Tariff pain and retaliation

Summary

Marketplace: Tariff Pain and Retaliation – Episode Summary

Release Date: March 5, 2025
Host: Kai Ryssdal

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Introduction: Entering a Trade War

In the episode titled "Tariff Pain and Retaliation," Kai Ryssdal delves into the escalating tensions of a burgeoning trade war. He outlines the current tariffs imposed:

• 25% on Canada
• 25% on Mexico
• An additional 10% on China, complementing the existing 10% retaliatory tariffs.

Ryssdal emphasizes the dynamic and uncertain policy environment, highlighting the ripple effects on businesses caught in the crossfire. He states, “This is the way things go in a trade war have already started” (00:29).

Impact on Agriculture: Avocado Imports

Kristin Schwab reports from the agricultural sector, focusing on Healthy Avocado Imports.
Paul Weissman, the company's representative, discusses the compounded challenges:

• Supply Issues: “Even before tariffs, supply from Mexico has been down because of bad weather” (01:38).
• Price Surge: Avocado prices have doubled since last year, affecting sales and consumer willingness to pay higher prices for products like guacamole.

Erica York from the Tax Foundation adds that tariffs not only increase costs but also inject uncertainty into business planning, deterring long-term investments (02:07).

Manufacturing Challenges

Chip McElroy of McElroy Manufacturing expresses concerns over the tariffs' impact on his business:

• Supply Chain Disruptions: Reliance on components from Canada and Mexico is jeopardized, with retaliatory tariffs driving customers to seek alternatives.
• Competition with Chinese Imports: He notes, “There is an influx of Chinese equipment that is substandard to what we provide but is, well, let's just say Chinese priced” (03:11).

Regional Effects: Texas Feels the Brunt

Elizabeth Trovall from Marketplace explores how Texas, deeply integrated with Mexico’s economy, is disproportionately affected:

• Rising Costs: Tariffs increase prices on essential goods like beer, lumber, and construction materials.
• Industry Strain: Oil producers and the trucking industry face higher costs, potentially reducing demand and affecting employment (04:26 – 05:56).

Economist Ray Perryman highlights that sustained tariffs could disrupt Texas's extensive supply chains, leading to broader economic repercussions across all states (06:13).

Retail Pharmacy Industry Struggles

Samantha Fields discusses the precarious state of major pharmacy chains:

• Walgreens' Potential Privatization: Facing prolonged struggles, Walgreens is reportedly in talks to be taken private by Sycamore for about $10 million (07:40).
• Operational Challenges: Chain pharmacies like Rite Aid and CVS are experiencing declining sales and closing stores due to decreased convenience and reduced prescription reimbursements.

Kristin Schwab and Emily Koharsky explain how consolidation among Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) has eroded pharmacy profits, creating a vicious cycle of declining customer experiences and reduced earnings (07:48 – 09:32).

Warehouse Space Shortage and Supply Chain Issues

Elizabeth Trovall reports on the critical shortage of small warehouses under 100,000 square feet:

• High Vacancy Rates: Smaller warehouses have a vacancy rate of 3.9% compared to 10.1% for larger ones (11:37).
• Business Adaptations: Companies like Half Price Books are resorting to temporary storage solutions due to the scarcity of suitable warehouse spaces in regions like the Twin Cities (12:54 – 14:14).

The shortage forces businesses to rethink their supply chains and logistics strategies, potentially leading to long-term operational changes (14:32 – 14:54).

Stock Market Repercussions

Ryssdal provides a snapshot of the stock market amidst these economic strains:

• Major Indices Decline: Dow Industrials down 1.5%, NASDAQ slipped by one-third of a percent, and the S&P 500 fell by 1.2% (15:25).
• Retail Impact: Companies like Best Buy and Target are experiencing stock drops due to tariff-induced cost pressures, while Walgreens shares rose amidst takeover rumors (16:43).

Bond markets also react, with the yield on the ten-year Treasury note rising to 4.25% as bond prices fall (16:43).

Forest Service Layoffs and Community Impact

The episode shifts focus to the human cost of economic policies, highlighting layoffs within the Forest Service:

• Case Study: In McCall, Idaho, nearly 150 Forest Service employees have been laid off, sparking protests and community distress (18:30 – 21:39).
• Economic and Environmental Concerns: Layoffs threaten forest management and wildfire prevention efforts, raising alarms about future fire seasons and community safety.

Bryce Baer, a former ranger, voices the loss of invaluable experience and expertise, stating, “There's a ton of knowledge that's being lost right now” (20:33).

Soccer Industry and Entrepreneurship

Ben Shahebar, founder of the soccer shoe brand Eleven, shares his entrepreneurial journey:

• Market Opportunity: Identifying a gap in the soccer footwear market dominated by giants like Nike and Adidas, Eleven aims to innovate with a focus on quality and engineering (22:20).
• Challenges and Progress: Shahebar discusses the difficulties in transitioning from digital designs to tangible products, including manufacturing setbacks and strategic pivots to ensure product quality and market readiness for the 2026 World Cup (24:00).

Concluding Notes

Kai Ryssdal wraps up the episode by touching on diverse topics such as public office space availability in Washington, D.C., and promoting the "Financially Inclined" podcast for personal finance education (25:36 – 27:07).

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Notable Quotes:

• Kai Ryssdal: “This is the way things go in a trade war have already started” (00:29)
• Paul Weissman: “Even before tariffs, supply from Mexico has been down because of bad weather” (01:38)
• Chip McElroy: “There is an influx of Chinese equipment that is substandard to what we provide but is, well, let's just say Chinese priced” (03:11)
• Bryce Baer: “There's a ton of knowledge that's being lost right now” (20:33)
• Ben Shahebar: “We spent the first couple months really on the digital design, but then you have to take that design, however detailed it is, and you have to actually make it in real life” (22:52)

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This episode of Marketplace provides a comprehensive overview of how tariffs and retaliatory measures are reshaping various sectors, from agriculture and manufacturing to retail and public services, illustrating the widespread and nuanced impacts of economic policies on businesses and communities alike.

Transcript

[Kai Ryssdal]

Programming is supported by Stull Reeves, a leading US Corporate and litigation law firm providing sophisticated business clients high quality legal services with offices in seven states including Minnesota and Washington, D.C. stull Reeves is a nationally recognized leader in project finance and natural resources industries. From deals and disputes to compliance and counseling. Clients turn to Stull Reeves for their most complex business challenges. [e-mail].

One word, one guess people. What do you got from American Public Media? This is Marketplace in Los Angeles. I'm Kai Rysdal. It is Tuesday today, March 4th. Good as always to have you along everybody. Should you be wondering whether we are in a trade war? Yes, 25% on Canada, 25% on Mexico, another 10% on China on top of the 10% already imposed retaliatory tariffs because this is the way things go in a trade war have already started. Canada is going to hit alcohol, clothing and appliances. China's doing chicken, wheat and other things agricultural. Mexico says it is going to exact list as yet tbd. And look, this is a dynamic policy environment, right? Changes are possible by the very hour, as we've seen since the inauguration. But spare a thought in this moment for the business owners stuck in the middle. Marketplace's Kristin Schwab made some calls.

[Kristin Schwab]

Paul Weissman at Healthy Avocado imports more than a million boxes of avocados a year and he says the industry has been a little touch and go lately. Even before tariffs, supply from Mexico has been down because of bad weather.

[Emily Koharsky]

The prices for super bowl were twice.

[Kristin Schwab]

What they were last year, which impacted sales. It makes him wonder if people have already reached the price threshold for guacamole.

[Emily Koharsky]

Will consumers pay three or four dollars each for an avocado? I don't think so.

[Kristin Schwab]

Mexico is the biggest supplier of avocados, so all he can do is wait to see how tariffs impact prices and wait to see if farmers adjust to compensate. Erica York at the Tax foundation says the cost of tariffs is a big factor for businesses and consum. But a perhaps bigger consequence for the economy is the uncertainty of trade policy. That itself has a negative impact on business investment on business activity. If you're a business trying to plan a long term investment, you're going to sit on your hands. York says Even if a trade war doesn't emerge and even if, say Trump reversed these tariffs, they've created friction for companies across borders. These are business relationships that have developed over years. We don't really see them snap back into place overnight. This is the main Worry for Chip McElroy at McElroy Manufacturing in Tulsa Many of the components he uses to make construction equipment come from Canada and Mexico. That's also where most of the finished equipment he exports ends up. He thinks retaliatory tariffs might make his customers look elsewhere.

[Kai Ryssdal]

There is an influx of Chinese equipment that is substandard to what we provide but is, well, let's just say Chinese priced.

[Kristin Schwab]

While he waits to see how it all shakes out, he'll be doing some component pricing job.

[Emily Koharsky]

One is to gain some clarity on what actual impact these tariffs are going.

[Kristin Schwab]

To have so he can quantify the new cost of thousands of components that go into one piece of construction equipment. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace.

[Kai Ryssdal]

One of the realities of tariffs is that they hit differently depending on, among other things, where you are. Henry Epp did a story for us the other day about New England and New York, perhaps having to pay more for electricity than it gets from Canada. Sure enough, today Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, said that province is going to impose a 25% tariff on power it sends to a million and a half homes in Minnesota, Michigan and New York. Texas, meanwhile, has what amounts to a roughly $300 billion trade relationship with Mexico, all on its own. So after 30 years of free trade, Marketplace's Elizabeth Trovall takes us to the state where everything is bigger, including the effects of tariffs.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

New tariffs could raise the price of what Texans eat and drink.

[Samantha Fields]

It's beer, it's liquor, produce, agave, sugar.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Coffee, chocolate, and where they sleep, softwood.

[Samantha Fields]

Lumber, which is like your frame lumber, gypsum board, which is your drywall. All those are largely sourced from Canada and Mexico. And these tariffs on the building materials would drive up the cost to build the homes.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

That was Emily Williams Knight with the Texas Restaurant association and Houston area home builder Matthew Rivenstein out in West Texas. Oil producers who get pipes from Canada and Mexico could feel the squeeze, says Carr Ingham with the Texas alliance of Energy Producers.

[Samantha Fields]

There's a lot of steel that is deployed in the business of drilling for and producing and transporting crude oil and.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Natural gas in the trucking industry, which has boomed under free trade. John Esparza with the Texas Trucking association says he worries tariffs will increase the cost of semi trucks and decrease demand for trucking.

[Samantha Fields]

That could mean less business and that.

[Kai Ryssdal]

At a higher cost.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Many trucks operate out of Laredo, which is particularly exposed to tariffs, says Daniel Covarrubias with Texas A and M International university.

[Emily Koharsky]

On a 30 mile radius here across border, you have upwards of 1500 logistics.

[Samantha Fields]

Companies, transportation companies, customs brokers or logistics warehouses.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

These firms grew out of decades of free trade, but economist Ray Perryman says now with tariffs, you really rip up.

[Kai Ryssdal]

An entire supply chain that we've spent the last 50, 60 years building. It really begins to impact employment in a significant way. Because of the inflation, consumers have less.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Money to spend, he says. If tariffs are sustained, all states will feel it, but especially Texas because its economy is so integrated with Mexico's. I'm Elizabeth Trovall for Marketplace on Wall street today.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Well, let's just say the major indices closed off their lows, shall we? We'll have the details when we do the numbers. Walgreens has been a publicly traded company for nearly a century, and according to the Wall Street Journal, it might be about to be taken private. The retailer, which also owns the Boots chain over in the UK Is said to be in talks to sell to the private equity firm sycamore for about $10 million. Truth is, though, that Walgreens has been struggling for about a decade now. And it is not the only drugstore chain out there that's been having a hard time. Rite Aid has filed for and come out of bankruptcy protection, CVS is in trouble, and all three chains have been closing stores by the score. Marketplace's Samantha Fields has more now on what's going on with the retail pharmacy industry.

[Kristin Schwab]

Walking into a big pharmacy these days can be kind of depressing. Empty shelves, locked up products, long lines to pick up prescriptions.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

If your stores aren't very good, then.

[Kristin Schwab]

Why would people bother to go in there? Neil Saunders at Global Data says chain pharmacies were designed to be convenient, the.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Place you can quickly pop to if.

[Kai Ryssdal]

You need a pint of milk or.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

You need to buy replacement skin care or something like that.

[Kristin Schwab]

For years, he says, pharmacies figured people would just keep coming in no matter what. Because of that convenience factor.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

They became very lazy. They just don't bother with retail.

[Kristin Schwab]

And with so many other convenient options now, including speedy online delivery, Saunders says customers have drifted away from pharmacies and sales have fallen. On top of that, D. Maketo at USC's School of Pharmacy says drugstores aren't making nearly as much as they used to filling prescriptions, either.

[Samantha Fields]

Reimbursement for prescription drugs has declined, and.

[Kristin Schwab]

That'S really the source of profit for pharmacies. So that's made it worse and more.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Challenging for pharmacies to stay operational.

[Kristin Schwab]

The main reason they're making less on prescriptions has to do with the consolidation of pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, the companies that negotiate drug reimbursement rates with insurers, manufacturers and pharmacies. George Hill at Deutsche bank says today about 80% of prescriptions go through just three PBMs.

[Emily Koharsky]

They just have incredible negotiating power and.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Incredible leverage and have done a great.

[Emily Koharsky]

Job of forcing retail pharmacies to compete.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Against each other, which has led to.

[Emily Koharsky]

Dramatic erosion in pharmacy payments and pharmacy reimbursement.

[Kristin Schwab]

Couple that with the decline in the in store experience, and Hill says big pharmacy chains have found themselves in a downward spiral.

[Emily Koharsky]

The customer experience isn't good, so fewer.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Customers want to go there. So the stores make less money, so they have less money to invest in.

[Emily Koharsky]

The customer experience, which means fewer people.

[Kristin Schwab]

Want to go there, which means earnings continue to erode and on and on. It's a tough cycle to break. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace.

[Kai Ryssdal]

We're past the dismal days of all that supply chain agita. We went through the pandemic. But what happened supply wise back then is still playing out in where companies store their stuff, warehouses specifically, how many of them retailers need, how big and where they should be. And the warehouse business just ain't keeping up. Liz Young wrote in the Wall Street Journal the other day about the warehouse market and which sizes of it are currently out of stock. Liz, thanks for coming on.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Let's get a little ground truth here. When we talk small or smaller warehouses, what are regular warehouses? And then what are, how big are smaller warehouses?

[Elizabeth Trovall]

So warehouses can obviously run the gamut in terms of size. They can be quite small. I mean a thousand square feet. They can be the million plus square foot buildings that we see on the side of highways. So I looked and set the definition of a small warehouse as anything under 100,000 square feet. Now, of course, that's still quite large, but compared to the whole gamut of what's, what's happening with warehousing, those are considered quite small.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Okay, now let's talk vacancy rates. What's the difference between, you know, above and under 100,000 square feet?

[Elizabeth Trovall]

So the overall nationwide vacancy rate in the fourth quarter was 6.7%, which has been climbing quarter over quarter. And what I found was that the vacancy rate for U.S. warehouses owned under 100,000 square feet was 3.9%, while buildings that are more than 100,000 square feet had a 10.1% vacancy rate.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Okay, how come?

[Elizabeth Trovall]

So the reason is a few different things. There's a lot of demand for smaller spaces, especially as companies get more careful about their leasing decisions. There's general economic uncertainty A ton of companies expanded quite a lot during the pandemic. And so companies have since kind of dialed that back. So if they've taken on more space, they've looked to take on smaller spaces at the same time. That kind of frenzied pace of expansion during the pandemic prompted a lot of real estate developers to say, hey, we want to get in on this. And they started building warehouses. But almost all of those have been concentrated in that large category, if you will.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Yeah, I mean, you can go. And we did, during the pandemic, we did stories out there. You go 35 miles east from LA, 40ish, whatever. You get out to the Inland Empire in Riverside county, and there's warehouses all over the place and they're huge. And now they want smaller ones that I'm going to guess are closer in. Right. It's that whole last mile thing.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Absolutely. Yeah. So a lot of these properties, when they're smaller, are closer to cities. So they might be in urban areas themselves, they might be in suburban areas. And that means space is tight and land is expensive.

[Kai Ryssdal]

So talk to me about the retailers who want these smaller spaces you talked about in this piece. Half Price Books.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

So Half Price Books is a discount secondhand books retailer. They have stores across the country. They have kind of localized so that mostly they fulfill orders out of their stores, but they like to have a little bit of warehouse space, especially in certain markets, to have extra stock on hand. So one example of where they've run into this problem with a shortage of small warehouses is that they've been looking for a new warehouse in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota from more than a year and haven't been able to find anything.

[Kai Ryssdal]

So what are they doing? I mean, it's not like they can go to one of those, you know, maybe they can one of those self storage places and rent like. Like a storage garage.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Yeah. They are, in fact using temporary storage units.

[Kai Ryssdal]

I was kidding. Sorry.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Yeah. And they also, they also are just doing what we all do with our homes. Right. If you run out of space, you start to go through and think, okay, what can I get rid of?

[Kai Ryssdal]

What about the biggies? Because the biggies have that whole, you know, we'll get it to you in three hours thing. And it's not like they're driving from Riverside county to my house in LA in three hours, even on a good day, you know?

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of the big companies, of course, are the ones driving up demand for this space.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Right.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

There's also companies that specialize in renting out. You know, if a company has an extra a hundred thousand square feet in their own warehouse, but they're not using it, there are companies that then come in and connect, you know, somebody who wants that space with the company that has it.

[Kai Ryssdal]

So as the person on this call who specializes in supply chains and logistics, what's your sense of how companies are feeling now, given the economic agita that is out there and seems to be on the horizon and what these companies are feeling in terms of their supply chains and logistics and how they're going to be able to do business?

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Yeah, absolutely. I think that this is creating a stressor. I think they need the space. There's uncertainty about when construction will pick up in this category and they don't know what they'll do without it. So I'm sure that some of them will have to think differently about their supply chains and organize things in a different manner because they're unable to get the space that they feel they need.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Liz Young at the Wall Street Journal. Liz, thanks a bunch.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Coming up.

[Emily Koharsky]

So we grew up watching Manchester United play. So I think soccer has just always been around me turning that into a business.

[Kai Ryssdal]

But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrials down 670 points today, one and a half percent closed at 42,005. The NASDAQ slipped 65 points. That's about a third of 1%. 18,285. The S&P 500 subtracted 71 points, 1.2%. 57 and 78. Best Buy beat fourth quarter expectations, but the outlook was mixed. CEO said price increases are likely due to China and Mexico tariffs. Where have you heard that before? Best buy down 13 and a third percent today. Target shares dwindled 3% after that. Retailer also warned tariffs could drag down profits. Target said price increases could take effect in stores as early as, get this the next couple days. Samantha Fields was telling us about Walgreens Boots alliance going private maybe for now. Still, publicly traded shares elevated 5.6% today. Competitors CVS Health ticked down about one and a tenth percent. Bond prices fell as well. The yield on the ten year T note thus rose 4.25%. You're listening to Marketplace.

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I'm Kai Ryssdal. Here's your semi regular reminder that just one in five federal employees live in or near Washington, D.C. the flip side of that coin, of course, is that four out of five, 80% don't, including most of the 2,000 Forest Service workers who've been sacked by Elon Musk and his operatives. And in a lot of places, those public lands agencies like the Forest Service are major employers. Places like McCall, Idaho, population about 3,700. The Mountain West News Bureau's Murphy Wodehouse has more.

[Samantha Fields]

It's a postcard snowy day in the charming Lakeside town of McCall, but it's warm inside the Flying M Cafe where Forest Service workers are preparing for a protest. One of them is Emily Koharsky. She got laid off from Idaho's Payette National Forest on Valentine's Day.

[Kristin Schwab]

It felt pretty horrible.

[Samantha Fields]

Kaharski was a trail crew lead and in a memo she was told she had not shown that her continued employment would, quote, be in the public interest.

[Emily Koharsky]

I mean, the main part of my.

[Samantha Fields]

Job in the winter is safety.

[Kristin Schwab]

I ride out on snowmobiles, I check avalanche reports. I decided disseminate information to the public.

[Samantha Fields]

Garski was a probationary employee. She liked her work and did it well. In her most recent performance review, she was deemed to be, quote, fully successful. Garski is here for the protest, but she also brought her resume. I want to work. I want to find a job. I'm going to pass out my resume and tell people what has happened to.

[Kristin Schwab]

Me and ask for help.

[Samantha Fields]

A union steward with the National Federation of Federal employees said that 45 Forest Service employees on the Payette have been laid off recently. New Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins supports the administration's efforts to eliminate inefficiencies and strengthen USDA's many services to the American people, according to a statement last week, a federal judge found that the layoffs of probationary employees were likely illegal. The firings have spurred protests across the West. Some 50 people, including the Forest Service workers from the Flying M are gathered at a small park near snow covered Payette Lake. Bryce Baer takes the mic. He's a now former backcountry ranger and was also a probationary employee. He was also told that his continued employment was not in taxpayers interest.

[Kristin Schwab]

I take a real great offense to that.

[Samantha Fields]

Spare's job included patrolling trails and keeping bathrooms clean. Like many in the Forest Service, he started his career as a seasonal worker before getting a permanent position. Spare's supervisor was disturbed by his termination and she provided Spare with a letter calling the notion that his work did not serve the public a farce. Spare says he and other laid off colleagues represent decades of on the ground experience.

[Kristin Schwab]

There's a ton of knowledge that's being lost right now.

[Samantha Fields]

By early afternoon, nearly 150 protesters line McCall's main drag. Chants and the honks of supportive motorists fill the air. Bethany Thomas works at a local bookstore. Her sign reads Valley county stands with our federal workers.

[Kristin Schwab]

You know, our neighbors, our friends, our kids, soccer coaches, our federal employees. Employees. And without their income, our community doesn't have money coming into it.

[Samantha Fields]

County data show that the Forest Service is the area's third largest employer, ahead of a school district, the local hospital and a major ski resort.

[Kristin Schwab]

And I have huge concerns over what this means for our forests and our communities in the coming fire seasons.

[Samantha Fields]

While Forest Service fire personnel are exempt from the layoffs, many non fire staff play key roles in preventing or responding to wildfires.

[Kristin Schwab]

A lot of us are in support positions.

[Samantha Fields]

That's Brad LaPlante, the Payette Union steward. Even though he works in forest health, he is regularly deployed on fires. It helps come July and August when.

[Emily Koharsky]

Fire season is really ramped up.

[Samantha Fields]

Laplant still has his job, but he's worried about whether he and the other workers who remain can fulfill the Forest Service's missions like caring for the land and keeping communities safe from fire. In McCall, Idaho, I'm Murphy Woodhouse for.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Are salad days for soccer fans. The English Premier League is on, Europe's Champions League. MLS here in the states is going and the NWSL Starts next week its season. And then in the summer of 2026, the center of the soccer universe comes to the United States, Canada and Mexico for the World Cup. In the meanwhile, soccer in the US is booming. Participation from 2018 to 2023, up 28%. And more players means more customers. Which brings us to today's installment of our series, My Economy.

[Emily Koharsky]

I'm Ben Shahebar. I'm the founder of a new soccer shoe brand called Eleven, and I'm based in Washington, D.C. i grew up in a household that was really all about soccer. I have two older brothers. They all played soccer. My dad was our coach. My mom is from Manchester, England. So we grew up watching Manchester United play. So I think soccer has just always been around me. And then I've always also enjoyed building physical products. And building a soccer shoe brand really was combining those, those two passions of soccer and engineering. You know, Nike, Adidas and Puma have certainly dominated the market for a really long time. But we're seeing in other spaces, like running or trail running or cycling, where there are a number of indie or startup brands that are really starting to break through. And there really hasn't been a brand in soccer. And so I really think there's a big opportunity to do this for that, that market. One of the biggest learnings of starting the shoe company has really been about, I guess, building the physical product itself. You know, we spent the first couple months really on the digital design, but then you have to take that design, however detailed it is, and you have to actually make it in real life. And that translation step has really been the hardest, the most tedious, also fulfilling part of it. Our first sample that we got, I got the first pictures of it on Thanksgiving Day, and it was awful. Before we got our first sample, we had provided to the factory very detailed. They're called tech packs, but it's essentially a blueprint of this is what the shoe should look like. And when we got the first samples back, you know, the shape of the shoe was wrong. A lot of those construction details were wrong. And I remember being like, can I actually do this? Am I actually going to be able to make the shoe that I would want to wear? And what we, what we really had to do is first we pushed back and said, hey, here are all the things that you need to do. And when it was clear that they didn't want to put in that effort, we ended up switching factories. And we've made a ton of progress since, and it's all worked out. 2025 is upon us. Our goal is to be launched this summer, so probably July or August and then really get as many players as possible exposed to our product through a lot of in person demos at tournaments and other events in the lead up to the World cup, which I think is going to be huge in 2026 for our brand.

[Kai Ryssdal]

Ben Shahbar, founder of the soccer startup 11 Manchester United shares By the way, it is publicly traded ticker symbol Manu Manu off 17% the past six months which is coincidentally perhaps or not when the Premier League season started might have something to do with Manchester United United sitting 14th in a 20 team league this final note on the way out today, should you be in need of 1,779,349 square feet of office space in the nation's capital, Elon Musk and his operatives have just what you're looking for. The J. Edgar Hoover Building, the, I guess soon to be former headquarters of the FBI is on the General Services Administration's disposal list. Here, I quote the GSA we are identifying buildings and facilities that are not core to government operations. Our Digital and On Demand team includes Kerry Barber, Jordan Manji, Dylan Mietanen, Jenna Winn, Olga Oxman, Ellen Rothfuss, Virginia K. Smith, and Tony Wagner. Francesca Levy is the Executive Director of Digital and On Demand. I'm Kai Rysdal. We will see you tomorrow, Everybody. This is APM.

[Elizabeth Trovall]

Consumer confidence had its sharpest monthly decline since 2021, which means we're all in our fields about money. And while uncertainty is the only constant these days, it's also a great reason to get serious about understanding personal finance. I'm Janelie Espinal, host of Financially Inclined, a podcast from Marketplace that makes learning about money simple. Learn about practical skills like negotiating job offers, dealing with money and friendship and love, entrepreneurship and student loans. Get serious about your money and build a life you've always dreamed of. Listen to Financially Inclined wherever you get your podcasts.