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Good morning. It's Wednesday, October 15th. I'm Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, how domestic furniture makers are feeling about new tariffs, why one Powerball winner is snatching up real estate burned by the LA fires, and how the world's worst men's soccer team could make it to the World Cup. But first, to the man President Trump calls his favorite president. Argentinian leader Javier Milei is perhaps most known internationally as the libertarian who literally takes a chainsaw to spending. While yesterday he was at the White House to thank the Trump administration for a $20 billion bailout for Milei, this financial package could be an economic lifeboat that saves the peso from a currency crisis and lifeboat. And Trump has said that financial infusion is necessary to stabilize Argentina's economy and prevent effects from spilling over into the region. All while applauding Milei's record of slashing government spending, cutting regulations and reducing the federal workforce. But critics say it's mostly a political play, a way for Trump to publicly praise a like minded leader and bolster Milei and his party on the heels of an upcoming election in Argentina. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board described it this way. Argentina is in need of monetary reform, but this deal risks throwing, quote, good dollars after bad pesos. At their face to face meeting yesterday, Trump explicitly linked the agreement to Milei's political future.
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We think he's going to win. He should win. And if he does win, we're going to be very helpful. And if he doesn't win, we're not going to waste our time because you have somebody whose philosophy is has no chance of making Argentina great again.
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Milei was elected at the end of 2023 in the midst of an economic crisis. Voters were looking for change and were willing to take a chance on him as a political outsider, an economist and TV personality. Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires based journalist who's been covering Milei's political career.
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He's definitely delivered on a lot of what he promised. In the first year. He cut, I think some 30% of real public spending. And the government has fired thousands sector workers. It's cut deeply into subsidies. And he has made some progress on some important indicators. Most notably, the one that we often hear about is inflation. It's now monthly at less than 2%, around 2%.
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All this has made him something of a hero and a model to the political right in the US and beyond. But his popularity at home has begun to wane.
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He's cut back subsidies for a whole range of services, made moves that have driven the cost of other expenses for Argentines up, which means that when you're on the street, it still feels like Argentines are still struggling.
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The loss of subsidies, Alcopa told us, has meant higher prices for gas and food and shuttered factories, all of which have prompted protests and social unrest. And after promising to stamp out corruption, Milei has been tied to a number of scandals involving his sister and close allies, which have dented his polling numbers. Against this backdrop, Milei's party now faces possible backlash in upcoming national midterms, which have put him firmly back in his unconventional campaign mode. Last week, he took to the stage, delighting his base with a performance of rock covers. While Milei sings. Investors nerves, at least temporarily, have been calmed by the US bailout. But as Alcoba points out, the $20 billion bailout PAC isn't a sure thing. As far as we know, the whole.
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Point of this package was to create certainty. But if it's tied to a certain political outcome, then which cannot be guaranteed, of course, then that would raise a whole bunch of questions about what kind of certainty is actually behind it.
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Now to the latest tariff rollout that could change your next home renovation project or prevent you from buying a house altogether. Yesterday, new duties ranging from 10 to 25% came into effect for lumber, kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, and upholstered furniture. President Trump justified the new taxes, saying they would support national security and revitalize the domestic furniture industry in places like North Carolina. Matt Egan is a senior reporter with cnn.
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And on the jobs front, the President has a point. I mean, North Carolina once had a booming furniture industry. In 1999, there were about 80,000 furniture manufacturing jobs in North Carolina alone. But Today there's just 28,000.
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Egan and a colleague spoke to people in different parts of the industry and he told us the reaction was mixed.
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They're hopeful that the tariffs are going to help when it comes to domestic manufacturing. But there's also some worry and some fear. There's concern that all of this is just going to increase already high levels of uncertainty and that the tariffs could actually undermine what is an intricate ecosystem in the furniture industry.
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And because profit margins in this industry are thin, some are worried about a short term shakeup spelling disaster for these kinds of businesses.
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We spoke to Alex shuford. He's the CEO of this 78 year old North Carolina furniture company. They get about 80% of their sales from furniture that they make in factories in the United States. But even he was worried about this tariff plan. And he said that his fear is that they don't want the medicine that's intended to help them end up causing so much harm that in the end it ends up really hurting them.
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Shuford has another problem finding talent. His company has 50 to 75 job openings for skilled workers like technicians and woodworkers. But there's a shortage that makes filling those roles hard.
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There just doesn't seem to be the skilled workforce to do that. And even if there was, it might require their labor costs to go so significantly higher that it would end up causing some real sticker shock for consumers.
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Costs have been going up already. Items for living rooms and kitchens rose by 9.5% in August over the same month a year earlier. And bedding Prices were up 4.7%.
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Prices shot up on just about everything, including furniture, during COVID But then what you saw was actually in 2023 and 2024, furniture prices were actually falling. It was getting cheaper to buy furniture, and now we're seeing the opposite, with prices going up significantly. And it's hard to see how this imposition of new tariffs on furniture, how that's going to help things. In fact, it looks like it's going to only increase the cost of furniture even more.
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The tariffs brought in this week are just the beginning. In the new year, levies for these same goods will rise again. Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs economists published new analysis suggesting that consumers, not foreign exporters, will shoulder the majority of the tariff costs this year. Now to Southern California and an ongoing recovery effort from the major wildfires that leveled entire neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area earlier this year. In the aftermath, community members had lots of questions. Could they rebuild? What would it cost? How much will insurance pay? Or is it time to consider moving somewhere outside of a state that's contending with the worst of the housing affordability crisis?
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In the immediate wake of the wildfires, any homeowner I spoke with compared it to some kind of apocalyptic zone.
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Rebecca Pucciotto with the Wall Street Journal told us about Edwin Castro, a native of Altadena, one of the hardest hit areas in the LA fires, who's now one of the biggest buyers of burned down lots in his hometown.
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He wants to build single family homes for families and kind of save at least more than a dozen lots from what he sees are corporate interests who might be interested in turning them into rentals or something else.
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The reason that he's able to even be a big player here is back in 2022, Castro bought the winning ticket in the $2 billion Powerball lottery. So far, he has spent $10 million on real estate in the neighborhood.
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And so he's really interested in preserving the neighborhood that he grew up in, at least on the 15 lots that he bought, which is definitely a small share of all lots that were burned. But to him, this is kind of a way to lead by example.
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Before the fires, Altadena was known for its small town feel, with tree lined streets, Craftsman bungalows and Spanish Revival homes. Many of its 42,000 residents had lived there for decades.
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It was relatively affordable compared to the rest of LA and a racially diverse place. In the mid 20th century, Altadena was a refuge from redlining for a lot of black families. And that allowed them to build wealth through home ownership in ways that they couldn't elsewhere. And so that's a really important part of the character of Altadena. And there is a fear that the rebuild could accelerate some of the gentrification that kind of was already taking place before the wildfires.
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California recently passed a series of laws that make it easier to build duplexes and apartments in areas that typically have single family homes, a point of contention in the battle over affordable housing. A petition to prevent investors from buying lots in the area has collected almost 1500 signatures. Residents supporting the petition refer to the influx of investors interested in development as a second wave of disaster. Castro says this isn't a giveaway. He wants to sell the homes at market value, but he specifically wants to sell to families who want to stay, Pichoto told us. In a neighborhood where lots of locals are skeptical, some are coming around to Castro's vision.
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They know this is the guy who won the lottery at a local gas station, and they know he's from there or at least has roots in Altadena. And so I think there is a sense that if anyone is going to invest in this land, they feel a little bit more comfortable with him.
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Rebuilding after wildfires in California has generally been a tedious, fraught process. And in the aftermath of this year's blazes, state officials said they would cut down on that red tape to speed up the process. Still, of the thousands of structures and homes that were Destroyed, only about 10% of homes have a permit to rebuild. Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Just days into the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, tensions have begun to rise. Israel has temporarily closed the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, and the number of aid trucks allowed in will be reduced. The Israeli officials say this is because Hamas has been slow to hand over the remains of deceased hostages as part of the peace plan. Hamas said the delay is because the bodies are difficult to locate and identify. 300 trucks, half of what was agreed upon, will now be permitted to enter, and Reuters reports no fuel or gas will be allowed into Gaza except for specific purposes tied to humanitarian infrastructure. Meanwhile, Hamas has moved quickly to regain control of certain parts of Gaza, where Israeli troops have partially withdrawn. On Monday, Hamas publicly executed seven men in Gaza City Square, and NPR reports Israeli forces killed at least six Palestinians they considered a threat. In other international news, the Trump administration says it has carried out another strike against a boat off the Venezuelan coast, killing six suspected drug smugglers. Trump called those killed, quote, narco terrorists. This is the fifth boat destroyed by US forces, killing a total of 27 people. The Washington Post reports no evidence has been disclosed that any of the boats that were struck carried drugs or that the people aboard were criminals. It's also not clear what country they came from. Trump has justified his right to conduct the strikes because he's declared the US at war with drug cartels. Congress is the only body legally allowed to declare war. And finally, could San Marino, the world's worst men's soccer team, be heading to the World Cup? Mathematically, it's possible. But here's the catch. They need to keep losing. Throughout its history, this micro state located in the north of Italy has failed to win a single one of the 169 qualifying matches that it's played for the World cup or the Euros. So, unsurprisingly, it's never made it to soccer's biggest stage. But it did get a couple of wins a while back in a different league that offers a new sort of backdoor route to the World Cup. It just needs one team above it there, Romania, to qualify through the traditional route. That would open up a potential space for San Marino. For that to happen, though, Romania needs a big win with lots of goals, and it just so happens that it'll soon be facing San Marino. So for the best possible chance of getting to the World Cup, San Marino needs to lose, and lose big. If they do, who knows? This could be Ryan Reynolds next soccer documentary. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple news app. And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up next. New York Magazine tells the story of how a Russian exile was deported to Costa Rica as part of the administration's plan to remove asylum seekers from the US and send them to countries they're not from or have ever been to. If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Narrated to find that story and I'll be back with the news tomorrow. It.