← The Headlines
The Headlines
The Business Strategy That Could Drive Up Your Grocery Bill, and Trump’s $12 Billion Bailout
00:09:04
Plus, a big Hollywood battle just got messier.
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- [00:00]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
This podcast is supported by the International Rescue Committee, co founded with help from Albert Einstein. The IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years. The IRC helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and responding within 72 hours of crisis. Donate today by visiting Rescue.orgRebuild.
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Traci Mumford
From the new York Times, it's the Headlines. I'm Traci Mumford. Today's Tuesday, December 9th. Here's what we're covering.
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One morning earlier this fall, a group of a few dozen volunteers gathered on a video call for an experiment.
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They all logged on to the grocery shopping app Instacart and simultaneously selected the same item for pickup from the same store, eggs from a particular Safeway in D.C. what they found was that they were being offered significantly different prices. The eggs that cost $3.99 for some shoppers were being sold to others for $4.79, nearly 20% more for the exact same product. Dozens more volunteers did the same thing for other products at other stores scattered around the country, like a box of Cheerios, St. Paul or wheat Thins in Seattle. They also discovered they were being offered completely different prices. The findings, which were published this morning by Consumer Reports and the Groundwork Collective, a progressive policy group, highlight how so called dynamic pricing is spreading across the economy as companies use sophisticated algorithms to adjust prices in real time. The strategy has been used for years for things like Uber or airline tickets, where companies factor in how far out you're planning a trip or the fact that it's bar closed and everyone wants a ride at the same time. But Times chief economics correspondent Ben Castleman says now dynamic pricing is increasingly becoming a part of the shopping experience for everything from restaurants to retail.
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Ben Castleman
Economists point out that companies have always adjusted prices for different customers, right? You can clip coupons to get a discount. You can go to a happy hour or an early bird special. Most of those methods are transparent, right? Consumers know that they are getting a higher price or a lower price during certain periods, and they can plan around that. The concern that I hear from consumer advocates is that these sorts of methods that are being adopted now by companies are in many cases much less transparent. And it's more difficult for consumers to know whether they're getting the best price or even if they're getting the same price as somebody else who's sitting next to them. And it raises the concern that we're heading towards a world in which your shopping habits or your income or where you live leads you to get a different price from somebody else. There's also some evidence that this actually leads to more volatile and maybe even higher prices overall, that if companies are all just setting prices on algorithms, that eventually that can actually lead to higher prices at a time when consumers are already worried about affordability, particularly particularly for things like groceries.
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Traci Mumford
In response to questions from the Times, a Target spokesman said it's not responsible for prices on Instacart, and Safeway declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Instacart said that some of its partner stores do short term pricing tests to, quote, learn what matters most to consumers and how to keep essential items affordable. Companies including Amazon and Home Depot have previously been called out for using dynamic pricing, only to retreat after consumer backlash.
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Now two updates on the Trump Administration President Trump has given the green light to Nvidia to sell some of its most powerful AI chips to China, reversing a longtime US Policy that was meant to limit Beijing's access to that kind of cutting edge technology. Many American officials have expressed concern that allowing these kinds of sales could help China get an edge on the US Militarily and economically. But Nvidia's chief executive spent months lobbying for the change, and as part of the deal, Trump said that the US will get 25% of the revenue from the sales. Experts say that arrangement could be illegal since U.S. law prohibits charging fees for export licenses.
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Farmer / Economist
Meanwhile, we love our farmers, and as you know, the farmers like me.
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Traci Mumford
President Trump is trying to blunt the fallout from his steep tariffs on China by announcing a $12 billion bailout for American farmers who got caught in the middle earlier this year. In response to sky high tariffs, China had halted its purchase of US Agricultural products like soybeans, leaving many farmers struggling as they faced other ongoing pressures like rising costs and high interest rates, too. But Trump's bailout now could have a limited impact. According to some estimates, it would only cover about one third of the overall losses farmers faced this year, and analyses of bailout payments made during Trump's first term found they disproportionately went to larger and wealthier farms.
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In Gaza. The Times is covering how Hamas is holding on to power in the parts of the territory that Israel pulled out from, and despite being severely weakened in the war, the group is reasserting its authority. It's replacing commanders who were killed in the fighting, using the large swaths of its tunnel network that withstood Israeli attacks to hide and store its weapons, and continuing to run key government functions in.
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Adam Razgan
Gaza, according to a former Israeli intelligence official. The official estimates are that Hamas still has around 20,000 fighters. Its government has deployed police forces around Gaza. Masked Hamas gunmen are manning checkpoints, sort of overseeing the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, but also to sort of supervise the movement of people between parts of Gaza. And some local merchants have told us that Hamas was even levying taxes on a small set of electronics, inexpensive goods.
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Traci Mumford
My colleague Adam Razgan has been speaking with people on the ground in Gaza, and in the past few days he traveled to Doha, where many of Hamas's top political officials are based, to ask how the group plans to move forward.
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Adam Razgan
We met with a senior Hamas official named Hussam Badran. When we asked him about Hamas reasserting its authority, he responded by saying that Hamas wants to hand over the administration of Gaza to a Palestinian committee, but that such a committee had yet to be formed. And when we sort of asked, well, what about Hamas's weapons, which is a key source of its authority? He said that they would be open to discussion of the weapons, but only on the condition of serious talks about a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, a total end to its military operations in one last condition, which is probably difficult for this Israeli government to entertain, which is a serious discussion about the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
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Traci Mumford
Meanwhile, Adam says that Israeli political and military officials he talked to are concerned that with each passing day, Hamas is able to reorganize its forces and deepen its control over the territory, meaning that the slow process of setting up a new government for Gaza is playing in Hamas's favor.
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And finally, the fight for control of Warner Bros. Already seemed like a Hollywood drama, with Netflix making an audacious play to buy the legendary movie studio. Now there's a whole new twist, a new challenger, a new with Paramount gunning for a hostile takeover. And the power players have been out in force because any merger will need the stamp of approval from federal regulators. So you had the head of Netflix making a stealthy visit to the Oval Office, the Paramount chairman stopping by the presidential box at the Kennedy center this weekend, and Jared Kushner, the president's son in law, is in the mix since he's an investor in the Paramount deal. While presidents have typically stayed away from influencing regulators who review major corporate deals, Trump has put himself in the middle of it.
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Farmer / Economist
I don't know. That's going to be for some economists to tell. And also and I'll be involved in that decision, too.
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Traci Mumford
On today's episode of the Daily, a team of Times business and entertainment reporters breaks down what might happen next. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
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Podcast Sponsor Announcer
This podcast is supported by the International Rescue Committee. Co founded with help from Albert Einstein, the IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years. The IRC helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and responding within 72 hours of crisis. Donate today by visiting rescue org Rebuild.