Week of August 18th, 2025

Kimberly joins live from an anime convention.

You can thank viral mozzarella cheese pulls and an appeal to Gen Z diners. Plus: Jay Powell’s Jackson Hole speech, electric bills, and the housing market.

Ivan Penn of the New York Times discusses his reporting on how big tech’s AI data centers are raising electricity costs for households and small businesses.

Short answer? Viral fried cheese. Long answer: A strategy of courting Gen Z with kitschy marketing and affordable offerings.

And many of them are denying that the president’s import taxes are to blame.

Columbia University has agreed to pay the federal government $200 million, media companies have agreed to donate millions toward a future presidential library, and law firms are offering the government free services.

Evergrande spent lavishly on a soccer team, EV company, and theme parks.

We learned yesterday that business activity in the U.S. picked up in August, led by a big advance in the manufacturing sector.

Many manufacturers aimed to avoid tariffs by stockpiling.

New data underscores the “resilience” of first-time homebuyers.

The first time central bank officials set 2% as their inflation target was in 2012.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is expected to unveil a new framework for the central bank’s interest rate strategy today.

From the BBC World Service: President Donald Trump has backed down on setting high tariffs on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors imported from the European Union.

Maria Curi, Tech Policy Reporter at Axios, joins Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino on “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.”

That stands for: What Will Jay Powell Do? As in, that’s what all the Fed-watchers and economists are wondering as unemployment claims climb.

Who says you can’t get smarter about the economy while binging a great show? “Make Me Smart” host Kimberly Adams curated this watch list for you.

At the prestigious Santa Fe Indian Market, artists’ work is rooted in their Indigenous traditions and homelands. But many work with materials sourced from around the world.

Home sales climbed by 2% in July, according to the National Association of Realtors, but prices remain high.

“Food costs are really high, and spice is a great way of masking cheap flavors,” said Ellen Cushing at The Atlantic.

That’s complicating the Fed’s upcoming decision on what to do with interest rates.

Large language models, or LLMs, are the AI engines behind Google’s Gemini, ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and the rest. But they have a sibling: VLMs, or vision language models.

Plus, what it’s like in Washington D.C. right now.

July’s weak jobs report could be grounds for a big rate cut come September.

President Donald Trump recently demanded that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook resign after she was accused of mortgage fraud.

Higher mortgage rates have prevented many first-time homebuyers from purchasing a home.

The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, goes a long way toward normalizing the use of stablecoins in the U.S. economy.

Today, we’ll discuss how higher interest rates kept many would-be homebuyers in the rental market.

From the BBC World Service: Sony is bumping the price of its PlayStation 5 consoles by $50 — but only in the U.S.

Jian Liu, an associate professor at the University of Georgia, explains how his new software "MusicShield" can prevent AI from extracting and editing music without permission.

From Intel to Nvidia, the Trump administration is rewriting the playbook on how the presidency interacts with American capitalism.

This economic moment calls for bargain hunting. Plus: Sneaky price hikes, White House corporate meddling, and fashion sustainability.

Through its textile recycling program, “SUAY it Forward”, they have diverted over 4 million pounds of textiles from landfills.

SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, are touted as a quick way to take companies public — avoiding the usual, lengthier route of initial public offerings.

Tariffs are part of the story, of course. But not all of it.

Nationally, the unemployment rate is low, at 4.2%. But it’s much higher in some parts of the country than others.

Adding shipping fees and tariffs surcharges increase the final price consumers pay.

Plus, an important Regulations.gov update.

First Nations, Inuit, and Métis artists from Canada are a fixture at the prestigious Santa Fe Indian Market. But this year, the Trump administration’s economic policies complicated things for those travelers.

Mortgage rates have ticked down, but not enough.

Trump’s economic policies are hitting some Indigenous Canadian artists hard.

The move carries some risk.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has confirmed that the Trump administration is considering taking a stake in the struggling U.S. chipmaker Intel.

From the BBC World Service: Hundreds of thousands of avid video gaming fans are gathering in Cologne for Gamescom 2025, the world’s largest annual video game event.

Rya Jetha, tech culture reporter at the San Francisco Standard, explains the new wearable tech trend taking Silicon Valley by storm.

Plus: China pivots investment and trade focus to developing nations, public school districts hire recruiters to boost enrollment, and homebuilders remain wary.

Builders are mostly working on apartments and condos, and are still waiting to commit to more residential construction.

The Essential Air Service program funds commercial flights to small airports around the country. The Trump White House has proposed cutting that funding by half.

New York Times education reporter Dana Goldstein talks about how school voucher programs and a declining birth rate are affecting public school enrollment.

China’s investing more in those countries, too.

Starbucks is just one corporate example moving from a merit-based system to an across-the-board 2% raise.

Japan’s animation industry is putting down roots in other countries all over the world.

Automation and a focus on quality (not cost) could be the secret sauce for domestic garment makers.

While low-cost apparel manufacturing is unlikely to come back to the U.S., higher-end clothing can still be made at a profit stateside.

A lack of predictability and stability is putting the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” at risk.

A new report by MIT found that businesses are mostly not replacing humans with AI, although they are using AI to reduce outsourcing. 

For now, AI tends to be enhancing workers, not replacing them — except for some jobs already being outsourced.

From the BBC World Service: Japan’s SoftBank has invested $2 billion in Intel, which has been losing ground lately in the booming AI market.

Marketplace’s Jennifer Pak asks Chinese AI companies what they think about the humans who will lose jobs to their AI products.

Plus: Who wins when Congress triples the ICE budget? Why did the U.S. break energy export records last year? And, what’s it like to sell imported cheese right now?

Lydia Clarke navigates co-owning two California cheese shops and a bar amid tariffs and a decline in business in downtown Los Angeles.

Wealthier Americans are driving much of the growth in spending, while lower-income consumers are falling further behind.

The United States exported a record 31 quadrillion BTUs of energy last year, about 30% of total domestic energy production.

Profits in the second quarter are on track for about 12% year over year growth, according to an analysis by FactSet.

ICE's big new budget offers upside for private prison companies and the communities staffing new facilities.

Congress may scrap the USPS’s plans for a mostly electric fleet.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to speak at a research conference on Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. What can we expect?

That may be in part because wealthy consumers especially have tried to get ahead of tariffs by purchasing costlier items now.

Fewer government grants and contracts, as well as tariffs, are at the top of the list.

Consumer spending was up pretty significantly for more expensive items last month — things like cars and furniture.

From the BBC World Service: A court in Australia has handed the airline Qantas a $59 million USD fine for illegally laying off 1,800 ground staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Esports is a multibillion-dollar industry, but what does an esports player do when they’ve hung up their controller?