Tumbling economic sentiment — especially for Dems

Summary

Marketplace Podcast Summary Episode: Tumbling Economic Sentiment — Especially for Dems
Release Date: February 21, 2025
Host: Kai Ryssdal
Hosted by: Marketplace

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Introduction: Navigating Economic Uncertainty

In this episode of Marketplace, host Kai Ryssdal delves into the current economic landscape marked by declining market sentiments and heightened uncertainty. Joined by Heather Long from the Washington Post and Sudeep Reddy from Politico, the discussion explores the multifaceted challenges facing consumers, businesses, and policymakers alike.

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Market Overview: Stocks on the Decline

The episode opens with Kai noting a significant downturn in stock markets:

• Dow Industrial: Down 748 points (1.7%)
• NASDAQ: Dropped 438 points (2.2%)
• S&P 500: Fell 104 points (1.7%)

Kai remarks, “markets go down too gang,” highlighting a persistent trend of declining markets and the pervasive uncertainty affecting investor confidence ([02:00]).

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Economic Uncertainty and Policy Cross-Currents

Heather Long discusses the surge in economic uncertainty, attributing it to:

• Government Changes: Shifts in policy creating unpredictability.
• Tariff Threats: Increased use of tariffs adding to economic instability.
• Consumer Sentiment: A sharp rise in public concern over economic policies.

She states, “The Economic Policy Uncertainty Index at the Fed is very, very high right now... we have not seen this scale of tariff threats” ([05:37]).

Tara Sinclair adds that policymakers are grappling with how to manage the economy amidst these cross-currents, emphasizing the challenges posed by potential inflationary policies and the uncertain stance of the Federal Reserve ([03:56]).

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Consumer Sentiment and Political Divides

The conversation shifts to consumer sentiment data from the University of Michigan, revealing a notable decline:

• Overall Decline: Nearly 10% drop in consumer confidence from January to February.
• Political Split: Democrats exhibit significantly lower sentiment compared to Republicans.

Kai Ryssdal highlights this polarization, mentioning, “Democrats are freaking out” ([11:20]).

Daniel Ackerman provides historical context, noting that the divide intensified after the 2023 shift from phone to internet surveys, which may have exacerbated political biases in sentiment data ([11:56]).

Sonja Lipinski, from Alex Partners, observes that inflation fears and uncertainty around tariffs are universally dampening consumer confidence, leading to reduced spending and risk aversion ([10:53]).

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Business Investment Concerns

Heather Long identifies business investment as a critical indicator for future economic health:

• Current Sentiment: Business leaders remain cautiously optimistic, but watchful of consumer spending trends.
• Potential Impact: Reduced business investment could signal broader economic slowdown.

She emphasizes, “I am especially watching business investment. That is going to be the thing that determines so much else” ([09:04]).

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Government vs. Private Economic Data

The discussion transitions to the reliability of government-provided economic data versus private sector data sources.

Tara Sinclair underscores the complexities of utilizing private data:

• Consistency Challenges: Private companies collect data for their specific needs, often leading to inconsistencies.
• Unstructured Data Risks: Without proper structuring, data can lead to misleading conclusions.

She warns, “We might find the wrong story from that data rather than if we had a more comprehensive view” ([21:09]).

Kayleigh Wells emphasizes the necessity of government statistical agencies in providing accurate and consistent data, which is crucial for informed decision-making by the public and policymakers alike ([23:05]).

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Impact of Sanctions on Oil Shipping

A segment explores the ramifications of Western sanctions on oil exporters like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, focusing on the rise of "dark ships":

• Dark Ships Prevalence: An estimated 43% of seaborne crude oil exports travel on ships that have disabled tracking systems ([14:05]).
• Implications: While sanctions aim to curb oil exports, the persistence of dark ships indicates limited effectiveness, allowing sanctioned oil to infiltrate global markets.

Erica Downs from Columbia University notes that much of this oil ends up at small Chinese refineries, maintained through opportunistic purchasing practices ([15:00]).

Robin Brooks of the Brookings Institution concludes, “sanctions haven't really squeezed the oil market,” highlighting the creation of parallel oil trading channels that undermine sanction objectives ([15:25]).

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Travel Industry Outlook: The Ghost of Revenge Travel

The episode examines the travel industry's performance as it transitions from the pandemic-driven "revenge travel" surge:

• Industry Earnings: Booking Holdings reported strong earnings, with Expedia and Airbnb also exceeding expectations.
• Future Projections: Industry groups anticipate continued growth in travel bookings, although at more moderate rates compared to the pandemic peak.

Seth Borko of Skift observes that travel remains a top priority for consumers, driven by the enduring desire for experiential identities ([24:36]).

However, Patrick Scholes from Truist Securities cautions that lingering consumer uncertainty may temper future travel plans, potentially impacting growth forecasts ([25:11]).

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Final Thoughts: Navigating Through Uncertainty

As the episode concludes, Kai reflects on the pervasive economic uncertainty and its implications for consumer behavior and policy responses. The persistent decline in consumer confidence signals broader economic vulnerabilities that could manifest in reduced spending and investment, ultimately shaping the economic trajectory in the months ahead.

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Key Takeaways

• High Economic Uncertainty: Unprecedented levels of uncertainty are influencing consumer sentiment and business investment decisions.
• Political Polarization: Consumer confidence is sharply divided along political lines, complicating economic forecasting.
• Private Data Limitations: Reliance on private data poses risks due to lack of consistency and potential biases.
• Ineffectiveness of Sanctions: Dark shipping practices indicate that sanctions on oil exporters have not significantly disrupted global oil markets.
• Travel Industry Moderation: While travel remains vital, growth rates are stabilizing after the explosive pandemic recovery phase.

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Notable Quotes

• Heather Long: “We have not seen this scale of tariff threats... It is a quite resilient economy, and the threat of tariffs does have some effect on individual industries, a lot of individual companies.” ([05:37])
• Tara Sinclair: “We are just hacking our government and this is backfiring by losing so many talented employees...” ([07:18])
• Kai Ryssdal: “Democrats are freaking out” ([11:20])
• Daniel Ackerman: “ships go dark to try and hide their cargo” ([14:23])
• Robin Brooks: “Sanctions haven't really squeezed the oil market” ([15:25])

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the episode's exploration of declining economic sentiment, the intricate web of policy-induced uncertainties, and their cascading effects on consumers and businesses. By integrating expert insights and data-driven analysis, Marketplace provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of the current economic climate.

Transcript

[Kai Rysdal]

This podcast is supported by Odoo. Some say Odoo business management software is like fertilizer for businesses because the simple, efficient software promotes growth. Others say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk because it scales with you and is magically affordable. And some describe Odoo's programs for manufacturing, accounting and more as building blocks for creating a custom software suite. So Odoo is fertilizer Magic beanstalk building blocks for business Odoo exactly what businesses need sign [e-mail] that's o d o.

[Sudeep Reddy]

O.Com if we've learned anything in the first couple of months of 2025, it's that we don't always know exactly what's coming next or how it's going to affect the economy and everybody in it. As always, Marketplace is focused on covering each new development in ways that are meaningful and relevant to is our March fundraiser. So please help us plan for an uncertain future by donating today. We need to know that you're with us. Go to marketplace.org donate you saw the markets today, right? That is where we'll start. And then of course, the rest of this week in this economy. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace in Los Angeles. I'm Kyle Rysdal. It is Friday today, 21st February. Good as always to have you along everybody. I will note here two things as we get going. Thing number one is that markets go down too gang. It's been a while since I've said it, but it is no less true in its absence. Thing number two, ain't nobody out there likes uncertainty, of which we have a lot. So let's get to it. Heather Long is at the Washington Post. Sudeep Reddy is at Politico. Hey you two.

[Heather Long]

Hey Kai.

[Tara Sinclair]

Hi Kai.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Sudeep, let me begin with you and the observation that the markets today finally actually after 5ish weeks since the inauguration and in the face of consumer sentiment and Walmart yesterday said, yeah, we're not here for this. Are you surprised it took this long?

[Heather Long]

We all knew there was going to be a moment when markets come off the sugar high that is happening right now. And what the adjustment looks like is what we'll be following for a while. It's not a huge surprise today as options expiration day. There are moments when markets act up right around that point, especially in a memeified stock market era where people are making day trade bets like they have been in the last few years. But we, we have a lot of cross currents hitting businesses, hitting consumers, obviously A lot of change in the government. That is all stuff that is starting to create more of that uncertainty. The University of Michigan is very well known for consumer sentiment, for inflation. They also track people just commenting on uncertainty around economic policy. This has just shot up to levels that we have not even seen before. Higher than back when we were talking about the debt ceiling 15 years ago. Higher the 911 period. That is a lot to take in a historical context of what's happening right now. And I don't think it's even most of us even have even made sense of it yet.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Heather Long, it is now your job to make sense of all of this, the uncertainty, the cross currents, the Fed's challenge right now in what they are going to do in managing this economy in the face of what could be inflationary policies from the White House and Congress doing who knows what with, oh, by the way, the debt limit and tax policy. How do you steer this economy right now?

[Tara Sinclair]

Yeah, yeah, you're right. There's a chill in the air and it's not just from winter right now. And it's, you know, it's hard to know how long it's going to stick around. I think what's, what's really challenging for any policymaker right now or even any investor or any of us who are trying to figure out are we still going to have jobs in a few weeks is, is really, you know, this question of how serious is President Trump about, about tariffs, about all of these different things he's doing. And what you'll still hear a bit of from Wall street chief economist types or from Federal Reserve officials is this we're going to wait till it's actually in place. You know, we're not going to preemptively steer the economy before and until we actually see a lot more destruction. But I don't not sure if that it worked pretty well in Trump's first term. I'm not sure it's going to be the right approach here in the second term. And as Sudeep was laying out and you were laying out, we're already starting to see consumers respond and businesses respond. And so I'm not sure how long you can really just sit on the sidelines and say, yeah, but there's no tariffs yet. So I think that's probably the biggest challenge right now.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Well, Sudeep on that issue of, you know, there's nothing happening tariff wise yet, you know, a lot of Fed talkers this week, eight or nine regional presidents and members of the board of governors, the general theme of which was, we're going to look through whatever all the talk is with tariffs, and then the minutes come out and clearly they're actually worried about it. And, and I guess it's just, it's. This isn't really a question, it's a statement. It's just so much more complicated now. Yeah.

[Heather Long]

The Economic Policy Uncertainty Index at the Fed is very, very high right now. They're trying to make sense of, of, of a period that is, that is actually unprecedented. I don't think we've ever seen a secondary government arrive alongside the one that's in place, whacking at the government like this in this way. We have not seen this scale of tariff threats. And in addition to that, we have to remember, though, that last time around, the tariffs obviously had some impact, but they did not unleash inflation that was out of control. Inflation was relatively stable for several years, and they don't want to get caught in the trap of thinking that everything is going to go sideways. It is a quite resilient economy, and the threat of tariffs does have some effect on individual industries, a lot of individual companies. But is it really changing the shape of the macro economy that the Fed looks at? And they do need to be cautious about that, but they can't overreact, and that's the challenge that they've got right now.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Heather, can we talk for a second about something you alluded to a minute ago, which was, you know, we don't know if we're going to have jobs. And that's of course referring to the people at the government who have been fired in extremely large numbers. There are probationary employees, something like 200,000 of them, who may or may not be terminated really soon. There are others who have been. And I guess the question is the micro pain for these people is very, very real. We've heard the stories of these individual people and the tragic circumstances they now find themselves in. How long till the macro pain, the economic systemic pain, shows up from all these firings?

[Tara Sinclair]

Yeah, you're right. That's been a question on a lot of people's minds. You know, some of it is showing up already. And in terms of what we've just been talking about, the uncertainty, and I was struck in that University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey that they specifically said that over half of respondents recently are worried and believe unemployment is going to go up. So even if they are personally impacted, they are starting to believe that that's the direction of things. And then like an actual data perspective, because the firings were done just after the reference week for the February unemployment report. We probably won't see a huge sign until another until early April when the March unemployment report comes out. Obviously this week we were all looking closely at that jobless report yesterday. We don't see that yet. But again, I think everyone's really looking that right into consumer spending and that are we people going to start canceling their Netflix or their Amazon prime or their Hulu? Are they going to stop shopping and stop going out to eat at the Applebee's and Chili's and Olive Gardens? I'm definitely watching that closely. But the biggest thing of all is we are just hacking our government and this is backfiring. It's already backfiring by losing so many talented employees and by sending a message to anybody who ever maybe wanted to go into public service is going to think twice about that for years and years to come.

[Sudeep Reddy]

It is, as you both have been talking about this week on the socials, it is a brain drain. And as we talked about yesterday on this program, government savings are not like business savings because government is not a business. Sudeep fire hose of news. Heather's watching consumer spending and how consumers are reacting. What's the thing you're looking at? You got 30 seconds to tell me.

[Heather Long]

I am especially watching business investment. That is going to be the thing that determines so much else. Everything rests on the employment picture. If businesses start to get skittish, if they see that consumer spending is not going to stay strong, they're going to start cutting back business investment and a lot goes goes wrong at that stage there. There's already enough uncertainty around the world about the trade situation, but there's a lot of investment there. And I think we have seen through time that businesses try to look through these moments. They see the pendulum swings wildly back and forth in an unhelpful way from policy, and they try to look through that. But that is really going to be the thing that tells us whether the system is starting to glitch.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Sudeep Reddy at Politico, Heather Long at the Washington Post on a Friday afternoon in unprecedented times. Thanks, you two.

[Heather Long]

Thanks, guy.

[Tara Sinclair]

Hang in there.

[Sudeep Reddy]

You too. On Wall street today. I'm gonna go out on a limb here, not a big limb, just a tiny little limb and say it'll be the wawas. Y'all know, consumers in this economy, as we were just alluding to, are often an irascible bunch and they are especially not thrilled right now, not thrilled at all. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment numbers came out this morning, as Heather was saying, down just shy of 10% January to now. But when one digs a little bit deeper, as one must, and breaks consumer sentiment down by political affiliation, well, one should not be surprised by what one finds. Marketplace's Kelly Wells explains there is one.

[Kai Rysdal]

Thing that consumers across the political spectrum agree on. Inflation isn't going anywhere, regardless of where you lean.

[Kayleigh Wells]

I think there's concern over what does it mean and how's it going to impact me.

[Kai Rysdal]

Sonja Lipinski with the financial advisory firm Alex Partners says inflation fears and talk of tariffs make consumers feel uncertain, and uncertainty shows up as negative sentiment.

[Kayleigh Wells]

They don't want to spend money. They don't want to take any risks. So that's what we're seeing, I think.

[Kai Rysdal]

A lot in the consumer, for sure. Republican sentiment is about the same as last month. Meanwhile, Democrats are freaking out. That is a switch that happened, you guessed it, last fall and then everything.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Went pretty haywire after that, of course, as the political bias, I think, gets baked into that data set.

[Kai Rysdal]

Adam Turnquist is chief technical strategist at LPL Financial. He's hopeful the political chasm will start to shrink soon.

[Sudeep Reddy]

There's probably some shock factor on maybe both sides coming out of the election. So I would expect some of these.

[Tara Sinclair]

Sentiment indicators to normalize a bit.

[Kai Rysdal]

The divide didn't start last November. Michael Green, chief strategist at Simplify Asset Management, says consumer sentiment polarized back in 2023 when the university of Michigan stopped gathering data by phone and started using an Internet survey.

[Daniel Ackerman]

You can imagine a phone interviewer saying something along the lines of, okay, so you're predicting a dramatic jump in inflation and somebody on the phone responding and saying, no, I mean, I just think.

[Kai Rysdal]

Inflation'S really high, meaning when you're talking to another person, you're more likely to moderate your view. Now that it's people alone with their.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Computers, you have absolutely no obligation to fill in the survey with any form of accuracy. You can basically reflect any wild view.

[Kai Rysdal]

While consumer sentiment remains divided, business leaders are feeling more confident. New data from the conference board says CEOs are the most optimistic they've been in three years. I'm Kayleigh Wells for Marketplace.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Let's talk maritime shipping here for a minute, shall we? Specifically, the shipping of crude oil. There's a thing that's happening that's kind of interesting in a kind of troubling way. There are, as you've surely heard, Western sanctions on some big oil producers, Iran, Russia, Venezuela among them. And in response to those sanctions A growing number of oil tankers. The ships themselves have gone dark. That is, they've shut off tracking systems that would let them be tracked. A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates A not insignificant 43% of seaborne crude oil exports traveled on dark ships the past couple of years. That 43% is of course, just an estimate because the ships have gone dark. But the logical conclusion is, is that a whole lot of sanctioned oil is still moving around the global economy. Dan Ackerman has that one.

[Daniel Ackerman]

If you're piloting an oil tanker and you shut off your transponder, you don't disappear altogether. This is not Star Trek.

[Heather Long]

We don't have cloaking devices.

[Daniel Ackerman]

But Ellen Wald of the Atlantic Council says it does make it harder to find you, which might involve combing through satellite photos and the like.

[Kai Rysdal]

It's just tedious.

[Daniel Ackerman]

So ships go dark to try and hide their cargo. This often happens when two oil tankers rendezvous at sea, says Ian Ralby, CEO of the maritime consultancy IR Consilium. If you have a small tanker that takes sanctioned oil out from Iran and transships onto a much larger tanker that is carrying a cargo of legitimate oil, they can obscure the fact that that oil is partially sanctioned. And it turns out it's not hard to find a buyer for oil of questionable origin. Erica Downs, an energy researcher at Columbia University, says a lot of dark shipped oil ends up at small independent refineries in China.

[Kayleigh Wells]

These refineries operate on very thin margins.

[Sudeep Reddy]

And they're highly opportunistic crude buyers, meaning.

[Daniel Ackerman]

They'Ll take the lowest cost crude. Sanctioned or not, oil on dark ships also ends up in South Korea, India and Egypt, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research study. This all means that sanctions haven't really squeezed the oil market, says Robin Brooks of the Brookings Institution.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Global oil supply was not at all.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Materially impacted, he says. Neither was the price of oil. What has happened with so many major oil suppliers under sanction is that the global oil trade has basically split into two parallel channels, says Ian Ralby of IR Consilium. If you put everyone outside of the tent, they're just going to make their own tent. And that's essentially what we've done. We've created a new marketplace for sanctioned actors and their enablers. Another unintended side effect, says Ralby. These tracking systems are a safety feature to help ships avoid collisions. It's not a great idea to turn them off. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace. Coming up, the ghost of Revenge Travel. The spirit of revenge. Travel lives on.

[Sudeep Reddy]

The ghost of travel future perhaps straight ahead. First though, let's do the numbers. Told you it'd be the Wawas. Dow Industrial is off 748 today. 1.7% 43,428 sounded a little chipper there. I'm just glad I was right about the music because as we know, I'm not in charge. NASDAQ dropped 438 points 2.2% 19,524. The S&P 500 down 104 points. 1.7% there as well. 6,013 for the week. The Dow and the Nasdaq both down 2.5%. The S&P 500 down 1 and 710 of 1%. Kelly Wells was telling us about consumer sentiment partly having to do with anticipated price hikes on imports and possibly affected companies. Whirlpool slowed 1.2% today. Honda stalled 3/10 of 1% today. A German court has ruled that Birkenstock sandals are not art. They are apparently a design and thus don't qualify for Germany's 70 year art copyright law protections. Birkenstock holdings dropped 4 and a 10th percent. I don't know how you say ugly in German. Somebody hook me up. You're listening to Marketplace. If you want to be savvy about the economy, the Marketplace newsletter is just what you need. Every Friday you'll get explainers and analysis that make sense of everything from the moving markets to grocery prices. No jargon, no hype, just smart takes delivered to your inbox. Sign up [e-mail] subscribe.

[Kai Rysdal]

This Marketplace podcast is supported by Gusto. Paydays are great, but running payroll, calculating taxes, deductions, compliance, that's not easy. Unless, of course, you have Gusto.

[Kayleigh Wells]

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[Kai Rysdal]

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[Sudeep Reddy]

I'm Kai Rysdal. With the caveat that conversations about government, statistical and economic data can get weedy in a big bad hurry. The current state of play with federal data disappearing and then reappearing in private, operatives getting extraordinary data access, these are conversations that have to be had. We talked yesterday about what we lose when government data disappears. So we're going to talk today about whether private data might be a suitable replacement. Tara Sinclair is a professor of economics at George Washington University, but for many years she was at indeed, where she founded the INDEED Hiring Lab, one of the sources of said private data. Professor Sinclair, good to talk to you again.

[Kayleigh Wells]

It's great to be back.

[Sudeep Reddy]

You have spent a good chunk of your career working on private indicators about this economy. And I guess the first thing I want to get your sense of is how hard it is to take data from private sources and make it useful to the public.

[Kayleigh Wells]

Well, that's a fantastic question because it is really, really hard. If we think about the ways that companies collect data. It ranges so widely from different company practices and styles. And to be able to try and take that data and condense it into something that answers a question that is important to the general public really takes specific tools, specific skills, and it's typically outside the scope or objectives that any one particular company has. That's why it's so important that we have government statistical agencies.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Yes, go back to that thing you just said, outside the scope of what any specific business has. These businesses are collecting this data for their business purposes, not to clarify things for the public.

[Kayleigh Wells]

Right, exactly. And they have their own objectives and those objectives can change over time. So they don't have necessarily a need to keep things consistent from month to month or quarter to quarter the way that it's so important for us to have that information to be able to make longer run decisions for the general public.

[Sudeep Reddy]

You've got a couple of decks that you put together as you were doing presentations on this throughout your career. And there was a phrase that hit me that I'd like you to explain. You talk about unstructured data and you call that something of a peril. And I want to know why.

[Kayleigh Wells]

Well, oftentimes people think that if we can just go and get the data directly from companies, it's going to be this, you know, amazing archaeological find. And, and it is, but it requires all of the tools and digging of archaeologists. Like it's not just sitting there as this glorious perfect data set, it's rather this giant unstructured mess that it has several perils. One of them is that we might find the wrong story from that data rather than if we had a more comprehensive view from all of the companies in the economy rather than just a few select ones that are willing to offer the data. I think that's one of the biggest concerns.

[Sudeep Reddy]

It does bear a mention here that private data, sometimes called high frequency data, we've done stories on that in the past. This private data already plays a role in government policy decision making on the margins, but it's there.

[Kayleigh Wells]

Oh, absolutely. And it can be a great input. In fact, it may be one way that we can save people time because instead of filling out a survey, maybe we can just collect the data of their shopping habits directly from the store. That sort of thing is already being used at statistical agencies and is really improving their efficiency. But it's got to be done carefully because we need to make appropriate adjustments for the fact that that data is coming from a select set of sources. We have to make sure that what we're observing is actually answering the question that we want to be answering.

[Sudeep Reddy]

So here comes the more subjective question. What is the risk for this economy if government economic data becomes unreliable or something short of unreliable just gets called into question, Right?

[Kayleigh Wells]

That is really, really scary because that's something that I think the statistical agencies have worked very hard to get that credibility. It may be the case that the typical American household isn't looking up what's going on with inflation from month to month or GDP from quarter to quarter, but it is the case that it's affecting them because it's affecting decisions that are being made on our behalf by their employers, by their local and state governments. And without that clear information, we're going to be in the dark making our decisions. Forward looking decisions are just already hard enough.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Professor Tara Sinclair, economics at George Washington University. Professor, thanks for your time, Emma. I appreciate it.

[Kayleigh Wells]

Thank you. I really appreciate it.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Online Travel closed out 2024 on a high note. That's according to the earnings report this week from Booking holdings, holder of priceline, kayak and booking.com and those strong earnings follow better than expected readings from Expedia and Airbnb earlier this month. Industry groups do expect bookings to push higher yet in 2025, but the skies are not entirely friendly. As Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino reports, the.

[Kai Rysdal]

Days of post pandemic revenge travel when bookings were growing at double digit rates, those might be over, but the ghost.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Of revenge travel, the spirit of revenge travel lives on.

[Kai Rysdal]

Seth Borko, director of research for travel news site Skift, says people seem to have come out of the pandemic with travel as a higher priority. A recent Skiffed Global survey found consumers were most excited to spend discretionary income on travel.

[Daniel Ackerman]

What we think we're seeing both short.

[Kayleigh Wells]

Term and long term, is travel as an identity, right? And experiences as an identity.

[Kai Rysdal]

But as we saw in today's Consumer Sentiment Survey. Buyers might be feeling a bit unsettled. That could be affecting travel plans for May and June, says analyst Patrick Scholes at Truist Securities.

[Sudeep Reddy]

The bookings are kind of mediocre.

[Tara Sinclair]

They're not going down, but they're not.

[Heather Long]

You know, they're not exactly on fire either.

[Kai Rysdal]

He says tariffs could have a direct effect on travel because they affect exchange rates. A stronger dollar would be good for US Travelers internationally, but foreign tourist money won't go as far here.

[Tara Sinclair]

One thing that's interesting we're watching very.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Closely is inbound Canadian to the United States.

[Kai Rysdal]

Typically, the US Gets its highest number of foreign tourists from Canada, followed by Mexico. Fliers are also voicing concerns about safety, says Jay Sorensen, an airline consultant. There have been several high profile air travel incidents in recent weeks. Of course it's still safe to fly, but then you add to it the whole disruption that the Trump administration is creating in terms of the faa, so that begins to magnify itself a little bit in terms of perhaps a hesitation for some. The administration recently cut hundreds of jobs at the Federal Aviation Administration, but stipulated air traffic controllers and other safety personnel are not affected. I'm Megan McCarty Carino for Marketplace.

[Sudeep Reddy]

This final note on the way out today saw this on Wired, which if you haven't been following their reporting on the Trump administration, you should Anyway, they are reporting Today that Elon Musk's operatives have put a $1 spending limit on most government credit cards used by employees and contractors at the General Services Administration, which among other things manages it and office buildings for the federal government. Similar limits Wired reports are coming to the whole rest of the federal workforce. Our theme music was composed by BJ Lederman. Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fargolin. Donna Tam is the executive editor, Neil Scarborough is vice president and general manager and I'm Kai Rysdal. Have yourselves a great weekend, everybody. We will see you back here on Monday. All right. This is APM.

[Kai Rysdal]

Consumer confidence had its sharpest monthly decline since 2021, which means we're all in our feels about money. And while uncertainty is the only constant.

[Sudeep Reddy]

These days, it's also a great reason.

[Kai Rysdal]

To get serious about understanding personal finance. I'm Janelia 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 the life you've always dreamed of.

[Kayleigh Wells]

Of.

[Sudeep Reddy]

Listen to Financially Inclined wherever you get your podcast.