July 10, 2025 • 30 mins
On Tuesday, seemingly off the cuff, US President Donald Trump suddenly threatened a 50% tariff on copper. The reaction from markets was predictably strong, leaving metal distributors scrambling to get deliveries across the border. In this week’s episode of Everybody’s Business, Bloomberg economics reporter Joe Deaux joins hosts Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith to discuss Trump’s latest musings, how complicated a rewiring of the copper supply chain might be and the stark challenges of bringing manufacturing back to the US. (As in, it takes about 10-20 years to get a mine up and running at commercial scale.)
Also on this episode, wealth reporter Ben Steverman enters the studio to discuss consumer sentiment as an economic indicator. For many academics (and consumers), the economy is largely made up of numbers to be calculated. But how do you measure how someone feels?
Steverman discusses his recent profile of Joanne Hsu, the director of the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers, an institution that’s been measuring vibes for decades. Over the years, the survey has found that people’s perception of the economy can be a powerful indicator of where things are heading. And as you likely know, recent surveys show that Americans are very pessimistic about their finances. Prices are still considered too high and Trump’s trade war is on everyone’s mind.
Lastly, Smith presents to Chafkin an underrated story of the week: scientists believe they have cracked the mystery of the big honey bee die-off. The likely culprits? Pesticide-resistant mites. This is welcome news to Chafkin, who shares his own story of a recent run-in with a beehive.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Everybody's business
from Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacey Bannocksmith and Max. This
week it's all about feelings.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah, Stacy. Feelings of confusion, confusion over tariffs, particularly copper tariffs.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Also feelings about what's really happening in the economy. Also bees, bees, bees,
a lot of feelings about bees.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Stacy, I missed you. We were apart for two weeks.
Brad going in for each of us.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I know, thank you to Brad, big thank you to Brad.
And it's good that we're back together this week because
this was this big tariff week.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah, member Stacy. We talked all about Liberation Day the
beginning of April. A lot we just hit the deadline.
This was the day those tariffs were supposed to be finalized.
We were gonna finally know what that chart that Donald
Trump put up, a very long chart actually does.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Buck the cam got kicked down the road. Now it's
August first, so a lot of deals have gotten pushed
off until then.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Meanwhile, people are feeling kind of worried.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
About the economy. I would say there's just a lot
of worry the vibes in the economy are bad.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, I mean this is what been one of these
like recurring themes. I loved hearing you talk about this
last week with Alison Schrager when I was on my vacation.
I chose to listen to the podcast appreciate it, even
though I wasn't being paid the Vibe Session. I think
we've got this conversation coming up that's going to really
help explain why when people talk about the Vibe Session,
why like those vibes actually matter. It's not just feelings.
(01:44):
Had those feelings translate into real numbers, prices, into all
sorts of things that affect our lives.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, we've got Ben Sieverman who did this big deep
dive into the Consumer Sentiment Index. We've got an economist
who heads that index, who directs that. But I also
wanted to talk to the people, see how they are
feeling about the economy, what they had to say. So
I went to Grand Central station where a lot of
people were waiting for trains catching trains, and decided to
(02:12):
ask them what they thought, how they're feeling about the
tariffs and the overall economy. What is your feeling about
the economy right now? How do you feel bad that? Yeah, yeah,
I'm not buying as much.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I'm definitely waiting.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
If I need to make bigger purchases, just like take
a bit of more time to think about it if
I really need it. I'm just trying to save more.
To be honest, I have mixed feelings because on once
I thought it was kind of like a strategy from
Trump for greater goods of the United States. But now
I think he's taking it a bit too far the tariffs,
and yeah, I just think things are about to get
(02:49):
more expensive in terms of big, big purchases for small businesses.
I think everything's getting more difficult.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
I am starting to like think about marriage and like
buying a house and like all those things.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And it's like I've I think twice, like, oh, can
I go shopping today, even if there's a sale?
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Can you take out or take out?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Or do I need to like constantly be thinking about
saving and like if I can affoord not? I so sorry,
our track is announced, but you gotta go to get
to trade.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Thank you, Yes, all right, thank you guys. Wow, A
lot of anxiety, but also you know, got some balance
planning a wedding. That's exciting, I know.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I mean everybody seemed to be kind of living their
life like it didn't seem like the worry was crushing now,
but it was certainly on everybody's mind. And everybody brought
up tariffs, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I think it's genuinely amazing how this very niche subject
that almost like nobody cared about, oh yeah a year
ago or whatever, is now just everywhere everyone has a
thought on it, and it's like it's affecting us every
single day. It's wild.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Well, I mean for so long, so many tariffs were
basically zero. I mean we've been kind of in a
free trade environment for so long that knowing about tariffs
and trade it was just not a thing. And now
everybody at Grand Central Station has feelings about it.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Stacey, tariffs are back in the news. Oh my gosh,
maybe they never left. In this week, there's been this
flory of activity. Trump has been sending these kind of
like weird letters to all the countries. It seems like
post Liberation Day. Yeah, basically like bringing back the Liberation
Day tariffs that he took away briefly or that were
delayed except with Brazil, which has a huge tariff. But
(04:35):
then also they're not going to go into effect till August,
So this whole deadline turns out to have been not
so much a deadline, a little.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Like a lot of this could be postponed or is
a little bit TBD.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Still, Yeah, and we've been talking about this and like
why that kind of uncertainty is bad, why businesses are
struggling with it. But I wanted to zoom out on
this other tariff thing, which are the sector specific tariffs?
Do you know what those are?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
That is like tariff's on particular things. Yes, strategic things
like cars and Luoden well and steel and allumin copper.
Which is where our guests this week comes in.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Jodo is a economic state craft reporter here at Bloomberg,
basically the guy at Bloomberg with the coolest title hejo.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
And knows about metal a.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Thing or two.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yes, So Joe, we wanted to have you in because
this week Trump, during like a press conference, he just
mentioned in an offhanded way, like, oh, by the way,
copper tariffs are going to be fifty percent now today
we're doing copper flowing tarify such a I believe the
tariff on copper. We're going to make it fifty And
(05:43):
then the markets went crazy, and it has all these
impacts that go to the goods we use and prices
we pay, and we wanted to talk about all that.
Just start tell us what happened this week with copper.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
I think a few things.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
First of all, the President of United States is long
telegraphed that he wants to tariff copper, which is a
little weird because yeah, why well, he went after steel
and aluminum the first time around. That was a big
deal in his first.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Term, and analogy for union workers and manufacturing jobs, and yes.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Exactly, let's bring back the manufacturing base that has left us,
even though steel has not. And then copper came up
right from the beginning. I think it was just a
few days after he was inaugurated and he said we're
going to do copper tariffs. And we got a nice
tip back in March that said the President of the
United States was going to announce a copper tariff within weeks,
(06:34):
not months. The reason that was a big deal was
because most of the market, looking at copper in particular,
had expected, probably we will get to thirty two terrafs
by December thirty two. What does that mean to thirty two?
Those are the sector specific tariffs.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
So the difference is that there are these the Section
two thirty two, there's a clearer legal case for these tariffs.
He can just do it. Basically like tactics, you have
to make a legal case or go through congres There's
a law that says for these these industries that are strategic,
he can just do this, And there is an argument
that copper is strategic for.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah, I mean, listen.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
I was talking to Wilbur Ross, who's the former Commerce
secretary months ago, right when the president took office, and
I said, well, what do you think he's gonna do
on trade? And he said, I think he has in
his back pocket the Section two thirty two law and
the Section three oh one law that he deployed during
his first administration, and he will do that again. Trust me,
he will do that again because he knows it's being
(07:29):
court tested. And they said it's totally legal for him
to do this under the guise of national security. Turns
out that was right. And so that's where we get
to copper. Like you said, I mean, it's an everything.
It's ubiquitous.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah, go through some of the industries that are using electronics,
car batteries, like what else? Yeah, what's what's copper in
all wiring?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I mean, like just think about wiring.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
That's a lot a lot of wire. There's a lot
in the world.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Like you just your your iPhone. Even some of the
advanced technology still as wiring in it, right, and that
is all copper. Copper is it's a perfect metal for
conduction of electricity.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
And the reason why we would want to do this
my understanding is we're using like, what like twice as
much copper as we make in this country. So the
thought would be to create some sort of more robustness
of our supply chain, I assume instead of is it
about jobs? Like, what is the actual rationale here?
Speaker 5 (08:30):
The short answer is, having spent months now talking to
various players in the market and policymaking trade lawyers, I
have constantly asked where is this coming from? And the
unified answers We're not really sure. If I could suggest
where it might be coming from, I think it goes
back to what you were just saying, which is there
(08:50):
is still a small jobs aspect and it's another manufacturing
base thing, right, And we do know that United steel
workers are the workers working in the proper copper producing
plants here in the United States. But like you said,
I mean eight hundred and fifty thousand metric tons of
(09:10):
copper were produced in the United States last year according
to the United States Geological Survey, we consumed about one
point six million. And you say, well, where do we
get the other basically eight hundred thousand, and that is Chile, Canada, Mexico.
So these are solid gold trading partners of ours.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Right, their allies, some of our closest allies. I mean,
you know Trump's threats to Canada to make Canada now
I know, a vassal state nowithstanding. So yeah, like why
is it bad? Like why would you care that half
of it comes from Mexico and Canada and Chile.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
I think this goes to the classic like defense. If
you're a person working in the defense department, right, you know,
this is kind of this idea that you're always thinking
about the worst case scenario, and really the worst case
scenario and I'm not saying it is the right way
to look at it, but the worst case scenario is
the United States gets into a situation where it has
to isolate itself from the rest of the world because
(10:03):
of some massive conflict, and it has to be self
sufficient to produce all the things it needs.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Another pandemic, right or another, or some kind of trade
disruption that wouldn't necessarily have to be a war.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Right.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
The pandemic's a great example. And if you talk to
people in the Defense Department who have worked on supply
chains for a lot of years, they do keep pointing
back to, Hey, the pandemic was an example where we
realized we were way short on protective gear basically, and
we need to scramble for it. But you know, the
(10:36):
President United States is looking at through this lens, not
just on copper, but on all these other sectoral tariffs.
And I think that's the question among trade lawyers, both
ones who support tariffs and ones who maybe fight against them.
They're all kind of unified and saying like, yeah, some
of these things are critical and important, but do we
(10:56):
have to do one hundred percent, you know, pedal to
the metal here?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So what is the logic you put it fifty percent
tariff in place?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
So huge tariff? Yeah, Like I understand why the tariffs
on other countries because he likes bilateral agreements and he
kind of gets into these deal making stuff. But what
is going on, Like, why is he doing this?
Speaker 5 (11:13):
Make America great again? America first, and you bring back
manufacturing of anything and everything that is manufacturing base and
copper is one of those things. And as we said,
it is a critical industry. And here's another thing. Donald
Trump talks to a lot of people. It's kind of
one of his strengths, right, Like he can talk to CEOs,
(11:36):
but he can also talk to the steel workers that
I've dealt with for the past year and a half
on the Nippon Steel US steel dealer. People have told
him copper, we used to be like seventy five eighty
percent reliant on our own copper production. I think he
hears those things and says, well, why can't we go
back to that? And it's a fair question if you
are Donald Trump in his worldview saying I do want
(11:58):
to bring everything back to the anies. And here's an
example of an industry that was the majority produced here
in the United States.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
How long would it take for people to like start
opening copper minds or whatever. I think what we would
expect is in the nearer term, there's going to be
some stuff will get more expensive. You know, maybe your
pipes get more expensive or whatever. Your iPhone could get
more expensive or Apple would have to swallow that. How
long before that starts to trickle into like okay, somebody
opens another copper mine.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
It takes about ten to twenty years to get a
mine of any type up and running at commercial scale production.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I mean one thing that I did wonder about from
Idaho where they have a lot of minding, and sometimes
they'll have mines that close because the price of a
commodity falls a lot. This happened with lithium or cobald
and things like that are there, like copper minds that
could just open their doors, but for twenty years.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
We have a mine called Resolution Copper in the middle
of Arizona. I went to it two summers ago and
went down one mile into the ground to see what
was the beginnings of this mine. Now, the problem is
that the mind sits near a indigenous sacred site, right,
and so it's been a massive kind of battle between
(13:14):
indigenous people and the mining company, which is Rio Tinto
and then the second largest mining company in the world.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It was a big deal under the Biden.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
Administration, and now Trump is trying to push it through
to make it happen. That mine would be able to
produce if it opens, and it still has to go
through a little bit of permitting. It just did get
over a big Supreme Court hurdle. It looks like it's
on its way to actually happening. That mine would produce
about a quarter of the demand for annual demand for
(13:43):
United States copper.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
So that that's a big mine itself.
Speaker 5 (13:46):
That's a big mine on its own.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Smell like, so it's really hot down there, and it's
like a minerally smell, right, you know, because everything bound
you is rocky.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
You don't put like these nice walls up around you.
You are just you're in the ground. We walked through
a dynamited tunnel. And I mean I've talked to guys
who like, have their lives have been underground?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Mind?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, they have towns down there, you know, places to.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Eat and yeah, yep, that's right.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
But that mine they broke ground basically in two thousand
and eight on that mine, and we're still waiting for
it to get up.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
All right, Joe, We're gonna have to have you back
on to talk about rare earths and all these other
and the underground copper. Mind, I want to go to underground,
to the bottom of the mine. See the town that
Stacy grew up in. H Underground actually paled.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So Max, like you said, there's been a lot of
talk about the vibe session since before President Trump, but
now to the vibes and the economy have been pretty off,
even though the economic data is really strong.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, that's been this big mystery that we have been
talking about over and over again. I think we still
don't really know the answer the question.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
It's true, and the data keeps coming out, and the
data keeps looking really strong. And meanwhile, the main measure
of the vibes, which would be the Consumer Sentiment Index
from the University of Michigan, and that keeps coming in
up pretty low numbers. It's near record lows right now.
And in fact, reporter Ben Steverman did a deep dive
into this index to look at what is going on
(15:33):
with it right now.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Ben, welcome, thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
So let's start out really really basically, what is the
Consumer Sentiment Survey?
Speaker 6 (15:42):
So since nineteen forty six, the University of Michigan has
been polling consumers on how they feel about the economy,
about their own personal finances, about unemployment, about business conditions,
like their feelings, their feelings, just their feelings.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
It's become this.
Speaker 6 (15:59):
Thing that while watches it comes out twice a month
to figure out where the economy might be headed. The
idea is how consumers are feeling today might influence how
they behave tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
And the survey I love this survey. The survey essentially
kind of breaks down how people are feeling about the moment,
right now and the future. So it's you know, the
questions are like, do you feel personally better off than
you were a year ago? Do you think you'll be
better off a year from now? What about the economy
do you think it's better than it was a year ago?
Do you think it's going to be better off a
year from now? Like are you planning to make big purchases?
(16:30):
Is this a good time to do that? So it's
trying to get at a bunch of different things, but
it's a little bit squishy, these questions. And you know,
the economy tends to be a very data driven place,
very numbers oriented, and you know, we like numbers here
at everybody's business. So Ben tell us, like, why should
we care about feelings?
Speaker 6 (16:49):
It matters because when you look at enough data and
you look at how consumers are reacting sort of before
recessions appear. Often it's showing up in these consumer sentiment
surveys that people are feeling bad even before the economy
starts to deteriorate. Consumers are almost seventy percent of the
US economy, so it really matters what they do and
(17:12):
how confident they're feeling.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
We've talked about this on the show before, how the
US economy in particular is really driven by consumption, particularly
consumption of this kind of small, rich group of people.
And the argument that's made in Ben's story is that
this index, which in the past has served as this
early warning system, is way down from last year. It's
(17:34):
like it was down like twenty percent from twenty twenty four,
went out a tenC bit last month, but still really low.
I mean, I don't know if this is the worst
it could possibly be, but it doesn't look great.
Speaker 6 (17:45):
I would say it was the worst it could possibly be.
This spring, we're scraping along the bottom, and then we
kind of came up a little bit. The worst case
scenario did not come about, but it's still really really
bad on a historical basis. People seem to be very
pessimistic about their own finance right now.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Stacey, you're always talking about the vibe session, right, and
the way you say it is that there's the real
economy over here, which is like the unemployment rate, and
like those numbers have been pretty good infam Yeah, yeah,
and then the vibes, which are very bad, and that's
been true for a while. Ben's kind of saying there's
(18:21):
no such thing as a vibe like those It's actually
one big story.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Why haven't the bad vibes or feelings turned into bad data?
Because I mean, it seems logical to me that if
people feel bad, they might not spend, they might save,
and if they don't spend, that means companies are selling
less stuff and making less money. So the companies can't
expand and they can't hire, and they might start contracting
and laying people off and that whole thing. But like
(18:47):
we haven't seen that. So do feelings matter less than
they did?
Speaker 6 (18:51):
It's sort of the huge question right now. Like I
was just talking about how what an amazing thing this
is in predicting the future, but in twenty twenty two
and twenty twenty three it failed. This as a metric failed,
like the people were feeling awful when inflation was spiking
and the economy kept coming. Now, a bunch of other
procession gauges failed.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
To covid or because of the cultural changes or the
well behavioral change.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
The stimulus was a big one.
Speaker 6 (19:19):
And yeah, well inflation was very high, so people hated
the prices being high, but their incomes were also going
up and the unemployment rate was low, so they had
more money coming into their accounts and they were spending
it and so that was helping. And there was all
this revenge travel and yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
We were yolo ing.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
Yeah yeah, it days in a way, in a way,
yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Well.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Before that happened before twenty twenty two, you mentioned that
this has been a really accurate gauge of downturns historically.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Can you talk a little bit about that, like, how
did that work? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (19:52):
So the founder of the survey is a guy named
George Katona, who was Hungarian Jewish fled the Nazis in
nineteen thirty three. He was actually a psychologist, so he
wasn't trained as an economist. Yeah, And so he comes
to the US, finds his way to the University of Michigan,
gets on the economics faculty. He had actually studied back
in Germany of attitudes about inflation under the Weimar Republic.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So he goes back to that was some major inflation.
Speaker 6 (20:19):
Yes, yeah, that those were some bad vibes. But what
ends up happening is that he starts the survey and
everyone's like, that's ridiculous, why are you doing that like that,
that's not going to.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Tell us anything.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
All the sort of mainstream orthodox economists are saying, like,
what people spend is based on what they earn, don't
you know. And he watches the survey. All the economists
are saying, we're going to have this giant post war
depression because of demobilization and things in the in the
US war, spending winding winding down after the war, and
(20:53):
he's showing consumers are upbeat, they're coming back from the war,
they want to spend money, and there wasn't that depression.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
So that that's sort of the first early win.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
But then it kept happening again and again. Like I
went through the archives of Business Week and I found
a nineteen seventy four story where we're having a conversation
a little like the one we're having here in the
story with all these corporate economists saying these consumer gauges
are broken. They're not telling us anything. People keep buying TVs,
they keep buying cars, like even though the sentiment readings
(21:23):
are low. Well, lo and behold the year later. I
found another clip. We just entered into the like the
worst recession of the postwar period, and that was what
was happening.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
The vibes called it.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, the vibes called it.
Speaker 6 (21:36):
And so this has happened several times if you look
at the data up until recently, and then who knows,
we might be in some kind of uncharted territory. There
might be something else going on now.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
So as part of your deep dive into consumer sentiment,
you spoke to the person in charge of gathering all
the data. Her name's Joanne Sue, and you wrote about
her being really worried in spite of all the other
solid economic data that we've been talking about on the show.
Stacey and I called her up yesterday to ask her
about that, and here is what she said.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
What we've seen since the beginning of the year is
a broad based decline in consumer sentiment and expectations. We're
seeing a tremendous amount of worry about the potential impact
of trade policy.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
People will continue to be really.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
Focused on inflation, and because they're so focused on inflation,
tariffs is the one thing that worries them the most.
Where there's this broad agreement everywhere that it's going to
increase inflation and possibly lead to a deterioration of business conditions.
I mean that's across the board, across political party, across
the income distribution, in the age distribution.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's loud and clear. And that made us wonder how
it feels just to be sitting with all this information
about how Americans are feeling right now.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
It feels like on a daily basis, I'm microdosing the
zeitgeist of the American consumer, and so right now people
are not feeling great. When I look at these open
ended comments and people are really telling us about how
worried they are about tariff policy, I find it to
be my personal responsibility to make sure that message gets
out there and for policy makers and decision makers at
(23:11):
companies to understand what the American consumer is going through.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
So make you mad if they don't pay attention.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
What I hope is that people take the American consumer
seriously and understand that, you know, what we are doing
here is backed by decades of science, and we're not
just going around, you know, asking people random questions like
man on the street type thing.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
You know, we're we're you doing something.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I mean, which is which.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Is fine but not necessarily for scientific is what?
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Ben? You spent about a month looking into what the
survey can tell us about the economy. What is your takeaway?
What do you think about this survey?
Speaker 6 (23:53):
I think it's a really fascinating tool. I think there's
one other dimension to this that I think about is
just how much did the pandemic just kind of break
our brains for lack of a better term, like how
much are we just like feeling lousy because we're feeling
lousy and that like we can't get out of our
funk for some reason, And is that somehow coloring things.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I'm glad you said the thing about the pandemic, because
it really was a terrible I said it. I was
joking when I said those were good days. It was
a terrible time. And I think every time we talk
about how consumers feel or how they're behaving, and like
anytime you're looking at trends over the last five years,
like you have to ask yourself, like, did the pandemic
do this to us? And it's still or maybe still
doing this to us.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, but even if it is like
the aftershocks of the pandemic, and it is maybe we're
reacting to stuff that's not immediately now, like that still
could affect how we behave in the world and spend
in the world and make financial decisions totally.
Speaker 6 (24:50):
Totally. Yeah, it's sort of a weird situation where if
the procession is really what we're worried about here, I mean,
we might just have a slowdown and that would be
bad enough. But if we you go back the last
like sort of normal recession we had was maybe like
twenty four years ago or.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Something like that was back when we knew how to
do recessions.
Speaker 6 (25:09):
Yeah, yeah, like financial crisis, maybe that counts, But COVID
was like kind of weird, like that doesn't Yeah, that
was like it, but just this used to be normal.
Economy would go up and then we go into recession
for a while and then we come back out again
and we haven't had that in a while, and we'll see.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Ben Steverman is a reporter for Bloomberg. You can find
his story on the consumer Sentiments survey at Bloomberg dot com,
in BusinessWeek in print, or we'll put a link to
it in the show notes. Stacey, you've got an underrated
story for us this week?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I think I do have an underrated story. So bees.
You know, bees have been in the news for Sonny
years now. Honeybees have been in the news for years
now because they've been sort of dying off in great numbers,
and there's been a lot of worry about that. People
don't know what's going on. Where what's happening to the bees?
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Colony collapse, right.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Colony collapse and there there's spend a lot of theories.
Is it pesticides, is it, you know, a virus? Like
what what's killing again?
Speaker 1 (26:06):
And this is a huge deal because bees are important
for agriculture and if you don't have enough bees, you
can't grow stuff. It's it's a real problem. It's true.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
But apparently a group of scientists thinks that they have
actually answered this question.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (26:21):
The thing that is killing the bees? Are mites.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
What mites. It's these mites, little others, even smaller bugs.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yeah, it's a bee virus spread by these parasitic mites.
And the way that the article in the Guardian described this,
which I love, is apparently if you look at like,
the size of the mites relative to the bees would
be like the size of a dinner plate on a human.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Okay, so these are pretty big relative to the bees.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Big mites. But these mites have apparently evolved so that
they no longer are killed by the pesticides that they
used to have to kill the mites.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
So wait, what are we going to do about this?
I think I said, you solved this problem. I just
know we just solved the mystery. Oh but I thought
we were going to figure out how to stop the
bees from dying off.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
You want us to save the bees, like at the
end of the show.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Right now, I thought that's where this was going.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Well, now I feel bad, even though I was very
excited to discover.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
You know what, it's cool that there's a scientific breakthrough.
And I guess the first step to figure out how
to stop the bees from getting attacked by the mites
is knowing that the mites are there. I don't know
if you know this mite. I am something of a
bee expert. I don't know what a bee keeper.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
How are you a bee expert?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Well, I recently have bees. No, but I did recently
purchase you just like them. I recently purchased a case
of bees of Italian honey bees and gave it to
my brother. You gifted bees a Holidays that the bees were,
gave him a beehive.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
He didn't accidentally open a box of bees.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
I gave him a bee high or a b of
bees that came in the mail was awesome, Like shout
out to the postal service. I cannot believe they were
the mail. They were like it was a little box,
like a shoebox size, with like thousands of little bee
arms sticking out and like wiggling their life the box. Yeah,
it was. There's so many in there. And I hired
a beekeeper, beekeeper Pete beekeeper Betsy came over helped us
(28:21):
get set up. It was so awesome. I'm like totally
b pilled, like I want my own beehive now as well.
There they are so cool.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Bees are very cool.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Nobody got stung. It was awesome.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
No bees are very peaceful in general. It's the wasps
you've got to watch out for.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah, Stacy, I have something for us before we leave.
Oh yeah, what a hikup? You have a hi coup.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I'm really a fan of the hikup segment.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
All right, So we got to say thank you to
Brook London. Brook London wrote a very nice review five
stars station Oh Brook, Though Brook, he or she has
a suggestion. I wish this podcast was daily, or at
least three times a week. Who's moved so quickly. Weekly
just isn't enough. And first of all, appreciate that you
were able to give us some constructive feedback, a little
(29:07):
bit of a compliment. Sandwich. There, we're going to take
the note and I have a response.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Okay, okay, I'm prepared.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Wish it was daily, you said, but please consider our
mental health two times a week, Brooke, what about that?
How about that seems like a fair compromise. Maybe we'll
talk about it.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I was just thinking everybody's beesiness would be a great
spin off.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
You're so right, just this weekend Bees, this weekend Bees.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
It feels like you're already like halfway there.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I gotta get my happen and be Keeper Betsy. Yes,
they're great. Thank you both Pete and Betsy. If you're listening.
The show is produced by Stacey Wong. Magnus Hendrickson is
our super provising producer, Amy Keen our editor, and Brendan
(30:02):
Francis Neonham is our executive producer. We get engineering support
from Blake Maples, Dave Purcell, factchecks, Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts,
and big thank you to Jeff Muscus and Julia Rubin.
If you have a minute, rate and review this show,
it means a lot to us and you could get
your very own Max Chafkin haiku or maybe Stacey Vanxsmith.
(30:23):
I might flake out another week. And if you have
a story that should be our business, email us at
everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. We will read them. They
mean a lot to us. That's everybody with an US
at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you for listening and we
will see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Everybody's business
from Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacey Bannocksmith and Max. This
week it's all about feelings.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah, Stacy. Feelings of confusion, confusion over tariffs, particularly copper tariffs.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Also feelings about what's really happening in the economy. Also bees, bees, bees,
a lot of feelings about bees.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Stacy, I missed you. We were apart for two weeks.
Brad going in for each of us.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I know, thank you to Brad, big thank you to Brad.
And it's good that we're back together this week because
this was this big tariff week.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah, member Stacy. We talked all about Liberation Day the
beginning of April. A lot we just hit the deadline.
This was the day those tariffs were supposed to be finalized.
We were gonna finally know what that chart that Donald
Trump put up, a very long chart actually does.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Buck the cam got kicked down the road. Now it's
August first, so a lot of deals have gotten pushed
off until then.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Meanwhile, people are feeling kind of worried.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
About the economy. I would say there's just a lot
of worry the vibes in the economy are bad.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, I mean this is what been one of these
like recurring themes. I loved hearing you talk about this
last week with Alison Schrager when I was on my vacation.
I chose to listen to the podcast appreciate it, even
though I wasn't being paid the Vibe Session. I think
we've got this conversation coming up that's going to really
help explain why when people talk about the Vibe Session,
why like those vibes actually matter. It's not just feelings.
(01:44):
Had those feelings translate into real numbers, prices, into all
sorts of things that affect our lives.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, we've got Ben Sieverman who did this big deep
dive into the Consumer Sentiment Index. We've got an economist
who heads that index, who directs that. But I also
wanted to talk to the people, see how they are
feeling about the economy, what they had to say. So
I went to Grand Central station where a lot of
people were waiting for trains catching trains, and decided to
(02:12):
ask them what they thought, how they're feeling about the
tariffs and the overall economy. What is your feeling about
the economy right now? How do you feel bad that? Yeah, yeah,
I'm not buying as much.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I'm definitely waiting.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
If I need to make bigger purchases, just like take
a bit of more time to think about it if
I really need it. I'm just trying to save more.
To be honest, I have mixed feelings because on once
I thought it was kind of like a strategy from
Trump for greater goods of the United States. But now
I think he's taking it a bit too far the tariffs,
and yeah, I just think things are about to get
(02:49):
more expensive in terms of big, big purchases for small businesses.
I think everything's getting more difficult.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
I am starting to like think about marriage and like
buying a house and like all those things.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And it's like I've I think twice, like, oh, can
I go shopping today, even if there's a sale?
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Can you take out or take out?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Or do I need to like constantly be thinking about
saving and like if I can affoord not? I so sorry,
our track is announced, but you gotta go to get
to trade.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Thank you, Yes, all right, thank you guys. Wow, A
lot of anxiety, but also you know, got some balance
planning a wedding. That's exciting, I know.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I mean everybody seemed to be kind of living their
life like it didn't seem like the worry was crushing now,
but it was certainly on everybody's mind. And everybody brought
up tariffs, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I think it's genuinely amazing how this very niche subject
that almost like nobody cared about, oh yeah a year
ago or whatever, is now just everywhere everyone has a
thought on it, and it's like it's affecting us every
single day. It's wild.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Well, I mean for so long, so many tariffs were
basically zero. I mean we've been kind of in a
free trade environment for so long that knowing about tariffs
and trade it was just not a thing. And now
everybody at Grand Central Station has feelings about it.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Stacey, tariffs are back in the news. Oh my gosh,
maybe they never left. In this week, there's been this
flory of activity. Trump has been sending these kind of
like weird letters to all the countries. It seems like
post Liberation Day. Yeah, basically like bringing back the Liberation
Day tariffs that he took away briefly or that were
delayed except with Brazil, which has a huge tariff. But
(04:35):
then also they're not going to go into effect till August,
So this whole deadline turns out to have been not
so much a deadline, a little.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Like a lot of this could be postponed or is
a little bit TBD.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Still, Yeah, and we've been talking about this and like
why that kind of uncertainty is bad, why businesses are
struggling with it. But I wanted to zoom out on
this other tariff thing, which are the sector specific tariffs?
Do you know what those are?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
That is like tariff's on particular things. Yes, strategic things
like cars and Luoden well and steel and allumin copper.
Which is where our guests this week comes in.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Jodo is a economic state craft reporter here at Bloomberg,
basically the guy at Bloomberg with the coolest title hejo.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
And knows about metal a.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Thing or two.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yes, So Joe, we wanted to have you in because
this week Trump, during like a press conference, he just
mentioned in an offhanded way, like, oh, by the way,
copper tariffs are going to be fifty percent now today
we're doing copper flowing tarify such a I believe the
tariff on copper. We're going to make it fifty And
(05:43):
then the markets went crazy, and it has all these
impacts that go to the goods we use and prices
we pay, and we wanted to talk about all that.
Just start tell us what happened this week with copper.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
I think a few things.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
First of all, the President of United States is long
telegraphed that he wants to tariff copper, which is a
little weird because yeah, why well, he went after steel
and aluminum the first time around. That was a big
deal in his first.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Term, and analogy for union workers and manufacturing jobs, and yes.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Exactly, let's bring back the manufacturing base that has left us,
even though steel has not. And then copper came up
right from the beginning. I think it was just a
few days after he was inaugurated and he said we're
going to do copper tariffs. And we got a nice
tip back in March that said the President of the
United States was going to announce a copper tariff within weeks,
(06:34):
not months. The reason that was a big deal was
because most of the market, looking at copper in particular,
had expected, probably we will get to thirty two terrafs
by December thirty two. What does that mean to thirty two?
Those are the sector specific tariffs.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
So the difference is that there are these the Section
two thirty two, there's a clearer legal case for these tariffs.
He can just do it. Basically like tactics, you have
to make a legal case or go through congres There's
a law that says for these these industries that are strategic,
he can just do this, And there is an argument
that copper is strategic for.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah, I mean, listen.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
I was talking to Wilbur Ross, who's the former Commerce
secretary months ago, right when the president took office, and
I said, well, what do you think he's gonna do
on trade? And he said, I think he has in
his back pocket the Section two thirty two law and
the Section three oh one law that he deployed during
his first administration, and he will do that again. Trust me,
he will do that again because he knows it's being
(07:29):
court tested. And they said it's totally legal for him
to do this under the guise of national security. Turns
out that was right. And so that's where we get
to copper. Like you said, I mean, it's an everything.
It's ubiquitous.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah, go through some of the industries that are using electronics,
car batteries, like what else? Yeah, what's what's copper in
all wiring?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I mean, like just think about wiring.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
That's a lot a lot of wire. There's a lot
in the world.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Like you just your your iPhone. Even some of the
advanced technology still as wiring in it, right, and that
is all copper. Copper is it's a perfect metal for
conduction of electricity.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
And the reason why we would want to do this
my understanding is we're using like, what like twice as
much copper as we make in this country. So the
thought would be to create some sort of more robustness
of our supply chain, I assume instead of is it
about jobs? Like, what is the actual rationale here?
Speaker 5 (08:30):
The short answer is, having spent months now talking to
various players in the market and policymaking trade lawyers, I
have constantly asked where is this coming from? And the
unified answers We're not really sure. If I could suggest
where it might be coming from, I think it goes
back to what you were just saying, which is there
(08:50):
is still a small jobs aspect and it's another manufacturing
base thing, right, And we do know that United steel
workers are the workers working in the proper copper producing
plants here in the United States. But like you said,
I mean eight hundred and fifty thousand metric tons of
(09:10):
copper were produced in the United States last year according
to the United States Geological Survey, we consumed about one
point six million. And you say, well, where do we
get the other basically eight hundred thousand, and that is Chile, Canada, Mexico.
So these are solid gold trading partners of ours.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Right, their allies, some of our closest allies. I mean,
you know Trump's threats to Canada to make Canada now
I know, a vassal state nowithstanding. So yeah, like why
is it bad? Like why would you care that half
of it comes from Mexico and Canada and Chile.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
I think this goes to the classic like defense. If
you're a person working in the defense department, right, you know,
this is kind of this idea that you're always thinking
about the worst case scenario, and really the worst case
scenario and I'm not saying it is the right way
to look at it, but the worst case scenario is
the United States gets into a situation where it has
to isolate itself from the rest of the world because
(10:03):
of some massive conflict, and it has to be self
sufficient to produce all the things it needs.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Another pandemic, right or another, or some kind of trade
disruption that wouldn't necessarily have to be a war.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Right.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
The pandemic's a great example. And if you talk to
people in the Defense Department who have worked on supply
chains for a lot of years, they do keep pointing
back to, Hey, the pandemic was an example where we
realized we were way short on protective gear basically, and
we need to scramble for it. But you know, the
(10:36):
President United States is looking at through this lens, not
just on copper, but on all these other sectoral tariffs.
And I think that's the question among trade lawyers, both
ones who support tariffs and ones who maybe fight against them.
They're all kind of unified and saying like, yeah, some
of these things are critical and important, but do we
(10:56):
have to do one hundred percent, you know, pedal to
the metal here?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So what is the logic you put it fifty percent
tariff in place?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
So huge tariff? Yeah, Like I understand why the tariffs
on other countries because he likes bilateral agreements and he
kind of gets into these deal making stuff. But what
is going on, Like, why is he doing this?
Speaker 5 (11:13):
Make America great again? America first, and you bring back
manufacturing of anything and everything that is manufacturing base and
copper is one of those things. And as we said,
it is a critical industry. And here's another thing. Donald
Trump talks to a lot of people. It's kind of
one of his strengths, right, Like he can talk to CEOs,
(11:36):
but he can also talk to the steel workers that
I've dealt with for the past year and a half
on the Nippon Steel US steel dealer. People have told
him copper, we used to be like seventy five eighty
percent reliant on our own copper production. I think he
hears those things and says, well, why can't we go
back to that? And it's a fair question if you
are Donald Trump in his worldview saying I do want
(11:58):
to bring everything back to the anies. And here's an
example of an industry that was the majority produced here
in the United States.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
How long would it take for people to like start
opening copper minds or whatever. I think what we would
expect is in the nearer term, there's going to be
some stuff will get more expensive. You know, maybe your
pipes get more expensive or whatever. Your iPhone could get
more expensive or Apple would have to swallow that. How
long before that starts to trickle into like okay, somebody
opens another copper mine.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
It takes about ten to twenty years to get a
mine of any type up and running at commercial scale production.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I mean one thing that I did wonder about from
Idaho where they have a lot of minding, and sometimes
they'll have mines that close because the price of a
commodity falls a lot. This happened with lithium or cobald
and things like that are there, like copper minds that
could just open their doors, but for twenty years.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
We have a mine called Resolution Copper in the middle
of Arizona. I went to it two summers ago and
went down one mile into the ground to see what
was the beginnings of this mine. Now, the problem is
that the mind sits near a indigenous sacred site, right,
and so it's been a massive kind of battle between
(13:14):
indigenous people and the mining company, which is Rio Tinto
and then the second largest mining company in the world.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It was a big deal under the Biden.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
Administration, and now Trump is trying to push it through
to make it happen. That mine would be able to
produce if it opens, and it still has to go
through a little bit of permitting. It just did get
over a big Supreme Court hurdle. It looks like it's
on its way to actually happening. That mine would produce
about a quarter of the demand for annual demand for
(13:43):
United States copper.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
So that that's a big mine itself.
Speaker 5 (13:46):
That's a big mine on its own.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Smell like, so it's really hot down there, and it's
like a minerally smell, right, you know, because everything bound
you is rocky.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
You don't put like these nice walls up around you.
You are just you're in the ground. We walked through
a dynamited tunnel. And I mean I've talked to guys
who like, have their lives have been underground?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Mind?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, they have towns down there, you know, places to.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Eat and yeah, yep, that's right.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
But that mine they broke ground basically in two thousand
and eight on that mine, and we're still waiting for
it to get up.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
All right, Joe, We're gonna have to have you back
on to talk about rare earths and all these other
and the underground copper. Mind, I want to go to underground,
to the bottom of the mine. See the town that
Stacy grew up in. H Underground actually paled.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So Max, like you said, there's been a lot of
talk about the vibe session since before President Trump, but
now to the vibes and the economy have been pretty off,
even though the economic data is really strong.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, that's been this big mystery that we have been
talking about over and over again. I think we still
don't really know the answer the question.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
It's true, and the data keeps coming out, and the
data keeps looking really strong. And meanwhile, the main measure
of the vibes, which would be the Consumer Sentiment Index
from the University of Michigan, and that keeps coming in
up pretty low numbers. It's near record lows right now.
And in fact, reporter Ben Steverman did a deep dive
into this index to look at what is going on
(15:33):
with it right now.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Ben, welcome, thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
So let's start out really really basically, what is the
Consumer Sentiment Survey?
Speaker 6 (15:42):
So since nineteen forty six, the University of Michigan has
been polling consumers on how they feel about the economy,
about their own personal finances, about unemployment, about business conditions,
like their feelings, their feelings, just their feelings.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
It's become this.
Speaker 6 (15:59):
Thing that while watches it comes out twice a month
to figure out where the economy might be headed. The
idea is how consumers are feeling today might influence how
they behave tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
And the survey I love this survey. The survey essentially
kind of breaks down how people are feeling about the moment,
right now and the future. So it's you know, the
questions are like, do you feel personally better off than
you were a year ago? Do you think you'll be
better off a year from now? What about the economy
do you think it's better than it was a year ago?
Do you think it's going to be better off a
year from now? Like are you planning to make big purchases?
(16:30):
Is this a good time to do that? So it's
trying to get at a bunch of different things, but
it's a little bit squishy, these questions. And you know,
the economy tends to be a very data driven place,
very numbers oriented, and you know, we like numbers here
at everybody's business. So Ben tell us, like, why should
we care about feelings?
Speaker 6 (16:49):
It matters because when you look at enough data and
you look at how consumers are reacting sort of before
recessions appear. Often it's showing up in these consumer sentiment
surveys that people are feeling bad even before the economy
starts to deteriorate. Consumers are almost seventy percent of the
US economy, so it really matters what they do and
(17:12):
how confident they're feeling.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
We've talked about this on the show before, how the
US economy in particular is really driven by consumption, particularly
consumption of this kind of small, rich group of people.
And the argument that's made in Ben's story is that
this index, which in the past has served as this
early warning system, is way down from last year. It's
(17:34):
like it was down like twenty percent from twenty twenty four,
went out a tenC bit last month, but still really low.
I mean, I don't know if this is the worst
it could possibly be, but it doesn't look great.
Speaker 6 (17:45):
I would say it was the worst it could possibly be.
This spring, we're scraping along the bottom, and then we
kind of came up a little bit. The worst case
scenario did not come about, but it's still really really
bad on a historical basis. People seem to be very
pessimistic about their own finance right now.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Stacey, you're always talking about the vibe session, right, and
the way you say it is that there's the real
economy over here, which is like the unemployment rate, and
like those numbers have been pretty good infam Yeah, yeah,
and then the vibes, which are very bad, and that's
been true for a while. Ben's kind of saying there's
(18:21):
no such thing as a vibe like those It's actually
one big story.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Why haven't the bad vibes or feelings turned into bad data?
Because I mean, it seems logical to me that if
people feel bad, they might not spend, they might save,
and if they don't spend, that means companies are selling
less stuff and making less money. So the companies can't
expand and they can't hire, and they might start contracting
and laying people off and that whole thing. But like
(18:47):
we haven't seen that. So do feelings matter less than
they did?
Speaker 6 (18:51):
It's sort of the huge question right now. Like I
was just talking about how what an amazing thing this
is in predicting the future, but in twenty twenty two
and twenty twenty three it failed. This as a metric failed,
like the people were feeling awful when inflation was spiking
and the economy kept coming. Now, a bunch of other
procession gauges failed.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
To covid or because of the cultural changes or the
well behavioral change.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
The stimulus was a big one.
Speaker 6 (19:19):
And yeah, well inflation was very high, so people hated
the prices being high, but their incomes were also going
up and the unemployment rate was low, so they had
more money coming into their accounts and they were spending
it and so that was helping. And there was all
this revenge travel and yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
We were yolo ing.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
Yeah yeah, it days in a way, in a way,
yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Well.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Before that happened before twenty twenty two, you mentioned that
this has been a really accurate gauge of downturns historically.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Can you talk a little bit about that, like, how
did that work? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (19:52):
So the founder of the survey is a guy named
George Katona, who was Hungarian Jewish fled the Nazis in
nineteen thirty three. He was actually a psychologist, so he
wasn't trained as an economist. Yeah, And so he comes
to the US, finds his way to the University of Michigan,
gets on the economics faculty. He had actually studied back
in Germany of attitudes about inflation under the Weimar Republic.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So he goes back to that was some major inflation.
Speaker 6 (20:19):
Yes, yeah, that those were some bad vibes. But what
ends up happening is that he starts the survey and
everyone's like, that's ridiculous, why are you doing that like that,
that's not going to.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Tell us anything.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
All the sort of mainstream orthodox economists are saying, like,
what people spend is based on what they earn, don't
you know. And he watches the survey. All the economists
are saying, we're going to have this giant post war
depression because of demobilization and things in the in the
US war, spending winding winding down after the war, and
(20:53):
he's showing consumers are upbeat, they're coming back from the war,
they want to spend money, and there wasn't that depression.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
So that that's sort of the first early win.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
But then it kept happening again and again. Like I
went through the archives of Business Week and I found
a nineteen seventy four story where we're having a conversation
a little like the one we're having here in the
story with all these corporate economists saying these consumer gauges
are broken. They're not telling us anything. People keep buying TVs,
they keep buying cars, like even though the sentiment readings
(21:23):
are low. Well, lo and behold the year later. I
found another clip. We just entered into the like the
worst recession of the postwar period, and that was what
was happening.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
The vibes called it.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, the vibes called it.
Speaker 6 (21:36):
And so this has happened several times if you look
at the data up until recently, and then who knows,
we might be in some kind of uncharted territory. There
might be something else going on now.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
So as part of your deep dive into consumer sentiment,
you spoke to the person in charge of gathering all
the data. Her name's Joanne Sue, and you wrote about
her being really worried in spite of all the other
solid economic data that we've been talking about on the show.
Stacey and I called her up yesterday to ask her
about that, and here is what she said.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
What we've seen since the beginning of the year is
a broad based decline in consumer sentiment and expectations. We're
seeing a tremendous amount of worry about the potential impact
of trade policy.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
People will continue to be really.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
Focused on inflation, and because they're so focused on inflation,
tariffs is the one thing that worries them the most.
Where there's this broad agreement everywhere that it's going to
increase inflation and possibly lead to a deterioration of business conditions.
I mean that's across the board, across political party, across
the income distribution, in the age distribution.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's loud and clear. And that made us wonder how
it feels just to be sitting with all this information
about how Americans are feeling right now.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
It feels like on a daily basis, I'm microdosing the
zeitgeist of the American consumer, and so right now people
are not feeling great. When I look at these open
ended comments and people are really telling us about how
worried they are about tariff policy, I find it to
be my personal responsibility to make sure that message gets
out there and for policy makers and decision makers at
(23:11):
companies to understand what the American consumer is going through.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
So make you mad if they don't pay attention.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
What I hope is that people take the American consumer
seriously and understand that, you know, what we are doing
here is backed by decades of science, and we're not
just going around, you know, asking people random questions like
man on the street type thing.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
You know, we're we're you doing something.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I mean, which is which.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Is fine but not necessarily for scientific is what?
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Ben? You spent about a month looking into what the
survey can tell us about the economy. What is your takeaway?
What do you think about this survey?
Speaker 6 (23:53):
I think it's a really fascinating tool. I think there's
one other dimension to this that I think about is
just how much did the pandemic just kind of break
our brains for lack of a better term, like how
much are we just like feeling lousy because we're feeling
lousy and that like we can't get out of our
funk for some reason, And is that somehow coloring things.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I'm glad you said the thing about the pandemic, because
it really was a terrible I said it. I was
joking when I said those were good days. It was
a terrible time. And I think every time we talk
about how consumers feel or how they're behaving, and like
anytime you're looking at trends over the last five years,
like you have to ask yourself, like, did the pandemic
do this to us? And it's still or maybe still
doing this to us.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, but even if it is like
the aftershocks of the pandemic, and it is maybe we're
reacting to stuff that's not immediately now, like that still
could affect how we behave in the world and spend
in the world and make financial decisions totally.
Speaker 6 (24:50):
Totally. Yeah, it's sort of a weird situation where if
the procession is really what we're worried about here, I mean,
we might just have a slowdown and that would be
bad enough. But if we you go back the last
like sort of normal recession we had was maybe like
twenty four years ago or.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Something like that was back when we knew how to
do recessions.
Speaker 6 (25:09):
Yeah, yeah, like financial crisis, maybe that counts, But COVID
was like kind of weird, like that doesn't Yeah, that
was like it, but just this used to be normal.
Economy would go up and then we go into recession
for a while and then we come back out again
and we haven't had that in a while, and we'll see.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Ben Steverman is a reporter for Bloomberg. You can find
his story on the consumer Sentiments survey at Bloomberg dot com,
in BusinessWeek in print, or we'll put a link to
it in the show notes. Stacey, you've got an underrated
story for us this week?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I think I do have an underrated story. So bees.
You know, bees have been in the news for Sonny
years now. Honeybees have been in the news for years
now because they've been sort of dying off in great numbers,
and there's been a lot of worry about that. People
don't know what's going on. Where what's happening to the bees?
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Colony collapse, right.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Colony collapse and there there's spend a lot of theories.
Is it pesticides, is it, you know, a virus? Like
what what's killing again?
Speaker 1 (26:06):
And this is a huge deal because bees are important
for agriculture and if you don't have enough bees, you
can't grow stuff. It's it's a real problem. It's true.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
But apparently a group of scientists thinks that they have
actually answered this question.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (26:21):
The thing that is killing the bees? Are mites.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
What mites. It's these mites, little others, even smaller bugs.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yeah, it's a bee virus spread by these parasitic mites.
And the way that the article in the Guardian described this,
which I love, is apparently if you look at like,
the size of the mites relative to the bees would
be like the size of a dinner plate on a human.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Okay, so these are pretty big relative to the bees.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Big mites. But these mites have apparently evolved so that
they no longer are killed by the pesticides that they
used to have to kill the mites.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
So wait, what are we going to do about this?
I think I said, you solved this problem. I just
know we just solved the mystery. Oh but I thought
we were going to figure out how to stop the
bees from dying off.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
You want us to save the bees, like at the
end of the show.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Right now, I thought that's where this was going.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Well, now I feel bad, even though I was very
excited to discover.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
You know what, it's cool that there's a scientific breakthrough.
And I guess the first step to figure out how
to stop the bees from getting attacked by the mites
is knowing that the mites are there. I don't know
if you know this mite. I am something of a
bee expert. I don't know what a bee keeper.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
How are you a bee expert?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Well, I recently have bees. No, but I did recently
purchase you just like them. I recently purchased a case
of bees of Italian honey bees and gave it to
my brother. You gifted bees a Holidays that the bees were,
gave him a beehive.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
He didn't accidentally open a box of bees.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
I gave him a bee high or a b of
bees that came in the mail was awesome, Like shout
out to the postal service. I cannot believe they were
the mail. They were like it was a little box,
like a shoebox size, with like thousands of little bee
arms sticking out and like wiggling their life the box. Yeah,
it was. There's so many in there. And I hired
a beekeeper, beekeeper Pete beekeeper Betsy came over helped us
(28:21):
get set up. It was so awesome. I'm like totally
b pilled, like I want my own beehive now as well.
There they are so cool.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Bees are very cool.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Nobody got stung. It was awesome.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
No bees are very peaceful in general. It's the wasps
you've got to watch out for.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah, Stacy, I have something for us before we leave.
Oh yeah, what a hikup? You have a hi coup.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I'm really a fan of the hikup segment.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
All right, So we got to say thank you to
Brook London. Brook London wrote a very nice review five
stars station Oh Brook, Though Brook, he or she has
a suggestion. I wish this podcast was daily, or at
least three times a week. Who's moved so quickly. Weekly
just isn't enough. And first of all, appreciate that you
were able to give us some constructive feedback, a little
(29:07):
bit of a compliment. Sandwich. There, we're going to take
the note and I have a response.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Okay, okay, I'm prepared.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Wish it was daily, you said, but please consider our
mental health two times a week, Brooke, what about that?
How about that seems like a fair compromise. Maybe we'll
talk about it.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I was just thinking everybody's beesiness would be a great
spin off.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
You're so right, just this weekend Bees, this weekend Bees.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
It feels like you're already like halfway there.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I gotta get my happen and be Keeper Betsy. Yes,
they're great. Thank you both Pete and Betsy. If you're listening.
The show is produced by Stacey Wong. Magnus Hendrickson is
our super provising producer, Amy Keen our editor, and Brendan
(30:02):
Francis Neonham is our executive producer. We get engineering support
from Blake Maples, Dave Purcell, factchecks, Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts,
and big thank you to Jeff Muscus and Julia Rubin.
If you have a minute, rate and review this show,
it means a lot to us and you could get
your very own Max Chafkin haiku or maybe Stacey Vanxsmith.
(30:23):
I might flake out another week. And if you have
a story that should be our business, email us at
everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. We will read them. They
mean a lot to us. That's everybody with an US
at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you for listening and we
will see you next week.
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