the town of Maltby, in South Yorkshire — about 160 miles north of London — the club play their home games in front of around 100 fans. Soccer clubs move up and down leagues depending on success; Maltby Main currently plays in one of the lowest leagues, which isn’t fully professional.

Despite that, their new kit launch has caused an unexpected stir, with demand for their team jerseys coming from around the world. And it’s been a lot for the club’s chairman, Kieron White, to manage.

“I have to sleep with my phone on silent because whenever we launch anything it’s just you can tell what time people are waking up around the world,” he said. “Because at certain times it’ll go off and it’s like, ‘Right, South America’s just getting up because we’re getting loads of orders coming in.’ So it’s been madness. Literally, I can’t wait to go on holiday and see somebody laying around the pool in a Maltby Main shirt.”

So why the sudden interest? It’s because Maltby Main’s matchday kits are now sponsored by Grammy-nominated metal band Bring Me the Horizon. So buy a shirt, and you’re also getting a bit of music merch. Kieron said the response has given a real boost to the team’s finances.

“It’s keeping us going because it does cost quite a lot of money to run a team at this level,” he said.

It came about because Bring Me the Horizon’s drummer Matt Nicholls is from the town. “Maltby’s not a place that has much going on,” he said.

“It’s a mining town, and then obviously like the coal industry’s gone. The pit’s closed. So it was more just like getting the community together and giving them something to be a part of, you know what I mean. That was the aim from the start,” Nicholls said. “It’s good to help them financially, but I think the aim more than anything is just to get people through the gate and to actually get involved.”

“My mum still lives there, all my family’s still there,” he added. “If I’m driving through there and I see one of the shirts, it gets you a little bit, you know what I mean? That’s brilliant, I love it.”

Bring Me the Horizon is far from the only band or musician to do something like this. Ipswich Town, for example — which currently plays against Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal in England’s most famous competition, the Premier League — is sponsored by Ed Sheeran. (It is his local team, after all.) But for a club the size of Maltby Main, the direct impact is much easier to track.

Matt Nicholls said he’s already seen the shirts abroad. “I mean, I’ve played gigs in, like, Malaysia and I’m seeing someone on the front row, he’s got a Maltby Main shirt on,” he added.

Music isn’t often thought of as part of the path to sporting greatness. But for this tiny soccer team, more shirt sales means more cash to spend on players — and that could lead to a climb up the leagues.

We call ourselves Marketplace, so part of our job is exploring how marketplaces work, in all their forms. David Brancaccio and the “Marketplace Morning Report” team are setting out to visit in-person places of commerce, in a world where so much buying and selling has gone remote and digital. None are financial markets in a formal sense, but all markets are financial markets in a way, right? The goal is to learn the right and the wrong moves with experts.

This week: “A Business Reporter Goes to the Rodeo.” Today, all of the retail at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

At the NRG Center in Houston, there are live bovines roaming, and, sure, manure. A T-shirt for sale depicts five cows with the words: “Smells … of money.” The retail selling floor next to the livestock judging pasture is heavy-gauge: There’s cattle-handling hardware, 900-degree home pizza ovens and Western hats of felt from pelt. Joe Young sells hats and realigns the ones customers bring by.

“You want to have a little bit of dip in the front,” he explained “It’s kind of that ‘howdy, ma’am’ dip. If it’s flat, it could pick it up, just blow it right off the top of your head.”

David Brancaccio came to Joe’s booth at the rodeo, called Heads or Tails Hats, out of Haskell, Texas, equipped with his own wool Stetson, which never did come with an owner’s manual. So Young started to share some proper care tips.

Young examines Brancaccio’s cowboy hat after steaming it and reshaping the brim. (Alex Schroeder/Marketplace)

“If you just were to throw it in the back seat, it’s not going to stay shaped very well,” he said. “So if you set it on your dash or in your passenger seat upside down, that would be the best way of keeping it so it holds its shape.”

We didn’t ask about his sales, but a rival vendor lets on that 300 hats a day fly off the shelves over there, with not even a sales pitch. Here, the reshaping is what they call in retail a “loss leader”: they don’t charge for the service, but it gets people over to this booth and buying things.

“It gets busy. All eight of these steamers, they’ll just be blowing with steam all day on a weekend especially,” Young said.

Now, Young’s key hat “trick if the trade” is the X factor. Literally. Hats come with a sort of rating on them: A 10X hat is plenty serviceable. But a 100X should be better armor against the elements.

“So like a 10X would probably be around about a 10% beaver quality,” Young said. “And 100X hat would be pure beaver.”

A 1,000X hat costs thousands and might have mink or chinchilla in the mix, with diamond accents. It’s maybe less for trail-riding and more for picking up Vocalist of the Year at the CMA Awards. But a 10X hat will get the job done.

“Still a good quality hat, it’s a $400 hat,” Young said. “They hold their shape well. I just wouldn’t go out in a torrential rainstorm.”

For a hat that’s more — maybe “vegan” is the right word — there’s Ginger Jo Sklavos’ booth, The Family Jewels of Texas. She’s got hats woven mainly of palm — all customized, none identical, featuring everything from turquoise to spiny oyster to coral and sterling silver conchos.

Hats for sale at The Family Jewels of Texas. (Alex Schroeder/Marketplace)

Sklavos’ trick of the trade is about the efficiency of what business geeks call “just-in-time inventory.” “I mean, if I didn’t go home and make hats in the morning and the night, we wouldn’t have any more left,” she said.

Back to cowhide at a business called Our Stuff, where Shanna Saunders is the proprietor. She’s selling easy chairs and sofas made in Levelland, Texas.

“That one’s a leather made out of Tiffany Blue with a cowhide on the side,” Saunders said.

Saunders shows Brancaccio one of her chairs at Our Stuff. (Alex Schroeder/Marketplace)

This chair is priced at $3,500, which seems like a steal for real leather, American-made. But people actually buy big-ticket items here, versus just stopping at the one place to sit down on the selling floor?

Saunders explained that it costs $28,000 to rent her retail space for the duration of the rodeo. In other words, if she can afford that, it must make good economic sense to set up shop. She will break even, no doubt.

And she said it also doesn’t hurt that alcohol is for sale just around the corner, and other stands all over.

“People come in, they’ll go home and measure. Sometimes the sale comes afterward, but some people are drunk and put their credit card out,” Saunders said.

What’s on offer at the rodeo — from hats to furniture and more — is not the typical, theme-park-style, throw-away stuff. Several families I meet here tell me they’d bought their spiffy headgear at the rodeo years earlier, suggesting the merch is an investment that holds up. Among them is Daniel Clark and his mom. He started to describe his hat.

Clark tells Brancaccio about buying a hat at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. (Alex Schroeder/Marketplace)

“It has red feathers two on the sides of the hat. And it kind of looks like a taco, but a bit smaller,” he said. “It didn’t fall apart because it’s good quality.”

Find all of our Tricks of the Trade stories here.

Baseball’s San Francisco Giants are selling a 10% ownership stake to a private equity firm — joining a growing trend in American sports. The firm in question is San Francisco-based Sixth Street. All major sports leagues in the U.S. now allow those firms to invest in their teams, according to the New York Times.

Historically, major sports teams in the U.S. have each been owned by one really rich person or family and the only way for them to cash in on their investment has been to sell the whole team. 

But as the value of sports teams has risen, owners have realized that selling off part of their stake in a team “is a way for existing owners to capitalize on the rising valuations of their clubs,” said Tim Koba, an assistant professor in sport, event and hospitality management at High Point University.

Right now, private equity firms are willing buyers.

“Essentially, they’re buying into people’s passions,” said Stefan Szymanski, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan. 

Because fans are so passionate about their teams, they’re willing to sink a lot of money into watching and supporting them.

And private equity, Szymanski noted, sees a revenue opportunity. “What they’re trying to do is trying ways to extract more of the financial value of that happiness from the fans.”

By raising ticket prices, he said, or finding new ways to reach — and charge — fans through digital channels.

At any given time, there are about 400,000 people up to age 17 in foster care in the United States, according to The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Many will never be adopted or permanently reunited with their families of origin. That means they’ll “age out” of the system into adulthood on their own, with all the challenges of getting a job, paying rent and pursuing an education.

There are state and federal programs to help with the transition: extended foster care up to age 21, financial assistance for college, Medicaid coverage up to age 26. There are also rights and benefits kids are entitled to while in foster care.

But a lot of foster youth don’t know about the help that’s available. By age 21, only about 70% have earned a high school diploma, and fewer than half have a job. Fewer than 5% have an associate’s degree or vocational training.

In Florida, child welfare advocates are trying to get crucial information to foster youth about these rights and benefits to help them while they’re in the system and when they’re out.

Every year, 700 to 800 foster youth in the state reach the age of 18 or 21 with no permanent legal family, said Robin Rosenberg, deputy director of Florida’s Children First, citing state data on foster care.

Aheim King is one of them. He’s 21 and active in the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity at Florida State University, and several college and community groups that advocate for foster youth.

“I’m on my own,” said King, who grew up in Tampa. “Once I graduated, I turned 18, I packed my bags.”

And against the odds, he earned an associate degree and is now two semesters away from a bachelor’s in nursing. His college education is supported by a federally backed tuition-and-fee waiver for foster youth, along with a $1,720-a-month stipend.

“When I first came here, I doubted myself, especially my intelligence,” King said. “‘Am I supposed to be here?’ And sometimes I definitely do struggle with it. But I just have to tell myself: ‘I’m confident. I got this.’”

King’s worked all along the way to support himself.

“As far as jobs,” he said, “I’ve worked at Taco Bell, a race-car place, Subway, I was a headhunter at a temp-to-perm agency, I was a CNA [certified nursing assistant] and I did DoorDash.”

King’s friend and fellow foster youth advocate, 20-year-old Quabiona Peeples, also from Tampa, has been bouncing between a series of foster family homes and group homes since she was 6. She’s just started working on a bachelor’s degree in criminology at Florida State.

As a teenager, she couldn’t work to earn her own money.

“I didn’t have the right papers to get a job — birth certificate, Social Security,” she said. “At my group homes, there were some times, if you was misbehaving, you didn’t even get the allowance,” typically around $30 a month.

Peeples has been lucky, getting advice from her foster mom and help from the Florida tuition waiver and stipend.

But, she said, “a lot of foster youth do not know about that. So they be like: ‘What’s the point of graduating if my college is not going to get paid for, who’s going to pay for this, who’s going to pay for this?’”

Fortunately for foster youth in Florida, there’s an app to help them find out about the rights and benefits they’re entitled to.

FosterPower is the brainchild of Taylor Sartor, an attorney at Bay Area Legal Services in Tampa. She got the idea while she was in law school and representing foster youth. Sartor said they had questions, and the answers weren’t in a guidebook.

“‘Am I supposed to get an allowance, I’m in a group home?’” Sartor said. “One teenager was aging out of foster care soon, wanted to know about extended foster care, what kind of benefits were going to be provided.”

FosterPower launched in 2023. The next year, Sartor’s team was awarded a $405,000 from the Legal Services Corp. to expand its reach in Florida and replicate it in other states.

King and Peeples helped test the app — foster youth who worked on the project have been paid advisers, Taylor said.

“If I’m having problems with dental, with medical insurance, with knowing my rights and that I don’t have to be kicked out with a garbage bag at age 18 — I have all that information in my phone,” said King.

The importance of mobile phone access was emphasized by the foster youth advisers.

“We had gotten a lot of feedback — kids lose things, kids in foster care lose things even more. So if kids could have this on their phones, it would be a total game changer,” Sartor said.

FosterPower addresses immigration, independent living, court, health, education, money.”

In addition to providing information and legal references, the app features videos seeded with questions from foster youth, covering topics like master trust accounts, reproductive health and allowance in foster care.

Other programs for foster youth in Florida offer more hands-on help for launching into financial adulthood.

Karen Bowen, 53, runs a foster home in a middle-class Tampa suburb and a house nearby where youth who have aged out of the system or who are in extended care can live more independently.

Bowen has launched Nekkts Step Hope Foundation, a nonprofit that assists foster youth and parents.

“We’re learning all the life skills, job preparation, financial aspects, and I’m walking this with you step by step.” Bowen said her work is guided by her foster kids, including Quabiona Peeples, who lived in Bowen’s foster home through her final years of high school.

Bowen said one day, Peeples called and said, “’Hey Miss Karen, can you come get me and go to with the bank with me? Because I’ve got this charge on here and I’m not understanding.’ And that’s what we do. We go with you, but we stand back and allow you to take charge.”

Building trust with foster youth is crucial, said Zach Laris, a child welfare expert and blogger who formerly served as a policy director at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Apps and other services like FosterPower play an important role in reaching young people,” Laris said. “Whether it’s education and training investments, or access to Medicaid up to age 26, young people are much more likely to pursue and follow up on those opportunities when they hear about them from a trusted resource.”

Laris pointed out that about 15% of federal tuition dollars earmarked for foster youth go unclaimed every year. Meanwhile, those who have aged out have lower education levels and earn about half what their peers do, on average, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Looking forward, Laris said child welfare advocates nationwide are worried about Republican plans to cut the federal budget, which could reduce spending on health care, education, housing and food assistance for foster youth.

“Anything and everything could be on the table,” Laris said. For instance, cuts to Medicaid would impact the vast majority of foster youth, who get their health care through the program.

From the Oval Office to the internet, the question of a possible impending recession has been drawing more and more attention lately. President Donald Trump has declined to rule out an economic downturn in the year ahead. And the word “recession” has been peaking on Google Search.

This is all to say there’s a lot of nervous chatter in the air. But how nervous should we really be?

Before we get into what’s at play in the economy right now, let’s remind ourselves what’s been happening in the last few years — even the last few months.

“A lot of the risks to the economy were to the upside,” said Samuel Zief, a global macro strategist at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.

Upside because since the COVID recession, which lasted just two months, he said the economy’s been hot. Maybe a little too hot — with strong gross domestic product growth, a strong job market and strong consumer spending. 

Those measures have continued to mostly hold up. So much so, that in this story about recession indicators, I couldn’t even run through the classic red flags like rising unemployment or an inverted yield curve in the bond market. The hard data actually point to a strong economy.

“Where we are seeing some signs of softening is in soft data. Sorry to use the word twice,” Zief said.

Soft data is more about you, the consumer — how you feel and how you respond to how you feel. Maybe up until recently, you were grumpy about all the inflation stuff. But now, it seems a different kind of anxiety has taken over. As in, Googling “Are we in a recession?” from bed at 2 a.m.

“The risk was there before, but it’s much bigger now because of the tariffs,” said Mark Gertler, an economist at New York University.

He said the risk is less about the tariffs themselves and more about the unpredictable trade policy coming out of the White House. “What’s happened is the craziest period of economic policy I’ve seen in my career,” Gertler said.

That has, as we’ve seen, sent the stock market tumbling — which alone is not enough to predict a recession. It is enough, though, to make the 60% of Americans who own stocks nervous. Because the stock market is not the economy, as we say, but it is real money. 

Those losses can have serious impact. “You lost your down payment or your children lost their down payment for that home they really wanted,” said Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at U.S. Bank.

Even if you’re not invested, the mood matters. Recent consumer confidence numbers show a sharp drop in expectations.

“Indeed, The Conference Board readings did drop into recession territory,” Bovino said.

Again, no one indicator signals a recession. There’s actually an organization that identifies them: The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as a significant, widespread decline in economic activity lasting more than a few months. 

But this so-called soft data is a warning that people are worried. Experts are looking for the signals beyond the hard data that usually has their focus.

Bovino’s version of this is taking a walk and keeping tabs on her town.

“If you start to see more signs of business closures or reduced hours. If you start to see a lot of ‘Sale’ signs,” she said.

It means people and businesses are hunkering down for whatever’s ahead. 

Billions of cubic feet of additional natural gas is now moving under the ground, thanks to the completion of 10 major pipeline projects in 2024, according to new analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Roughly half of that is natural gas that’s headed to Europe and other parts of the world through what’s called liquefied natural gas, which is slated to see export growth double over the next five years, according to S&P Global. So what is LNG — and why does the rest of the world want it from us?

This big new wave of U.S. LNG exports started in 2016. That’s after fracking revolutionized oil and gas production.

“With the introduction of that technology, the supply curve of natural gas that was available at cost effective prices really expanded significantly,” said Matthew Zaragoza-Watkins, an economist at the University of California, Davis.

Because natural gas plants run even when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow, natural gas pairs well with those renewables as a cleaner alternative to coal. And it’s cheap. 

“The United States has a comparative advantage over many countries in terms of our abundant supplies of natural gas,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist with University of Houston. “We sell LNG to the global market. It goes to China, it goes to Europe, it goes to Asia and Latin America.”

But to get it around the world, pipelines and LNG export terminals are critical. It’s at these terminals where natural gas is sent through an industrial refrigeration process, said Richard Meyer with the American Gas Association.

“That super-cools pipeline gas to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit,” he said. “And that’s the temperature at which natural gas will turn into a liquid that really condenses the natural gas, makes it very energy dense.” 

But the infrastructure necessary to grow the LNG export market does face red tape, which is costly and time-consuming. Though some of that burden should go away under Trump, said Zaragoza-Watkins at UC Davis.

“The willingness of the current administration to issue permits for new LNG export terminals is going to be a significant boon to the industry,” he said.

That will relieve some of the regulatory uncertainty around LNG’s future.