Marketplace - A fuel-driven economy

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

One glaring result of President Trump’s war on Iran, one month in? High oil prices. If fuel stays expensive, the cost could ripple through the global economy. Analysts think the market for electric vehicles in the U.S. could see a boost, for example, as gas prices shoot up. And countries in Asia may reopen coal production plants as crude oil becomes scarce. Also in this episode: Aluminum prices spike, Unilever sells off its food brands to a spice giant, and plasma centers see more middle-class donors.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

It's a commodities kind of day. Today, we're going to go a little sideways, though, from American public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizzdahl. It is Tuesday, today the very last day of March, 26. Good as it always is to have you along, everybody. Commodities is where the opening stanzas of the program today find us. Not, though, the usual suspect, because fine, sure.

oil, important, yes, but not the only globally critical item that is in the news. We're going to do a commodities one, two, today, aluminum and then coal. Aluminum prices have been rising since the war started. Attacks on smelters, you've probably heard of those. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, you've definitely heard of that. Also, the rising cost of the energy that those smelters need. Prices are up around 10% since the start of the war. That's according to CRU Group.

and that only adds to the 50% tariff that businesses have been paying on imported metals. So Marketplace's Justin Ho called some businesses that rely on aluminum to find out of how they're being affected and what they're going to do about it. Wolftooth Components is a bike parts manufacturer based near Minneapolis that makes hundreds of different products, including gears, pedals, and seat posts. I would say aluminum's in probably 90% of our products. That's co-owner Brendan Moore. He says ever since the war started, the price of the aluminum he buys has risen about 10%, even though the company mostly uses aluminum that's made in the U.S.

U.S. aluminum rises along with the broader commodity, and so U.S. prices have gone up, too. Thing is, Moore says there's not a lot he can do about that. You know, you go to a restaurant and the lobster on the menu will say, market rate. We don't get to say that on our components. Our components have a fixed price. Moore says raising his prices is risky, involves coordinating with dealers across the country,

and it can tick off as customers. So instead, the company's just going to eat the cost and hold prices steady. Morris says he'd rather focus on the things he can control. The things you can control are efficiency. How well we sell and market the product? Businesses can't make plans around the recent aluminum price spike, because we don't know how long this war is going to keep pushing up prices, says Vidya Mani, a visiting professor at Cornell University.

Two months down the line, I might be looking at a 50% increase. Four months down the light, I might be looking at a 70% increase. Plus, the war isn't only making aluminum more expensive. It's also causing actual shortages, says Ross Drackett, with CRU Group. In Japan and South Korea, some of the auto wheel manufacturers that make aluminum wheels, have had to cut their production because they can't get the material from the Middle East. That said, the U.S. has levied tariffs on imported aluminum ever since 2018, so many businesses can draw from their experiences with tariffs.

The new increases from the Iran War just falls right into our same playbook. That's Chris Blanche, CEO of Mavericks Manufacturing Partners, a company near San Diego that makes parts for nuclear power plants in the military. Blinch says the company's playbook is simple. Ever since the trade policies have been driving prices up on our metals and our raw material inputs, we've just been passing it on. Blinch says he knows the strategy will work, especially since everyone he's competing against is in the same boat.

I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace. Commodity number two in our hit parade today is a nod to the reality that one commodity's crisis is another's opportunity. Oil was down today, yes, but still above $100 a barrel. That's for both benchmarks, Brent Crude and West Texas. Coal, though, is having a moment because even though a lot of countries have been trying to phase out their use of it, demand of late is going up in Asia in particular. And in the month and four days since the war started, the global coal benchmark has jumped more than 20%. Daniel Lackerman has more now on the coal comeback.

This is a story about coal, but first we have to talk about a different fuel. This is actually more of a natural gas story. Kenneth Gillingham, a professor of environmental economics at Yale University, reminds us that about a fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas typically travels on tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. The consumers of that, the people who buy it, tend to be in Asia. Countries like China and India, they've been ramping up their use of natural gas in recent years, but these days coal is more readily available, and they still have plenty of coal-fired electricity plants hanging around, says Amin Mosei Chiraglu, an energy economist at American University. Given the current conditions, they can relatively easily go back to coal.

There is a lot of capacity. And he says that capacity is getting fired up once again, to lessen the blow of rising gas prices. It's just natural for those economies, try to switch back to coal as much as possible, of course. Thailand and Taiwan may unretire coal plants that had been shuttered, while South Korea and Japan have suspended climate laws that cap coal burning at some power plants,

says Kenneth Gillingham of Yale. Maybe they've run some of the time, they run occasionally, now they're being run all the time. He says the shift will be felt by the climate. I think this is a big enough impact that we will see a little jump in emissions. But this energy shock could have the opposite effect in the longer term. Daniel Cohen, a professor of environmental engineering at Rice University,

says it could incentivize countries to invest more in renewables. With a few years' time, that's when you can start building out more wind, solar and batteries, because those are the cheapest forms of electricity available. And because they'll make those countries less reliant on, imported fuels entirely. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace. Wall Street today, I regret to inform you that I'm going to have to take back the kind words I said yesterday about the markets and traders and the algorithms that drive things, because, alas, it turns out they actually are an idiot. Stocks way up today, oiled down just

a bit, bonds basically unchanged. We will have the details when we do the numbers. The Trump administration has apparently decided if you go by what the president and some of his cabinet officials say out loud. They've apparently decided that if maybe the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, that would be okay. The global economy would beg to differ. Crude prices we've touched on already. Dan Ackerman just talked about natural gas in Asia. And oh, by the way, gasoline here, $4.2 a gallon today, as I do not need to remind you. Now, on the theory that incentives matter, you might imagine that paying so much more at the pump would turn consumers fancy toward EVs.

And there is some evidence from the car buying site Edmonds that interest in electric vehicles has indeed ticked up the past couple of few weeks. Enough, though, to make a difference? Marketplace's Henry App reports. Before gas prices started climbing, the EV market entered this year in a tough spot. The Trump administration and Congress stripped away pretty much all. the federal policies that had been supporting the expansion of electric vehicles, one of the big ones tax credits, which up until last September knocked thousands of dollars off the price of many new and used EVs. In the couple months before those credits went away, electric car sales spiked,

but then... I like to refer to the time after that as like a hangover. Alex Lawrence owns EV Auto, which sells used EVs at dealerships in Utah and Tennessee. For his business, the bad part of that hangover lasted about a month. then just slow uptick, kind of creeping back, creeping back. But the EV market as a whole, it's still kind of hung over. Sales slumped from 10% of the car market in the third quarter to under 6% in the fourth quarter, according to Kelly Blue Book. Plus, says Jessica Caldwell at Edmonds.

We heard automakers saying that they were going to delay plans or cancel EV programs altogether, so it sort of felt like a bleak market. It wasn't necessarily stopping, but it didn't feel great in the short term. On top of the tax credit, the Trump administration also weakened fuel economy rules. So a lot of carmakers cut back their EV manufacturing and turned their focus and money back toward gas-fueled SUVs and trucks. And then all of a sudden gas prices spike, it's like, well, are you sure you want to do that? Because those high prices at the pump could maybe lead more Americans to go electric, says Tim Levin, senior editor of the EV News publication inside EVs. I think it depends on how high gas prices go.

and how long they stay that way, right? Even if gas prices stay high, EVs face a bunch of other points of friction, Levin says, that have always made them a tougher sell. People are worried about charging infrastructure. Not everybody has a home charger at home, which is where you're going to get the best savings and the best convenience. You know, people are worried about range. The cost of these EVs is pretty high.

But at least that last point appears to be changing a bit. Chevy and Nissan both released new models under $30,000 this year. Toyota and Subaru are also coming out with new models aimed to be a bit more affordable than previous generations of EVs. And the market for used EVs is growing fast, driven by many electric models coming off three-year leases, Levin says. Just by virtue of the fact that a lot more EVs were sold in the last few years than they were before, you have a lot of really high quality, really well-priced used EVs coming onto the market right now. Dealership owner Alex Lawrence expects buyers will scoop these up. He says he's seen an uptick in sales the last few weeks. He's decided to bulk up his inventory of used EVs by about a third.

And he plans to open two new dealerships this year. And so I'm all in. I mean, I'm accelerator to the floor. We're not slowing down at all. He's betting, he says, that gas prices will stay high for a while. and more people just won't want to deal with them anymore. I'm Henry App for Marketplace. You know what the world needs right now? It needs a preeminent global flavor-focused company. That's what it needs. If you're not quite sure what that means, I'll explain.

Unilever, a grocery giant that owns everything from Helmand's mayonnaise to Dove Soap has sold off its food business to McCormick, the Spices and Sources Company, creating the aforementioned preeminent global flavor-focused company, or at least so reads the press release. Unilever has been selling off its food brands for a while now. It got rid of its ice cream holdings late last year, Ben and Jerry's. We hardly knew you. And today's move is another instance of giant conglomerates spinning off, selling off,

and or acquiring familiar brands in those critical middle aisles of the local Piggly Wiggly. Marketplace of Kelly Wells explains what's going on. This move of consolidating and simplifying in the grocery industry has been going on for years now. Remember Procter and Gamble, the personal care brand, used to own Pringles and Folgers Coffee. It is much more difficult to have a company that is focusing on both foods and non-foods. Selling off the food brands makes sense, says Russell Zwanka, who directs the food marketing program at Western Michigan University. Because soap and mayonnaise are two really different products to sell. You can have entirely different strategy for personal care and home care, because you're ingesting the product as opposed to applying it topically or, you know, or, you know, or.

cleaning your clothes. And if Unilever was going to drop one, the food side just isn't growing much. Part of that is a change in consumer buying, says Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Folks have been increasingly moving towards more prepared and ready to eat foods, the perimeter of the supermarket. Meaning we're spending more time in the fresh produce and deli sections, less time buying boxes of stuff.

The other trend? With especially younger Americans, we've seen brand. loyalty eroded in a big way. Meaning we still know Hellman's mayonnaise, but we're not committed to buying it, especially if the generic store brand option is a dollar cheaper. So, Volpe says, good idea for Unilever to get rid of it. But also, a good idea for McCormick to pick it up, says Eric Chafy, with Case Western Reserve University.

This is going to make them more of a player in regard to the food industry, meaning that they're going to be able to provide both spices and condiments at the same time. For McCormick, adding mayonnaise is a pretty natural progression to their spice and sauce niche, says Bobby Gibbs with the consulting firm Oliver Wyman. Because the scale that you're doing in one of your products, you can actually apply others. In the short term, this won't change much for consumers. But Volpe with Cal Poly says, as more brands consolidate power in their corner of the market, they also have an easier time raising their prices. I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. Coming up.

You know, you start to see your numbers and you're just like, oh, dang it. I hate it when that happens. First, though, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial's up 1,125 points, 2.5% today, 46,341.3.1. But come on, context is everything, right? The NASDAQ grew 795 points. That is 3 and to 810%. 21,590. S&P 500 added 184 points, 2.9%, 65 and 288.

Henry was talking about EVs. Well, here you go. Tesla, which produces four car models and, oh, yeah, cybertruck, sped up four and six-tenths percent. Rivian, four models of truck there climbed three and nine tenths of one percent. McCormick dropped six and a tenth percent. Unilever decreased seven and three-tenths percent. Condiment competitor, Kraft Heinz, which, oh, by the by, also used to be two separate food giants, sauced up one-tenth of one percent. Bonds up, yield on the 10-year Tino down. Four point three-two percent. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. We have been talking for months, longer maybe, about the K-shaped economy we have now and the growing number of people on the lower leg of that K, struggling to get by. A problem that's going to be compounded, the longer this war goes on on the higher it drives household costs. Along those lines, there was a piece in the New York Times the other day about blood plasma donation centers and about the people who go there and what that says about this economy. Curtis Lee shared the byline. Curtis, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.

Do me a favor and tell me about the guy you start this piece with, Joseph Braseno is his name, his circumstances, if you would, and then where you came across him? Yeah, so Joseph Brasenio lives in the suburbs of Houston and I met him outside of a CSL plasma donation center. Joseph is 59 years old. He works at a local waste disposal company. He earns about $50,000 a year. Lives comfortably for the most part. But as we all know with this economy right now, the rising prices of gas and groceries, he needs some extra income.

So that's why he was selling his blood plasma. And this CSL lab, CSL, the name of the company, where is it? I mean, what's the local environs, if you will? Yeah, it's very much in a suburban. if you think of suburbia in America, it's in this strip mall. There's an Orange Theory fitness, a few doors down from the CSL plasma, and it very much does have the feel of suburban America. And the thrust of this piece, or at least what I took away from it, is that, you know,

we've known about people selling plasma and people, in fact, in some days, days gone by, selling actual blood. But it's been people on the ragged edge of this economy and what you've discovered, you and your co-author on this piece, the data guy, is that it's moving sort of up into suburban, as you said, middle class, doing okay people who are now not doing okay enough that they can't get away without selling their blood plasma. Yeah, for years, selling plasma was known to be in mostly lower income inner city communities, but now over the past two decades, it's definitely moved out into more suburban middle class areas. We based our story kind of a bit off of a study

by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Colorado, Boulder, who looked at plasma centers in America and basically found that the number of plasma centers more than doubled between 2014 and 2021. And then we took that data and we found that more and more of these plasma centers are moving out into the suburbs. And in particular, we went to the suburbs of Houston. We went to the suburbs called Webster, Texas. And in the last couple of years, there's been two plasma centers that have opened up, the CSL plasma where I met Joseph Brisseneo, and also there's a bio-life plasma services, which is a little more than a mile away. And we really just wanted to talk to Americans and see why they're selling their blood plasma right now. We should just stipulate

here in case it isn't clear somehow in what we've been saying. It is net, net, not a great thing that people have to sell their blood plasma to survive in this economy, no matter what part of the socioeconomic spectrum they're on, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is, This is one of those things that, you know, a lot of people I talked to felt this sense of shame. A lot of people wanted to be anonymous in these conversations. They weren't proud of having to sell their blood plasma. But then you talk to, you know, patients that need certain medical therapies. And they're very grateful to these people who are donating and selling their plasma because it helps with their medicines.

And the United States collects about 70% of the world's blood plasma. And it's only one of a handful of countries around the world. world that allow for the payment of plasma. So that's why it's become such a lucrative business in the United States. Yeah, it's worth pointing out here that CSL, the company that runs one of the centers that you found these people in front of it. It's a publicly traded for-profit Australian company, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And it's done really well over the years, but it's also a company that's looked to work on its profit margins, essentially. It's lower donor fees, but it's very much an company that's doing well in this country. Mr. Bressino and the other

folks you talk to, how much are they getting when they sell their plasma? It varies quite a bit how much people are receiving. Mr. Brasenio was receiving on average $70 each visit, but it really varies based on people's weight, the frequency, they donate, food and drug administration rules don't allow an individual to donate plasma more than twice a week. So a lot of people are doing the maximum, and the pay really does vary. is just as a way to bring this home, it's a form of a safety net, right? Oh, absolutely. I talk to researchers and academics who said that it's kind of a shadow safety net in a lot of ways. There's people who are, you know, very much looking to supplement their income in this economy. They're

driving for Uber, Lyft, but there's also this other area, which is plasma donation, and it's a way for them to really survive in this economy. Curtis Lee, the New York Times. Curtis, thanks a lot. It's quite a peace. Thanks so much for having me. Thursday is the one-year mark of President Trump's now struck down tariffs, the ones he just decided on, all by himself, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. So we're going to go back to some of the small business owners who have paid the price, quite literally, for the president's volatile trade policy. And we're going to start with Melissa Fields. She's an interior designer, also the founder of Shades of Gray Design Studio in San Antonio, Texas. Big picture would be that it obviously has increased pricing, right, for our clients. Of course, I had to have my contract changed when the whole tariff thing came about.

It used to be back in the day, we would be able to hold that pricing for 30 days. And now that's not the case anymore. And so we are now having to have this conversation with them saying, hey, this is the pricing that we're presenting to you now. However, comma, from the time that you approve of the proposal to when we actually invoice you for the items, there might be some changes to the pricing. And so they actually have to sign off on that. And if they're not okay with that, then obviously we don't move forward with that client. No, it still makes me feel bad, to be honest with you. And, you know, everybody's going to, you know, look at it differently. But for me, I feel bad because I don't like, you know, to have that sticker shock. So I was actually really surprised about the Supreme Court decision.

And the first thing I thought of was, you know, what about my clients that were, that were impacted by that? Like, for instance, you're like, man, if it wasn't necessary for them to pay, then, you know, that was just extra money they could have saved in their pockets, so to speak. I feel like I have adjusted where I needed to. And I've learned that. I didn't do it right away. And then I started, you know, you start to see your numbers and you're just like, oh, dang it. You know, like I completely forgot because this whole tariff thing was new at the time. And so you end up eating some of those costs, right?

And so I have since then kind of course corrected as I'm coming up with my fees and things like that. I am taking all of those tariffs and things into consideration. But then at the same time, I think we have to be balanced with it because, you know, you never know what the next decision is. going to be on these tariffs, you know, are they going to, I don't know that they're going to completely go away with this administration. And so I think we just kind of have to be flexible and just kind of ready for those different decisions and policies that come down. So I hope that it doesn't affect my bottom line as much because I have made sure that I was taking those things into account and making those adjustments as needed.

Melissa Fields, Shades of Gray Design Studio San Antonio, Texas. More on tariffs in this economy one year later tomorrow on the program. This final note on the way out today, which I'll offer is sort of an amuse-boosh, if you will, ahead of Friday's March jobs report. We got the jolts for February today, the job openings and labor turnover survey, and the news is, well, it's been better. The number of job openings is down. The quits rate is down.

That is the number of people quitting their jobs, just like it sounds. That's not great because when a labor market is really good, people can, quit pretty easily, thinking it'll be a cinch to get a new job. The number of hires was down as well. Jordan Manj, Zonio Maharaj, Janet Wyn, Oga Oxman, and Virginia K. Smith are the digital team around here. I'm Kai Rizda. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is 8 p.m. Hey, David Brancaccio here. I hope you're well and that your passport is up to date because I am hosting a trip to Italy this fall.

And you, you are invited. Stay at a world-class Tuscan Villa. and step into the world of the Medici, the formidable family whose influence and power helped give rise to the Renaissance and the art we still celebrate today, and not to mention the banking system. We're going to visit the world's oldest bank, swim in the thermal spa waters in Montecatini, and take in the art of the Uffizi. All of this, and then we'll try to put it all into context with great conversation over even better meals and wine tasting. Please join me and know this, buying into this trip will provide essential support for public media. Discover more about this fall's Tuscany Adventure at Marketplace.org slash travel to reserve your

spot today. That's marketplace.org slash travel.