Business

While concerns mount over how exactly President Donald Trump’s tariffs will impact the cost of coffee, cell phones and cars, there’s one price that’s tanking — and it’s something a lot of us rely on every day.

Oil fell to just $60 a barrel. That’s the lowest we’ve seen it since 2021. (And if you’ll recall, that was back during the height of the global pandemic, when we weren’t traveling much.)

Tariffs are helping to cause that, sure, but that’s not the only factor at play here. And none of it is good news for President Trump’s call to increase U.S. oil production.

Just like any commodity in the market, there’s a supply side and a demand side. The oil demand is responding like it would during any economic downturn.

“On the demand side, the tariffs and the recession fears, etc, show a weaker economy, and that means suppressed demand for oil,” said Morgan Bazilian, who directs the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines.

Lower demand usually means suppliers cut back supply, he said. That makes the response this time more puzzling: “OPEC+ said they were going to increase production, and that also suppresses prices.”

It sounds counterintuitive, but as other producers decrease supply, if OPEC+ increases supply, then they can gain market share, explained Hugh Daigle, who teaches petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Because every time the price of oil goes up but they don’t take advantage of that by increasing the amount that they’re producing, other people will make up the slack for the demand that’s implied by that increase in prices,” he said — and that decreases their market share over time.

So, Daigle said, this is an opportunity to up production and claw that market share back.

It’s good news for Trump’s campaign promise to lower oil prices. It’s not good news for his other goal of increasing domestic oil production.

“There’s not a lot of room for those extra barrels,” said Daigle. “Nobody really wants them.”

Domestic oil producers have already faced thin margins recently. They need prices above $60 per barrel to profitably drill a new well, per energy economist Mark Finley with Rice University. And prices fell to that threshold figure this week.

“What the administration’s response to oil producers domestically has been is, ‘Don’t worry, lower oil prices will be offset by easier regulation,'” Finley said.

The hope of the Trump administration was to have lower prices and increased domestic production, he added. But “it’s hard to see how less regulation can completely offset the decline of lower oil prices.”

Decreased regulation could increase profits for companies anywhere from $2 to $4 a barrel, Finley said. But by the beginning of this week, crude oil prices had already fallen by $10.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs — and the anxiety they are creating — have sent the stock market into a nosedive. But it’s not just stocks. Uncertainty is spreading throughout the economy.

There are several ways these concerns are showing up in the labor market, Elizabeth Crofoot, a senior economist with Lightcast, told “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal.

“There’s not a lot of job opportunity that people are seeing recently, and that’s really where you start to see uncertainty come in, at least from the consumer side,” she said. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: As the trained economist in this conversation, what do you make of everything that’s going on right now?

Elizabeth Crofoot: Oh, you know, I’m a labor economist, so I think about things from the perspective, obviously, of the labor market, and just all the uncertainty that we’re seeing is really manifesting itself in several ways throughout the labor market. First of all, we see this frozen labor market, right? There are hirings that have stalled out, quits and layoffs are relatively steady, job openings have been moving sideways since essentially the summer of 2024. So there’s not a lot of job opportunity that people are seeing recently, and that’s really where you start to see uncertainty come in, at least from the consumer side, right? Because at the end of the day, it’s, do you have a job? Are you bringing income into your household, and what does that mean for your household budget and your financial situation? So if you don’t have that job and that solid income, that’s going to manifest itself in the real economy in terms of your spending power and your ability to be a consumer.

Ryssdal: Am I wrong if I take your use of the word “uncertainty” and flip it and talk about economic confidence? Because it seems to me that what is happening now, like, since last Wednesday, is that, subject to the whims of one man, the global economy now has no confidence in anything. There’s literally no stability.

Crofoot: In terms of that stability, it is definitely the whims of one person, right? It can change on any given day. The whole uncertainty around tariffs, all of that hits consumers as well. It hits people in their jobs. My neighbors, for example, are big travelers and asking them about what plans you have for the summer, and they’re saying, “I don’t know. We’re actually going to hunker down and start saving a little bit more because we don’t know what’s going to happen to our jobs.” So that’s really hitting everybody on so many levels.

Ryssdal: If you were a business person, which is not to say that economists aren’t business people, but if you were, like, running a manufacturing company, and you had to think about starting a new plant here, what would your set of considerations look like present day?

Crofoot: That’s a really good question. And actually, in my current position at Lightcast, I do talk to a lot of companies, especially those that are in Canada, having the same exact conversation about “What am I going to do? I need to move operations quickly.” But they need to be in an area of the country that’s going to make sense for them financially, not only from a labor standpoint, but from other costs as well, in terms of energy availability, there’s so much that goes into that, rents. So it’s a huge equation. It’s the whole gamut of starting to run a business from a different country, and what are all of the considerations that they need to make.

Ryssdal: What is your — this is sort of a squishy question — but what’s your overall level of concern right now about what you see, again, as the economist in this conversation?

Crofoot: I mean, the real economic data so far is still really solid. I mean, the jobs report from last week —

Ryssdal: That’s a super important point, actually, right?

Crofoot: Yeah, I mean, unemployment is still very low, historically low, 4.2%, really solid job gain. If this was pre-pandemic times, we’d be all celebrating this huge uptick in jobs. But, yeah, I mean, it’s all the uncertainty around that, and we’re just in such a vulnerable position. And the thing is that it changes so quickly.

The European Union is open to a trade deal with the U.S., European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said today.

But the giant economic bloc could also impose retaliatory tariffs of its own on U.S. goods. Some imports from across the pond are already caught in the crossfire.

Audi is holding recently arrived cars at U.S. ports, and Jaguar Land Rover plans to pause vehicle shipments from the U.K. for a month.

European car companies have a bit of time to plot their next move because they’ve got cars on dealer lots that entered the U.S. before the tariffs.

Sean Tucker at Kelley Blue Book said Audi could keep those cars sitting in port for a while “because at this point they have more than a three-month supply before their dealers reach a point where they’re having to pay the post-tariff cost.”

But pretty quickly, they’ll have to make a choice.

Selling internal combustion engine cars to the U.S. had been a steady source of revenue in a global market that’s leaning electric, said Karl Brauer at ISeeCars.com. But now?

“They can’t really sell even their internal combustion cars that still have plenty of profit built in to U.S. consumers because of the tariffs,” he said.

So what are their options, if the new tariffs stay in place? Brauer said they could shift more production to the U.S. to avoid import taxes. 

Or, said Mary Anne Madeira, an assistant professor of international relations at Lehigh University, “the best option for these firms is to divert trade away from the U.S. and towards consumer markets elsewhere in the world.”

European leaders, she said, have already been looking to open up trade to South America and other parts of the globe. But they’re also preparing to respond with retaliatory measures, if they don’t reach a deal with the U.S. 

The problem is, Madeira said, balancing all the competing interests and politics across 27 EU member countries would be really tricky.

One example: “The automobile industry, you know, is really located in Germany, but a lot of parts and suppliers are in Central and Eastern European countries like Czech Republic and Hungary,” she said.

So hurting the exports of one country in the name of standing up for the bloc could hurt relations among partners.

Two weeks ago, the price of U.S. copper surged to a new record high as buyers stocked up, only to collapse after last week’s tariff blitz. 

Yes, other commodity markets took a similar hit: The price of oil; cash crops like soybeans and cotton; and precious metals like gold are also plummeting. 

But copper markets have a special reputation for helping us predict the macroeconomic future. You need copper to make or build just about anything in this economy. Almost every sector relies on it. 

“From construction, infrastructure and also defense,” said chief market strategist Phillip Streible at Blue Line Futures.

He said those are the traditional markets for copper. But the material also in high demand for various kinds of emerging tech. 

“EV vehicles, which use four times more copper than traditional gas vehicles; AI which is energy intense — computing requires copper in order to perform its function,” said Streible. 

All of this is why demand for copper, both the actual metal and copper futures, usually portends healthy economic growth. 

But the recent run on the 29th element doesn’t quite fit that pattern, said Trevor Yates, senior analyst at Global X ETFs. 

“Copper prices were almost synthetically high because of this pre-buying,” said Yates.

Pre-buying ahead of last week’s tariff announcements, which ultimately did not target copper. 

Craig Pirrong, a professor of finance at the University of Houston, said copper is on a short list of products, including lumber and semiconductors, exempted by the White House.

“One possible reason would be that they surmised that Americans would bear most of the cost of a tariff on copper,” and decided against a specific tariff for now, said Pirrong. 

So, why have copper prices been tanking? 

“This is a verdict about the overall prospects for the economy and not something specific to the copper market,” said Pirrong. 

He said slowing demand for copper could foreshadow a broader slowdown around the world, especially in China, the world’s top buyer of the metal. 

The S&P 500 stock index has lost almost 20% of its value since February. Over in the bond market, alarm bells are flashing too. Particularly in a type of Treasury debt we don’t talk about very often — the two-year note. Investors in that market are particularly looking at what’s gonna happen to the economy and interest rates in the next two years. 

Almost everyone in this economy is touched in some way by interest rates. 

“It’s what people pay to lease their cars and their home mortgages and their credit card bills,” said Harry Mamaysky, a professor at Columbia Business School.

The Federal Reserve influences these interest rates based on what it thinks the economy needs. And what it does is gonna depend a lot on what tariffs do to the economy. Right now, economists expect tariff policy is going to hit in two big ways.

“One is it’ll probably push inflation up, at least for a while, and the other is it will push output and employment down,” said Bill English, professor of finance at Yale School of Management. 

So, tariffs equal inflation. Tariffs also equal economic slowdown or recession. Here’s the tricky part: the Federal Reserve can’t fight both of those at the same time. It keeps interest rates higher to fight inflation. It keeps rates lower to fight an economic slowdown. The bond market has to guess which one the Fed will do.

“Markets seem to think that the Fed will respond more to the weak economy than to the high inflation,” said English. 

Yields on two-year notes, which look two years out into the future, have dropped in the past couple of days. Investors think the Fed will have to cut interest rates more than expected because the economy is going to be worse than expected.

“Investors believe growth is going to slow and we are potentially going to enter recession,” said Ruben Hovhannisyan, a fixed-income portfolio manager at the TCW Group. 

At the beginning of the year, markets expected the Fed to cut rates maybe once this year. But expectations have changed. “Something like two to three rate cuts by the end of the year,” said Harry Mamaysky.

So interest rates could fall by three-quarters of a percentage point this year. So far, Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said the Fed’s not in a hurry. 

Collin Martin, a fixed-income strategist at Charles Schwab, said that may be because tariffs aren’t something the Fed can address. Schwab is a Marketplace underwriter.

“If the Fed were to cut rates, I don’t know how much that’s going to encourage companies to invest more,” said Martin. “I don’t think it’s the level of borrowing costs that’s necessarily affecting business behaviors right now. It’s the uncertainty.”

Dozens of workers at a shoe factory in southern China’s Dongguan city glue, sew and buff foam slippers and canvas shoes.

They punch every hole and lace every shoe by hand.

“Every lacing is [done] manually. There is no robot. I think the big brands tried and failed,” James Gau, whose company ShoeBot owns the factory, said. Sixty percent of his clients are from the U.S.

Shoe manufacturing is labor-intensive, according to Gau, especially when clients want their brand tags attached to the shoes, and to have them wrapped in tissue paper before boxing up.

Last week, President Donald Trump announced a new round of tariffs on foreign exports to the United States as part of a plan to bring more manufacturing back to the U.S. China was hit with an extra tariff of 34%, bringing total levies on Chinese exports to 54%.

China has been here before. During Trump’s first term, he hiked tariffs on things like Chinese solar panels, computers and footwear. So, many manufacturers expanded their operations. Under the ‘China plus one’ strategy, production takes place in China plus a neighboring nation such as Vietnam, Cambodia or Indonesia. That strategy did not always work out well and for a variety of reasons; China is still the best place to produce quality products at a scale and speed unmatched by other exporting countries.

In shoemaking, when local wages get too high, Gau said manufacturers like him and his cofounder must relocate. That has been the pattern ever since shoe manufacturing started out in the west.

“The footwear started from Europe and then America,” Gau said. He has been in the athletic and casual shoe industry, mostly in the shoemaking hub of Dongguan, since 1995 and has worked with big brands including Adidas, Crocs and Timberland.

By the 1960s, Gau said shoe factories had shifted to Japan and Brazil, then Korea and Taiwan. For the past three decades, the industry has been based largely in mainland China, until President Trump’s first term when he hiked tariffs on China. China hit back with tariffs on U.S. goods.

So, seven years ago, more companies started to look at relocating production to Southeast Asia.

“We actually looked at Vietnam,” cofounder Lena Phoenix of Colorado shoe brand Xero, said. Xero did not end up moving production to Vietnam because of the complexity of manufacturing their products. The company specializes in shoes meant to mimic the sensation of being barefoot.

“We make everything from casual sandals to technical hiking boots to professional quality basketball shoes, to lifestyle and kids footwear,” Phoenix said. “So, because we have such a wide range of styles requiring different technical capabilities, we use a number of different factories.”

Those factories are in China because that is where the skilled workforces are. Phoenix’s company is doing business with Gau’s ShoeBot.

The manufacturer works with small- and medium-sized brands. ShoeBot also makes shoes in Vietnam, though its operations there are small.

“Vietnam is already overloaded. It’s [got] limited capacity, limited labor force,” Gau said. “The larger brands already took over all the best resources.

He said Indonesia is also another shoe manufacturing hub and the situation is similar. Still, he said most raw materials and parts must be shipped from China.

One of ShoeBot’s clients is a Portland shoe start-up, Avoli, which makes volleyball shoes for women and girls. ShoeBot was an early investor in Avoli.

Cofounder Mark Oleson said Vietnam may be good for big brands but not for niche ones like his.

“Vietnam is where China was maybe 15 years ago,” Oleson, who has over two decades’ experience working with Adidas, Under Armour and Lululemon, said.

China has so-called industrial clusters, which means everything shoe-related, from raw materials to foam manufacturers, knitwear, lacing and embroidery groups are all within driving distance of Chinese shoe factories.

“It’s just set up to do it right,” Oleson said.

He said as a startup, footwear production is difficult because most manufacturers are not willing to pick up his small orders.

“The [first] barrier of entry is getting into a factory that is not going to kick you out,” Oleson said. “A reasonably large manufacturer is looking at 5,000-plus units per color.”

In contrast, Avoli wants only hundreds of pairs per color and ShoeBot was willing to do it by finding more cost-effective ways. Oleson gave an example of ShoeBot using a different way of integrating color by painting from the back side of the outsole or using small embroidery lines.

“It’s the little detailed pieces that actually change the look of the entire shoe without having to create a whole new model,” Oleson said.

He said Chinese factories are innovative. They find new materials, upgrade machines and cut down production times.

Manufacturing in China makes it easier to roll out and test different colors for new volleyball shoe styles.

“There’s nothing more satisfying than being at one of these tournaments and having our product on display and you hear those four words as [volleyball players] pass by, ‘Oh, those are cute,’” Avoli’s other cofounder, Rick Anguilla, said.

He has over two decades of experience in the shoe industry working for major brands like Nike and Under Armour. Anguilla said they’ve thought about manufacturing in the U.S. but decided the challenges were too great.

Phoenix of Xero shoes agrees.

“There isn’t an opportunity to move footwear manufacturing back to the United States,” she said. “It would take hundreds of millions of dollars of factory investment, training of a workforce that does not exist. It would take an enormous amount of time.”

When it was clear Trump would be the Republican party’s nominee for the 2024 election, Vietnam seemed like a more attractive option to Phoenix, despite its less skilled workforce.

Phoenix said her company had hoped to shift manufacturing there in phases. 

Since Trump increased tariffs on Vietnamese exports by 46% last week, she has been having second thoughts.

“One of the things that’s critical for us to know is whether or not these are in fact the final tariffs, given all of the changes that have come out of this administration, we are, to some extent, waiting for the dust to settle,” Phoenix said.

In these uncertain times, some manufacturers remain optimistic.

As an entrepreneur, Gau said he feels excited because the tough economic climate and uncertainty means larger players do not hold all the advantages.

“Everyone is considering or exploring what a new model should be. [This] puts a giant company [and a] small company like us on the same starting line,” Gau said.

He said small manufacturers like him are more agile and can help clients pivot quickly for whatever may come next.

Additional research by Charles Zhang

There is a blinding beacon of light at the top of a tower in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

It’s a solar power facility called Ivanpah. It’s been supplying enough juice to power 140,000 homes for more than a decade. But it doesn’t generate electricity directly like rooftop solar panels do. It’s surrounded by a bunch of mirrors in concentric circles.

“Those mirrors reflect the heat of the sun to a receiver that’s mounted at the top of a big tower,” said Ed Smeloff, a clean energy consultant. “And then that receiver heats up, and the fluid in the receiver is used to drive the energy through a conventional steam turbine.”

Ivanpah opened 11 years ago, and it’s run by a company called NRG Energy. It cost $2.2 billion to build, $1.6 billion of which came in the form of loans from the U.S. Department of Energy.

“The cost of the project compared to other renewable technologies looked reasonable,” said Smeloff. “That, of course, has changed dramatically over the last 15 years or so.”

The hundreds of thousands of mirrors in the Ivanpah project, called heliostats, track the sun so they can reflect light to the beacon in the middle throughout the day. (Cliff Ho/DOE)

Because over that period, the cost of photovoltaic solar power, or solar panels, has fallen about 70%. Now it is significantly cheaper than the energy that Ivanpah generates. The main buyer of the plant’s power — California utility PG&E — released a statement saying it’s pulling out to save its customers money. Ivanpah’s set to close early next year.

Whether that counts as a failure depends on how you view the mission of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, said Jigar Shah, its former director.

“It was clearly successful in that we gave them money and they commercialized the technology here in the United States,” he said. “It didn’t catalyze a trillion dollars’ worth of investment. So from that perspective, it wasn’t successful. Whereas, the solar PV [photovoltaic] investments that we made did catalyze a trillion dollars of investment.”

He also said taxpayers will get most of their money back. The Department of Energy declined to say exactly how much. 

“Long term, the reason we’re doing all of this is to get the technologies that succeed to get successful at scale,” Shah said.

Concentrated solar power won’t die when Ivanpah shuts down. There are still people and companies who think the plant has value.

Fred Morse is one of them. He’s the guy who wrote up the report 55 years ago on whether it made sense to put solar on the roof of the White House. Today, he runs a startup called SolStor Energy that develops concentrated solar.

“I was there two months ago. It’s a beautiful facility. It works,” said Morse. “Clean, carbon-free. You really want to shut that down?”

He said sure, PV solar panels are cheaper in the day time. But a concentrated solar plant can pump that superheated liquid it generates into an insulated tank so the plant can provide electricity at night.

But Morse said the future investments, like the one Ivanpah needed to get off the ground, are more uncertain as the new trade war and the shrinking of the federal government make investment less likely.

On Monday, we’ll get the Federal Reserve’s February report on consumer credit — that’s borrowing on all different kinds of loans, like mortgages, credit cards, auto and student loans. 

Consumer credit was up 4.3% in January, after rising by double that in December. 

Here’s the glass-half-empty scenario, brought to you by Bankrate senior industry analyst Ted Rossman “Credit card balances are at record highs, up more than 50% from 2021.”

Delinquency rates have been rising since 2022, and more than 10% of credit card bills are more than 90 days late. 

“We’re seeing more people using cards just to get by for groceries and gas,” Rossman said.

OK, now for the glass-slightly-more-full perspective: “Overall levels of debt-to-income — it looks pretty good,” said Curt Long, deputy chief economist at America’s Credit Unions.

Most consumers can still afford to keep up, even with interest rates topping 20%. But that could change, he warned “if the labor market really starts to deteriorate.” Delinquencies tend to rise in lock-step with unemployment. 

And Ted Rossman’s biggest worry? “Auto loans. Delinquencies there are worse than they were during the financial crisis.”

People really try to pay that bill first. Because if you don’t, they repossess.

Major economic transformations often gather momentum slowly. That is, until accumulated data add up into clear signs of change. That’s the story arc of the more than three-decade-long rise in older Americans holding debt.

Older Americans are increasingly carrying debt into retirement, and the amount of debt is also on the rise.

“In 1989, about 58% of older adults over the age of 50 carry that in retirement. And in 2020, that percentage has jumped to 78%,” said Mingli Zhong, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute.

This series is in partnership with Next Avenue, a nonprofit news platform for older adults produced by Twin Cities PBS.

Owing money isn’t necessarily bad. Even upper income households, earning, say, $260,000 or more, take out loans to buy homes, cars and appliances. Young adults borrow to pay for their education and to start a family.

That said, the standard personal finance recommendation is to eliminate debt around retirement. Everyday life at older ages is financially riskier with debt, especially for people of modest means. Yet fewer near-retirees and retirees are debt-free.

“We’ve seen an uptick in debt, including mortgage debt, among older adults for a long time, for a couple decades now. It has to do with several factors,” said Odette Williamson, senior attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. “It has to do with cutback and some safety net provisions. It has to do with [the] increase in expenses, most recently due to inflation. And it has to do with the fact that older adults are aging with just fewer resources.”

The combination of debt and low savings among older adults is pushing more households into the ranks of the financially precarious. Three major factors are driving the trend.

“We found that the debt-creating institutions overwhelmed our wealth-creating institutions,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economics at the New School of Social Research.

The value of home equity for the bottom 90% measured by wealth has barely increased over the past 40 years, Ghilarducci said. Lenders made it easier to borrow from home equity, lowered downpayment requirements and spearheaded other similar innovations. People also borrow to pay for the basics of modern life.

“People were able to also get car loans and other kinds of durable consumer purchases on loans rather than cash,” Ghilarducci noted.

In the series “Buy Now, Pay Later” Marketplace senior economics contributor Chris Farrell looks into the risks debt holds for older people. (Courtesy Farrell)

Debt is also the other side of the lack-of-retirement-savings coin. Nearly half of private-sector workers and some two-thirds of lower-wage workers don’t have access to a retirement savings plan at work. Finally, wages rose slowly for most workers in recent decades — especially for Black and Latino workers, and for women in all categories. All the while, the costs of everyday living went up.

“I’m seeing the debt increase for everyone, but it’s a matter of whether you have the resources to deal with the debt,” said Odette Williamson. “And for those, especially people of color, older adults who have faced a lifetime of discrimination in the job market and other types of discrimination, they simply have aged with little or no resource to meet these mounting expenses.”

Nearly half of older adults surveyed by AARP use credit cards to cover basic living expenses. Toss in home-equity loans, medical debts, student loans, auto loans and mortgages. The accumulation of debt signals that too many older adults are living on a financial precipice.

The situation is reminiscent of these lyrics from Woody Guthrie’s “The Debt I Owe” sung by Lou Reed: “Every day, several times a day, a thought comes over me/ I owe more debts than I ever can pay back, more money than I’ll ever see.”

Hear or read the latest installment of Chris Farrell’s “Buy Now, Pay Later” series every Monday morning. This series is in partnership with Next Avenue, a nonprofit news platform for older adults produced by Twin Cities PBS.

The economy added 228,000 jobs in March — generally more than economists expected. The labor force participation rate was up a tad, and the unemployment rate rose just a touch. All signs of a fairly resilient labor market. 

Of course, there’s a “but”: That data was collected in mid-March and we are now firmly in April, with new, broad tariffs expected to take effect over the course of the next week. And all that changing trade policy could affect employment moving forward.

That saying, “past performance is no guarantee of future results,” could apply to this jobs report. 

“Things were good in mid-March, but what do they look like in mid September?” said Guy Berger, director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute.

Tariffs on imports will mean higher prices for, let’s say, imported hoodies and headphones and whiskey.

And if demand for all that falls? “Less stuff is going to be going through that chain to the end consumer,” Berger said.

Which means we’re likely going to need fewer people to transport, store and sell that stuff. 

“Less of it’s gonna go into retailers hands. You probably need less salespeople,” he said.

Manufacturing jobs here could be hit too, particularly in the short-term.

UBS Chief U.S. Economist Jonathan Pingle said, take automakers, who’ll be paying more for imported parts.

“If the price goes up a lot, because the production costs have gone up a lot, the demand for those cars is probably going to fall,” he said. “And that probably means less workers to produce those cars.”

Pingle said if tariffs stay in place, manufacturing could move back to the U.S. But that could take in some cases, a year, in others, years, plural.

Also, not every manufacturing job abroad equals a new job for a person here. Instead, it’ll equal a job for a robot.

“You could imagine 10 people overseas becomes three U.S. workers plus …  the other seven people’s jobs being done by technology paired with the U.S. worker,” Pingle said.

Jobs in some industries will be less affected. Like services that are created and used here, said Kory Kantenga, head of Economics, Americas, at Linkedin.

One that’s especially needed by an aging population is health care. 

“We’re going to need workers to take care of our elderly, to take care of us,” he said.

But overall, UBS’s Jonathan Pingle said these tariffs are gonna hurt economic growth, hurt our national wealth and ultimately hurt demand for workers.

This trade war’s going to hit everybody’s wallet. The Budget Lab at Yale University estimated fresh produce, for instance, will go up by 4% and clothing prices will rise 17%. That kind of inflation hits people with the lowest incomes hardest.

The Yale Budget Lab also estimated that Trump’s tariffs alone will slash disposable income in the poorest households by at least $1,700 a year. Simply put, the lowest-income households spend more money on necessities.

Steve Blitz, chief U.S. economist at GlobalData TS.Lombard, said the category that’ll hit them hardest is apparel.

“That’s really where they’re going to feel it the most, because they buy clothes like everybody else,” he said.

Blitz said yes, you can hold on to clothes longer and mend tears, but everybody needs new underwear and shirts sometimes.

Sheng Lu is a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.

“The current reciprocal tariff structure especially leads to a price hike for products targeting the value market,” he said. That means the cheapest clothes, which come from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka — all countries that face some of the highest tariffs. Lu said that puts low-income buyers in a tough position.

“They already have more limited choices compared to more affluent consumers,” he said.

If you’re already buying your underwear from the most affordable brands, there’s nothing cheaper to switch to. You just have to pay the higher price.

That’s a problem people with low incomes face at the grocery store too, said Tim Richards, an agribusiness professor at Arizona State University.

“The top half of income earners, they spend about 10% of their income on food,” he said. “But if you look at the lowest 20% of income earners, they spend 30% of their income on food.”

Richards said those higher-income shoppers can also “trade down,” from, say, the organic vegetables to the cheaper ones.

“It’s one of the real harmful things about tariffs is that the people that are less able to substitute away end up paying the bigger hit,” he said.

And, Richards said, that has health consequences. Because healthier food tends to be more expensive, and if you can’t afford the cheapest vegetables, then you don’t buy any.

At Christina Kent Early Childhood Center in downtown Albuquerque, the kids guide the curriculum. Right now, the two- and three-year-olds in the bunny classroom are guiding it in a Jurassic Park kind of direction. 

“Do you know the names of any of these dinosaurs?” asked teacher Danielle Reinertsen as the “bunnies” dug through a basket of toy triceratops and brachiosaurus and made their best dino sounds. 

“It seems they’re most interested in figuring out, why did the dinos die? And, what do dinos eat?” Reiertsen said. 

Some possibilities jotted down on the classroom white board include salad, people and croissants from the coffee shop down the street. 

“We’ll see if there’s a question they want to dig deeper into and if they want to move on to something else, we’ll probably move on to something else,” Reinertsen said. 

Something else like making family portraits or watching real caterpillars transform into painted lady butterflies. 

Reinertsen and two other teachers lead this classroom of 18 toddlers. That’s a pretty low grownup to kid ratio, and one reason why Christina Kent earns a five-star quality rating from the state of New Mexico. High payroll costs compared to tuition are also what make running the center so expensive. 

“Our margins are fairly narrow,” said executive director Sondra Carpenter. “I can tell you that consistently, for a number of years in a row, this center was running in the red.” 

Carpenter said the center was walking a sort of tight rope. It was barely charging enough to keep the lights on. Still, lots of families struggled to make tuition payments. That included families whose incomes far exceeded the cutoff for childcare assistance through the state. Carpenter said center leadership found themselves playing the uncomfortable role of bill collectors. 

“Do we send them to collections? Do we take it as a loss for the year?” Carpenter said. “Then the relationship gets a little strained.” 

But in 2021, New Mexico made some big investments that changed that dynamic. It dramatically expanded eligibility for childcare assistance from 200 to 400% of the federal poverty line. It also boosted the reimbursement rates centers receive for accepting childcare vouchers to a level that the state says actually covers the cost of providing high quality care. 

“It’s allowed child care programs to really focus where we want to focus, which is on the kids,” Carpenter said. 

This started as an experiment paid for using federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funds. In 2022, New Mexicans voted to make the expansion permanent using money from two state investment funds fed mostly by the state’s surplus oil and gas revenue. 

“You can make choices about what’s important, and New Mexico has really decided to go big on early childhood,” said Hailey Heinz, deputy director of the University of New Mexico’s Cradle to Career Policy Institute. 

Heinz said a New Mexican family of four making up to $124,000 a year can now send their kids to day care for free. That’s twice the state’s median income. 

“New Mexico is a pretty low income place, so when you move something up to 400% of federal poverty you get something that starts to almost look and feel like a universal system,” Heinz said. 

Child care in the United States is a classic example of a failing market where the forces of supply and demand don’t produce good outcomes for businesses, workers or consumers. Day care prices are about as high as families can bear. That constraint means many centers are barely scraping by and can’t offer higher teacher salaries, enough slots to meet demand or the quality of care that we know is good for kids’ development. 

Since the pandemic, a couple of state governments have been trying to bring things into balance by helping more households afford care. California, Colorado and Alabama have expanded their free childcare options for three- and four-year-olds. But New Mexico is the only state to offer full tuition waivers to broad swaths of its middle class from birth to age five. 

“The play New Mexico is making is to put a lot of public money into this broken market,” said Heinz. “Could we transform the system that way? Could we make it higher quality? Could we incentivize providers to open new rooms because they know they’re going to have this reliable, higher revenue source?” 

If more families can afford care and providers’ margins are a bit wider, maybe the system could work better for everybody. Easy, right?  

“Right,” said Jessica Brown, an economist studying childcare markets at the University of South Carolina. “If every state could have oil money, maybe we could solve the child care crisis.” 

In 2022, New Mexico was in the unique position of having both the surplus revenue and the political will to make an all-in investment in early childhood education. Brown said the investment funds that pay for the expanded subsidy are innovative but not necessarily replicable in states with tighter budgets. Still, she said other states should be taking notes. 

“Child care serves this dual purpose in facilitating labor force participation of parents, but also being really important for child development,” Brown said, so getting more kids into high quality care should pay short and long term economic dividends. 

“We have a lot of research showing that if early care environments are good we see better outcomes later in life,” Brown said. “We see higher educational attainment, we see higher wages, we see better health and lower crime rates.” 

For now, researchers at the University of New Mexico are finding that the expanded subsidy is helping shift New Mexico’s child care sector toward more center-based, licensed care at higher quality. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of licensed child care slots in the state increased by 7% and the number of centers earning a “five-star” rating grew by 16%. 

In some cases, the stability provided by the expanded subsidy is allowing centers to expand. 

Across the street from Christina Kent Early Childhood Center is a building that the center just purchased and that will soon house five new toddler, pre-K and badly-needed infant classrooms. Director Sondra Carpenter said she knows the center can fill those classrooms now that more families can afford care and the center’s profit margins are a bit wider. 

“Has that set the stage and the foundation for us to be able to say, ‘Yes, let’s take on a loan?’ It has,” Carpenter said. “I don’t think the school ten years ago was in a financial position to make that kind of decision.” 

More and more people are flocking to Texas — making it one of the fastest growing states in the country. The population explosion also means an increase in the demand for water.

Take West Odessa — many residents don’t have running water and this is in a region where the multi-billion dollar oil industry is booming. But figuring out how to pay for new infrastructure to get water lines where they need to be is a big problem.

Driving through a West Odessa neighborhood, Catarina Tavarez points out bulky water tanks sitting alongside most of the homes and RVs.

“There’s a black tank right here. They’ve got a green tank right there,” she said. “RV place with three tanks.”

Residents store water in these large containers because otherwise they don’t have a reliable source. West Odessa is an unincorporated community that local leaders believe has around 50,000 residents, and in recent years, the West Texas community has been growing fast.

The farther you drive into West Odessa, the more black water tanks are scattered across yards. (Mitch Borden/Marfa Public Radio) 

Many people came here for cheap land and few regulations. It’s a place you might see a small ranch in the middle of a residential neighborhood, work yards filled with oil drilling equipment or mobile homes packed tightly on a single lot.

“This is West Odessa, you’ll have a beautiful home and then the most random mobile homes falling apart,” Tavarez said.

As more people have moved here, the community has expanded beyond existing water lines. Hence the tanks. Which can take a ton of time and money to fill with thousands of gallons of water.

Pulling up to her neighbors house, Tavarez tells me how they haul water.

“They’ll have their flatbed, they’ll have different kinds of tanks,” she said. “They’ll go out anywhere where they can find it less expensive and she told me it takes her about two to three hours per week to haul water.”

Tavarez is part of a group called the West Odessa Water Warriors, which is trying to get more residents connected to the local water utility. Patti Kappauf founded the group last year and according to her it has not been easy.

She said, “You’d think prolific oil fields, right. We would have money — but we don’t and, you know, this population just got out of control.”

A big part of the problem is some parts of West Odessa have access to running water, while large swaths just don’t. The local water system is run by the Ector County Utility District, which doesn’t have the millions of dollars needed to run water lines to the far corners of West Odessa.

Darrell Pando, who was recently elected to the board of the utility district, is kept up at night by how difficult it is going to be to get running water to more West Odessans.

“The main issue is 99% of the people that are asking for water, are outside the district, so there’s no infrastructure out there whatsoever,” he said.

More people are going to have to pay the district if they are going to be able to expand water infrastructure, which has sparked some difficult conversations.

A water tower stands in West Odessa that’s surrounded by homes without running water. (Mitch Borden/Marfa Public Radio)

Pando recalled a citizen telling him, “Darrell, you mean to tell me that I probably won’t be alive by the time you get me water?’ I said ‘I might not even be alive.’ I said, ‘It might not be my kids, it might be my grandkids finishing this up.’”

There are some projects in the works that will expand access to clean and running water, according to Pando, but nothing that will fix the problems at the scale that’s necessary.

Across Texas, communities are worried about running out of water as more people move in. Lawmakers are talking about investing more in water projects. But people out here in West Odessa, like Catarina Tavarez, feel abandoned. 

“It’s not an issue for them, it’s not a priority for them,” Tavarez said.

She pointed out that it’s not always about expanding lines to new developments. In some cases old water wells have dried up, which is what happened to her.

“Running water is a basic need.  I mean this should not be a problem right now,” she said. “It should have been fixed years ago.”

For now, Tavarez and her neighbors will keep filling their water containers wherever they can to keep their faucets running.

This story was produced by our colleagues at the BBC.

The rapid patter of the auctioneer and the thud of a gavel — the classic sounds of an auction. Today, 250 cars are being sold at Manheim Leeds in the north of England. It’s part of Atlanta’s Cox Enterprises and is one of the U.K.’s busiest car auctions.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens to old rental cars or where your car goes at the end of the finance period, there’s a good chance it ends up at auctions like Manheim Leeds.

Out in the yard, it’s a fresh spring morning. Cars arrive by truck and undergo a rigorous process before hitting the auction floor: cleaning, inspection and grading.

Cars being prepped for auction at Manheim Leeds. (BBC)

In the main building is Manheim’s expansive warehouse. Lined neatly across the floor are gleaming cars waiting their turn to be driven down to the double-lane auction floor. Here, I catch up with Sunny Bhatt, who runs SRH Cars in Leeds. He’s eyeing up premium German vehicles.

“We’re kind of looking at the mileage,” explains Sunny, “so as long as it’s not too heavy on the miles. Preferably under eight years old. You’d be hoping to pay around about £8,000-£9,000.”

That’s about $11,000, and, according to another player — British Car Auctions — the U.K.’s used car market is going strong. The average selling price was $10,500 in January, up 6% from the year before. Sunny explains that we have electric vehicles to thank for that.

“It’s a supply-and-demand issue. There’s a massive influx of electric cars,” he said. “So a lot of the auctions have less and less petrol and diesel cars, which will drive the price up.”

By “petrol and diesel,” Sunny means gas cars. And despite this influx of EVs into the market, Sunny says, for now, he’s not interested. “I’d rather stick to the petrol and diesel cars that we know, love — and can fix.”

Standing behind the auctioneer’s platform, I can see the screens flashing: numbers and bids coming in from online buyers watching a live stream of the auction.

Matt Scholes from RHT Motors is taking a break. He comes to Manheim every week and always has a strategy.

Matt Scholes from RHT Motors comes to Manheim Leeds every week. (BBC)

“I do a lot of pre-work before I get here,” Scholes says. “I’ve managed to buy three out of six. Paid a little more than I would’ve wanted for two of them but I’ve got to set a ceiling before I start to bid or it can get out of hand.”

After greeting all the regulars on the auction floor, center manager Ben Musther gets me to go shoulder-to-shoulder with the other bidders.

“So we’re on lot number 496,” he says. “This is a Mitsubishi Shogun, and it’s done 130,000 miles. It’s got an auction guide price of about £2,000 to £2,450.”

He darts me a glance. “Where do you think it’s probably gonna end up?”

“I’d say £2,000,” I tell him, slightly uncertain.

“I don’t think you’re a million miles away,” says Musther. “I think that’s gonna probably do £1,700 to £1,800. Nobody’s putting their hand up just yet.”

“I better keep my hand down,” I say, only half-joking.

“We’re alright. We’re trained professionals,” quips Ben before turning his attention to business.

Ben Musther is the center manager at Manheim Leeds. (BBC)

“So he’s now asking for £1,800, the internet’s flashed up there, £1,900. So that’s now on provisional.”

“That’s it? It’s done?”

“That vehicle’s offered and out the door.”

I’m proud of my guess, telling Ben, “I wasn’t far off.”

Professional pride kicks in. “You wasn’t”, he says, “but I did mention £1,800 to £2,000!”

Okay, so Ben wins this one. It’s clear that here at Manheim Leeds, the used car market remains strong and always moving.

American startups raised more than $91 billion in venture capital funding in the first quarter of this year, according to new data out this week from the research firm Pitchbook.

More than a third of that funding went to one company: OpenAI. But even if you leave that mega-deal out, AI-focused companies still received about half of the remaining VC dollars in the United States.

One reason venture capitalists are piling into AI? They have a serious case of FOMO.

“People tend to chase hot sectors. Venture is a very shiny object industry,” said Sarah Kunst with the venture capital firm Cleo Capital.

She’s invested in AI companies herself and said lots of startups that were first focused on fintech or e-commerce but use artificial intelligence for something are rebranding themselves as AI companies now. 

“Because you know that leaning into the AI story will help you raise money, will help your company get off the ground,” Kunst said.

Still, there’s a drawback to all this focus on AI.

“If all these companies are doing AI, are we missing out on potential innovation in other spaces?” asked Emily Zheng, an analyst at Pitchbook. 

She also points out that a lot of AI-focused companies have yet to make money. If they never do, this big bet VCs are making won’t pan out and will have less to invest with in the future.

The prices of commodities like crude oil, copper and soybeans have dropped in response to President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements, indicating pessimism about where the global economy may be headed. Even though many commodities, like oil, were exempt from tariffs, the broader economic effects of tariffs are likely to take a toll if they continue.

Tariffs have cast a shadow on the upcoming planting season for Iowa soybean farmer Dave Walton: “It feels a bit like today; cloudy, overcast, gray,” he said.

Before this round of tariffs, Walton said that soybean prices were almost breaking even. “With that additional drop in price, it just creates more red ink, so we went from a break-even or a small loss to a larger loss.”

As for crude oil — the commodity of all commodities — new tariffs make U.S. consumer products pricier, according to Joe DeLaura, a senior energy strategist at Rabobank. That will cool the demand for fuel for transoceanic shipping and other transportation.

“Companies are just going to cut back on orders,” he said. “That’s going to decrease domestic usage of logistics, transportation and shipping.”

Gasoline demand could also take a hit. Consumers may be less likely to get in their cars and drive to the store.

“You’re not going to go shopping at Target if the $15 t-shirt costs you $30,” said DeLaura.

OPEC + is adding oil supply, which is also pushing down prices — lower prices that could hurt U.S. oil producers, said Ian Lange with the Colorado School of Mines.

“The shale revolution means we’re now big producers — the biggest producer — and so there’s sort of, like an extra negative impact right on the U.S. economy as a result of us being big producers of oil and gas when the price of oil and gas goes down,” he said.

In the world of metals, volatility has taken a toll on prices, per consultant Chris Berry of House Mountain Partners — including for copper, which was recently at a high.

“When you look at copper, it’s called the metal with the PhD in economics because it — generally speaking — is a pretty good predictor of economic growth in an economy,” he said. “If you’re going to lay higher costs into an economy, it’s going to hit copper prices in particular.”

In other words, a growing economy needs more copper, while a weakening one needs less.

The Trump administration’s tariffs are set to hit the apparel industry especially hard.

Nearly all of the clothes and shoes we buy in the U.S. come from outside our borders — many of them from countries in Southeast Asia. Imports from many of those countries are soon going to be subject to tariffs over 30%.

When President Trump raised taxes on imports from China in his first term, apparel companies moved a lot of their operations elsewhere — especially to Vietnam, said David Swartz with Morningstar. 

This time, with tariffs targeting all U.S. trading partners, there’s nowhere to hide.

“They cannot move production to other countries to avoid a tariff in one country in any realistic time frame,” he said.

Moving garment manufacturing to the U.S. is just not an option, per Stephen Lamar, head of the American Apparel and Footwear Association.

“Because we don’t have the labor, the skill sets, the infrastructure, the capabilities to scale up production,” he said.

Bottom line? “We’re not going to be able to buy clothing as inexpensively as we have in the past,” said Denise Green at Cornell University.

There could be an upside, though: We’ve been buying and wasting a lot of apparel for years, she said. “Maybe we come to value clothing and take care of it and ensure its longevity.”

But, Green added, tariffs will devastate the global apparel industry.

Twelve years ago, Frida Adame unknowingly launched her career outside downtown Houston’s outdoor ice rink in Discovery Green park, helping her mom make some extra money during the holidays. 

“My mom used to stand on that corner right over there selling trinket lights,” she said. “I used to stand right on that corner and sing, ‘lights, lights, $5.’” 

Adame, 29, spent so much time around rink that the operations manager encouraged her to get a job there.

“Of course, he didn’t know that I didn’t have legal documentation to work,” Adame said.  

At the time, Adame — who emigrated from Mexico as a kid — was eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, so a security guard at the rink gave her the money for her application fee. Once approved, she got a work permit and temporary protection from deportation under the program. 

“I started to get my new job with my Social, because I do get a Social Security [number] through DACA. I started filing my own taxes,” she said.  

Since then, Adame has worked her way up, from skate attendant to project manager for the company that runs the ice and roller skating rink, and other rinks across the country. Her contributions far surpass her first working years, when she earned around $8 an hour.  

“This year, I believe I had to pay back $2,500” to the IRS, she said. That’s in addition to what was taken out of her paycheck. These are taxes she pays even though she’s not eligible for benefits like federally funded Medicaid or Social Security. 

Millions of undocumented immigrants pay taxes every year, including DACA recipients like Adame. And the confidentiality of the addresses and other personal data submitted to the IRS by taxpaying undocumented immigrants has remained protected for decades. 

But the Donald Trump administration is looking to change that, challenging a decadeslong firewall around taxpayer data. In March, The Washington Post reported on a plan to share IRS data with immigration officials to carry out deportations.

Section 6103 of the U.S. tax code protects all taxpayers, including undocumented immigrants, from having their data shared with agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, according to law professor Shayak Sarkar of the University of California, Davis. 

“That allows for people to now provide the IRS detailed information on their income and on themselves, without concern that it will be shared with other people, agencies, congressional committees, except under the narrowest of circumstances,” Sarkar said. 

Taxpayer privacy provisions are strong, in part thanks to laws that came after the Richard Nixon administration weaponized IRS data against political enemies. 

“But as with other unprecedented actions, it’s going to require the courts to assert the importance of Congress’ will in the statute and the importance of the regulatory framework that has emerged from it,” he said. 

The longstanding protections around tax data have encouraged anxious immigrant families to comply with their legal obligation to file taxes. In 2022, an estimated $97 billion was paid by undocumented immigrants in federal, state and local taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Jackie Vimo, a political science professor at Montclair State University, has helped those families directly with their taxes for decades. 

“I have told people to their faces, told their families, in presence of their children and their spouses, that their information is absolutely safe,” they said. 

Vimo is not making the same assurances this year. 

“I can’t, in good conscience, advise people that it’s safe to file their taxes anymore,” they said. “This sets a dangerous precedent that no one’s information is secure.”

“It’s a catch-22,” said Ana Guajardo, executive director of the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos workers center in Illinois. The group is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last month to prevent the IRS from sharing data about undocumented immigrants. 

“You’re trying to force people to be in a situation where they’re not obeying the laws that they’re trying to follow, and then later you want to find ways that you’re going to deport them for not following them,” she said. 

Guajardo expects any move to share data with the Department of Homeland Security will discourage immigrants from filing taxes. 

It’s a puzzling move considering the fiscal implications, according to the Cato Institute’s vice president for economic and social policy studies, Alex Nowrasteh. 

“Reducing the amount of taxpayers paying into those programs who are not going to receive benefits is a really foolish thing to do,” Nowrasteh said. 

And Frida Adame, who first filed taxes while working at the Houston ice rink, thinks most immigrants will continue to file their taxes anyway.  

“We’re not looking for a free ride. We’re looking to do things right,” Adame said.  

The IRS and DHS did not respond to requests for comment on this story. 

We now know what many (but not all) of President Donald Trump’s tariffs are set to be: 10% minimum on imports, with exemptions for semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, lumber and certain minerals. For many countries’ goods, the levy will be much higher.

Just a year ago the average tax on goods coming into the U.S. was 2.5%. Now, it’s 22.5%, according to Fitch Ratings — the highest in more than 100 years. 

So now that we have those numbers, what are we going to see on shelves and in grocery carts?

For some businesses, tariffs have already made an impact. Eugene Jen is a partner at the Jenesis Group, a family-owned homebuilder in New York.

“We placed an order for specialty stainless steel. From the time that we first quoted the job back in February to now, my vendor told me they increased the prices 277% — I actually did the math,” he said.

Homebuilders expect construction prices to climb more than $9,000 for a single-family home, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

“It’s due to tariffs on building materials like nails and screws that come from Asia, as well as appliances,” said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz.

But the latest tariffs are so broad-based, they’re gonna show up way beyond home prices.

“These tariffs apply to pretty much everything that you see in a retail store,” said Jon Gold, vice president of supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation.

Goods from several Asian countries got the highest tariffs — 54% in some cases. That’s where we’ll feel the biggest sticker shock, said Kylie Cohu, a vice president at the Jefferies investment bank.

“Consumer electronics, those are definitely exposed. Footwear, as well as apparel, is highly exposed. Anything kind of with a textile, as well as toys and games and even some parts of furniture,” she said.

Cohu said retailers will try to convince suppliers to eat some of the cost. But a lot of goods arriving now were ordered up to a year ago. The time for negotiating is long gone, leaving retailers holding the bag and less able to shield consumers.

“And now, companies are gonna have to scramble to come up with the cash, and folks don’t have time to react and shift their supply chains and sourcing, if they’re even able to,” said Jon Gold with the NRF.

UBS economists now predict inflation will soar to 4.4% this year and stay above 4% in 2026. Deutsche Bank economists say real gross domestic product growth could fall below 1% this year, at which point the economy tips perilously close to recession. The unemployment rate, they predict, could rise to 5% this year.

We’ve talked about tariffs plenty in the context of manufacturing and consumer goods — the stuff people buy. But what about that much larger chunk of the economy: services? 

Growth in the service sector declined in March, compared to the month before, according to a report out Thursday from the Institute for Supply Management. 

The report showed the slowest growth for services since last June. That’s in part because business leaders were concerned about — yes — tariffs. 

Let’s start with tech. Software services aren’t subject to tariffs. But they will be affected, said Dan Ives, a tech analyst at Wedbush Securities.

“It’s about the recessionary and global growth fears weighing on ‘em,” said Ives. 

Take digital advertising. When the cost of the stuff in the ads goes up, people buy less of it.

“If you cannibalize 10 to 15% of demand, that could cut digital advertising for Meta, Google and other players in social media,” said Ives. 

Next, there’s food service. Rich Shank with consulting firm Technomic said restaurant owners are feeling OK right now, in part because their ingredients are more substitutable than, say, a clothing retailer’s. 

If you run a burger joint and your imported patties get more expensive, “you can make swaps on your cheeses or your lettuce,” said Shank. “You might be able to soften the blow a little bit.”

Then there are bigger-ticket services.

Jan Freitag, a travel analyst with the CoStar Group, said international travelers put off by the whole trade war thing might not come to the United States at all. 

“ We’ve already seen some of that close to the Canadian border, where room demand has actually declined,” said Freitag. 

He said domestic travel could slump too, because it’s a nice-to-have service. And tariffs could raise the cost of must-have items, like food and fuel.

“That then eats into people’s discretionary spending,” said Freitag. 

He said that doesn’t bode well for the hotel industry heading into the summer travel season.