A fuel-driven economy

it's a commodities kind of day today we're gonna go a little sideways though from american public media is market uh... in los angeles i'm kind of resolve it is tuesday today the very last day of march twenty twenty six good as it always is to have you along everybody commodities is where the opening stanzas of the program today find us not though the usual suspect because fine sure oil important yes but not the only globally critical item that is in the news we're gonna do a commodities one to today aluminum and then cold aluminum prices have been rising since the war started attacks on smelters you probably heard of those the closure of the straight of her moves you definitely heard of that also the rising cost of the energy that those smelters need prices are up around ten percent since the start of the war that's according to c r u group and that only adds to the fifty percent tariff that businesses been paying on imported metals so marketplace is justin ho call some businesses that rely on aluminum to find out how they're being affected what they're gonna do about wolf tooth components is a bike parts manufacturer based near minneapolis that makes hundreds of different products including gears pedals and c post i would say luminums in probably ninety percent of our products that's corner brendon more he says ever since the war started the price of the aluminum he buys has risen about ten percent even though the company mostly uses aluminum that's made in the u s u s aluminum rises along with uh... the broader commodity and so u s prices have gone up to thing is more says there's not a lot he can do about that you know you go to a restaurant in the lobster on the menu will say uh... market rate we don't get to say that our components are components of a fixed price more says raising his prices is risky involves coordinating with dealers across the country and it can tick off his customers so instead the company's just gonna eat the cost and hold prices steady more says he'd rather focus on the things he can control the things you can control our efficiency how well we sell and market the product businesses can't make plans around the recent aluminum price spike because we don't know how long this war is gonna keep pushing up prices says vidya mani visiting professor at cornell university two months down the line i might be looking at a fifty percent increase four months down the line i might be looking at a seventy percent increase plus the war isn't only making aluminum more expensive it's also causing actual shortages says ross draken with cru group in japan and south korea some of the auto wheel manufacturers that make aluminum wheels have had to cut their production because they can't get the material from the middle east that said the u.s has levied tariffs on imported aluminum ever since twenty eighteen so many businesses can draw from their experiences with tariffs the new increases from the iran war just falls right into our same playbook that's chris blench cio of mavericks manufacturing partners company near san diego that makes parts for nuclear power plants in the military blench says the company's playbook is simple ever since the trade policies have been driving prices up on our metals are are raw material inputs uh... we've just been passing it on blench says he knows the strategy will work especially since everyone is competing against is in the same boat i'm justin how for marketplace commodity number two in our hit parade day is a nod to the reality that one commodities crisis is another's opportunity oil was down today yes but still above a hundred dollars a barrel that's for both benchmark sprint crude west texas call though is having a moment because even though a lot of countries have been trying to phase out their use of it demand of late is going up in asia in particular and in the months and four days since the war started the global coal benchmark has jumped more than twenty percent daniel ackerman has more now on the coal comeback this is a story about coal but first we have to talk about a different fuel this is actually more of a natural gas story kenneth gillingham a professor of environmental economics at yale university reminds us that about a fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas typically travels on tankers through the straight of her moves the consumers of that the people by it tend to be in asia countries like china and india they've been ramping up their use of natural gas in recent years but these days coal is more readily available and they still have plenty of coal fired electricity plants hanging around says amin mosa nichiraglu an energy economist at american university given the current conditions they can uh... relatively easily go back to coal there is a lot of capacity and he says that capacity is getting fired up once again to lessen the blow of rising gas prices it's just natural for those economies try to uh... switch back to coal as much as possible of course thailand and taiwan may unretire coal plants that had been shuttered well south korea in japan have suspended climate laws that kept coal burning at some power plants says kenneth gillingham of yale maybe they've run some of the time they've run occasionally now they're being run all the time he says the shift will be felt by the climate i think this is a big enough impact that we will see a little jump in emissions but this energy shock could have the opposite effect in the longer term daniel cohan a professor of environmental engineering at rice university says it could incentivize countries to invest more in renewables with a few years time that's when you can start building out more when solar and batteries because those are the cheapest forms of electricity available and because they'll make those countries less reliant on imported fuels entirely i'm daniel ackerman for marketplace wall street today i regret to inform you that i'm gonna have to take back the kind words i said yesterday about the markets and traders in the algorithms of the drive things because alas it turns out they actually are an idiot stocks way up today oil down just a bit bonds basically unchanged we will have the details when we do the numbers the trump administration has apparently decided if you go by what the president and some of his cabinet officials say out loud they've apparently decided that if maybe the straight of her moves stays closed that would be okay the global economy would beget to differ crude prices we've touched on already dan ackerman just talked about natural gas in asia and oh by the way gasoline here four dollars two cents a gallon today as i do not need to remind you on the theory that incentives matter you might imagine that paying so much more at the pump would turn consumers fancy toward e v's and there is some evidence from the car buying site admins that interest in electric vehicles has indeed ticked up the past couple of few weeks enough to make a difference man marketplaces henry app reports before gas prices started climbing the e v market entered this year in a tough spot the trump administration in congress stripped away pretty much all the federal policies that had been supporting the expansion of electric vehicles one of the big ones tax credits which up until last september knocked thousands of dollars off the price of many new and used e v's in the couple months before those credits went away electric car sales spiked but then i like to refer to the time after that is like a hangover alex lorence owns e v auto which sells used e v's at dealerships in utah and tenancy for his business the bad part of that hangover lasted about a month and then just slow up tick kind of creeping back creeping back but the e v market as a whole it's still kind of hungover sales slumped from ten percent of the car market in the third quarter to under six percent in the fourth quarter according to kelly blue book plus says jessica caldwell at admins we heard automakers saying that they were gonna delay plans or cancel e v programs altogether so it sort of felt like a bleak market it wasn't necessarily stopping but it didn't feel great in the short term on top of the tax credit the trump administration also weakened fuel economy rules so a lot of car makers cut back their e v manufacturing and turned their focus and money back toward gas fueled suv's and trucks and then all of a sudden gas prices spike it's like well are you sure you want to do that because those high prices at the pump could maybe lead more americans to go electrics as tim levin senior editor of the e v news publication inside e v's i think it depends on how high gas prices go and how long they stay that way right even if gas prices stay high e v's face a bunch of other points of friction levin says that have always made them a tougher sell people are worried about charging infrastructure not everybody has a home charger at home which is where you're gonna get the best savings and the best convenience you know people are worried about range the cost of these e v's is pretty high but at least that last point appears to be changing a bit chevy and nissan both released new models under thirty thousand dollars this year toyota and subaru are also coming out with new models aimed to be a bit more affordable than previous generations of e v's and the market for used e v's is growing fast driven by many electric models coming off three year leases levin says just by virtue of the fact that a lot more e v's were sold in the last few years than they were before you have a lot of really high quality really well priced used e v's coming onto the market right now dealership owner alex lorence expects buyers will scoop these up he says he's seen an uptick in sales the last few weeks he's decided to bulk up his inventory of used e v's by about a third and he plans to open two new dealerships this year and so i'm i'm all in i mean i'm accelerator to the floor where we're not slowing down at all he's betting he says that gas prices will stay high for a while and more people just won't want to deal with them anymore i'm henry at the marketplace you know what the world needs right now it needs a preeminent global flavor focused company that's what it needs if you're not quite sure what that means i'll explain unilever a grocery giant that owns everything from helman's mayonnaise to dove soap has sold off its food business to mccormick the spices and sauces company creating the aforementioned preeminent global flavor focused company or at least so reads the press release you deliver has been selling off its food brands for a while now it got rid of its ice cream holdings late last year ben and jerry's we hardly knew you and today's move is another instance of giant conglomerates spinning off selling off and or acquiring familiar brands in those critical middle isles of the local pigley wiggly marketplace to kelly wells explains what's going on this move of consolidating and simplifying in the grocery industry has been going on for years now remember proctor and gamble the personal care brand used to own pringles and folders coffee it is much more difficult to have a company that is focusing on both foods and non-foods selling off the food brands make sense says russles wonka who directs the food marketing program at western michigan university because soap and mayonnaise are two really different products to sell you can have entirely different strategy for personal care and home care because you know you're ingesting the product as opposed to applying it topically or you know or clean your clothes and if you know lever was going to drop one the food side just isn't growing much part of that is a change in consumer buying says ricky vulp e and agribusiness professor at cal poly san luce bispo folks have been uh... increasingly moving towards more prepared ready foods the perimeter of the supermarket meaning we're spending more time in the fresh produce and deli sections less time buying boxes of stuff the other trend with especially younger americans we've seen brand loyalty eroded in a big way meaning we still know helman's mannees but we're not committed to buying it especially if the generic store brand option is a dollar cheaper so vulp e says good idea for you to leave her to get rid of it but also a good idea for mccormick to pick it up says eric chafee with case western reserve university this is going to make them more of a player in regard to uh... the food industry meaning that they're going to be able to provide both spices and condiments at the same time for mccormick adding mannees is a pretty natural progression to their spice and sauce niche says bobby gibbs with the consulting firm oliver wyman because the scale that you're doing you know in in one of your products you can actually play others in the short term this won't change much for consumers but vulp e with cal poly says as more brands consolidate power in their corner of the market they also have an easier time raising their prices i'm kaley wells from marketplace coming up you know you start to see your numbers and you're just dang it i hate it when that happens first though let's do the numbers now and i was up one thousand one hundred twenty five points two and a half percent today forty six thousand three forty one but context is everything right then as that group seven hundred ninety five points that is three and eight ten percent twenty one thousand five hundred ninety this is the five hundred and a hundred eighty four points two point nine percent sixty five and twenty eight and we're talking about it he's well here you go to sell out which produces for car models and oh yes i've got sped up for and six cents percent rivian for models of truck their climb three and nine tenths one percent mccormick drop six and a ten percent you know they were decreased seven and three tenths percent condiment competitor craftines which all by the by also used to be two separate food giants soft up one ten of one percent bonds up yield on the ten your team know down four point three two percent you're listening to marketplace this is marketplace i'm chai rizdal we have been talking for months longer maybe about the case shaped economy we have now in the growing number of people on the lower leg of that case struggling to get by a problem that's going to be compounded the longer this war goes on in the higher it drives household costs along those lines there was a piece in the new york times the other day about blood plasma donation centers and about the people who go there and what that says about this economy curtsley shared the byline curts thanks for coming on thanks for having me do me a favor and uh... tell me about the guy you start this piece with uh... uh... joseph presenio is his name uh... his circumstances if you would and then uh... where you uh... came across him yes so joseph presenio lives in the suburbs of houston and i met him outside of the csl plasma donation center joseph uh... is fifty nine years old he's uh... works at a local waste disposal company he earns about fifty thousand dollars a year lives comfortably for the most part but as we all know with this economy right now the rising prices of gas and groceries uh... he needs some extra income so that's why he was selling his blood plasma and this uh... csl uh... csl the name of the company uh... where is it i mean what's what's the what's the local environs if you will yeah it's very much in a suburban if you think a suburbia in america it's in this uh... strip mall uh... there's an orange theory fitness a few doors down from the csl plasma and it very much does have the feel of suburban america and the thrust of this piece and or at least what i take away from it is that you know we've known about people selling plasma and and people in fact in in some days days on by selling actual blood but it's been people on on the on the ragged edge of this economy and and what you've discovered you and your co-author on this piece the data guy is that uh... it's moving sort of up into suburban as you said middle-class doing okay people who are now not doing okay enough that they they can't get away without selling their blood plasma yet for years selling plasma was known to be in in mostly lower income uh... inner city communities but now over the past two decades it's definitely moved out into more suburban middle-class areas we based our story kind of a bit off of a study by researchers at washington university in st louis and the university of colorado boulder who looked at plasma centers in america and basically found that the number of plasma centers more than doubled between twenty fourteen and twenty twenty one and then we took that data and uh... we found that more and more of these plasma centers are moving out into the suburbs and in particular we went to the suburbs of houston we went to the suburbs called wepster texas and in the last couple of years there's been two plasma centers that have opened up the csl plasma where i met joseph percenio and also there's a bio-life plasma services which is a little more than a mile away and uh... we really just wanted to talk to americans and see why they're selling their blood plasma right now we should just stipulate here in case it isn't clear somehow in in what we've been saying it is it is net net not a great thing that people have to sell their blood plasma to survive in this economy no matter what part of the socioeconomic spectrum they're on yeah absolutely i mean this is this is one of those things that you know a lot of people i talked to felt the sense of shame a lot of people wanted to be anonymous in these conversations they weren't proud of having to sell their blood plasma but then you talk to you know patients that need certain medical therapies and uh... they're very grateful to these people who are donating and selling their plasma because it helps with um... their medicines and the united states uh... collects about seventy percent of the world's uh... blood plasma and it's it's only one of a a handful of countries around the world that allow for the payment of plasma so that's why it's become such a lucrative business in the united states yeah it's worth pointing out here that that's csl the company that runs uh... one of the centers that you uh... found these people in front it's a it's a publicly traded for-profit australian company you know yeah absolutely and um... it's done really well over the years uh... but it's also a company that's looked to work on its profit margins essentially it's lower donor fees but it's it's very much a company that's doing well in this country mr brisenio and the other folks you talk to uh... how much are they getting uh... when they sell their plasma it varies quite a bit how much people are are receiving uh... mr brisenio was receiving on average seventy dollars each visit but it really varies based on you know people's weight the frequency they donate uh... food and drug administration rules don't allow of individual to donate plasma more than twice a week so a lot of people are doing the maximum and the pay really does vary it is just as a way to bring this home uh... it's uh... it's a form of a safety net right oh absolutely i talked to researchers and academics who said that it's kind of a shadow safety net in a lot of ways there's people who are you know very much looking to supplement their income in this economy they're driving for uber lift but there's also this other area which is as plasma donation and it's a way for them to really survive in this economy curtis lee the new york times curtis thanks a lot it's quite a piece thanks so much for having thursday is the one-year mark of president trumps now struck down tariffs the ones he just decided on all by himself under the international emergency economic powers act so we're gonna go back to some of the small business owners who have paid the price quite literally for the president's volatile trade policy and we're gonna start with melissa fields she's an interior designer also the founder of shades of grade design studio in san antonio texas big picture would be that it obviously has increased uh... pricing right for our clients of course i had to have my contract changed when the whole terror thing came about it used to be back in the day we would be able to hold that pricing for thirty days and now that's not the case anymore and so we are now having to have this conversation with them saying hey this is the pricing that we're presenting to you now however comma from the time that you approve of the proposal to when we actually invoice you for the items there might be some changes to the pricing and so they actually have to sign off on that and if they're not okay with that uh... then obviously we don't move forward with that client no it still makes me feel bad to be honest with you and you know everybody's gonna you know look at it differently but for me i i feel bad because i don't like you know to have that sticker shock so i was actually really surprised about the supreme court decision and the first thing i thought of was you know what about you know what about my my clients that were that were impacted by that like for instance like man if it was if it wasn't necessary for them to pay then you know that was just extra money they could have saved in their pockets so to speak i feel like i have adjusted where i needed to and i've learned that i didn't do it right away and then i started you know you start to see your numbers and you're just like oh dang it you know like i completely forgot because this whole tariff thing was new at the time and so you end up eating some of those costs right and so i have since then kind of course corrected as i'm coming up with my fees and things like that i am taking all of those tariffs and things into consideration but then at the same time i think we have to be balanced with it because you know you never know what what the next decision is going to be on these tariffs you know are they gonna i don't know that they're going to completely go away with this administration and so i think we just kind of have to be flexible and just kind of ready for for those different decisions and policies that come down so i hope that it doesn't affect my bottom line as much because i have made sure that i was taking those things into account and making those adjustments as needed melissa fields shades of gray design studio sent and tonio texas more on tariffs in this economy one year later tomorrow on the program this final note on the way out today which i'll offer is sort of in a moose bush if you will ahead of friday's march jobs report we got the jolts for february today the job openings and labor turnover survey and the news is well it's been better the number of job openings is down the quits rate is down that is the number of people quitting their jobs just like it sounds that's not great because when a labor market is really good people quit pretty easily thinking it'll be a cinch to get a new job the number of hires was down as well jordan manjik zoniel maharaj jenet win ogre oxman and virginia k smith are the digital team around here i'm kai rizdal we will see you tomorrow everybody this is a p m hey david brunk at you here i hope you're well and that your passport is up to date because i am hosting a trip to italy this fall and you you are invited stay at a world class tuscan villa and step into the world of the medici the formidable family whose influence and power helped give rise to the renaissance and the art we still celebrate today and not to mention the banking system we're going to visit the world's oldest bank swim in the thermal spa waters in montecatini and take in the art of the ufizi all of this and then we'll try to put it all into context with great conversation over even better meals and wine tasting please join me and know this buying into this trip will provide essential support for public media discover more about this falls tuscani adventure at marketplace dot org slash travel to reserve your spot today that's marketplace dot org slash travel