Marketplace - Bird flu spreads its wings

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

As bird flu proliferates across U.S. farms, infecting chickens, cows and even humans, some public health experts worry that that funding to deal with it has been inadequate. Above all, they say we need stronger incentives for farmers and farmworkers to test for and report cases of the virus. Plus, the manufacturing sector’s outlook remains mixed, two-thirds of Americans say they have been victims of a financial scam and what would happen if we removed government spending from GDP calculations?

Are we in a trade war yet? From American public media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdall. It is Monday today. This one is the 3rd of March. Good as always to have you along everybody We are gonna get right to it tariffs President Trump today at the White House taking questions

Is there any room left for Canada and Mexico to make a deal before midnight? And should we expect those Chinese tariffs the extra 10% to take no room left for? Mexico or for Canada know the tariffs, you know, they're all set. They go into effect tomorrow. Twenty-five percent on everything from Canada and everything from Mexico. Twenty percent total now on everything from China until the president changes his mind. TBD on that one. But if you had been watching his remarks on cable news, you'd have seen the stock market

fall in real time as he was speaking. So, first of all, there was that. Second of all, the economic policy confusion that has marked the first six or so weeks of the Trump administration is starting to play out in the actual economy. Case in point, two indicators of the U.S. manufacturing sector that were out today, S&P Globals was up, the one from the Institute for Supply Management was down. Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval gets us going. There's a word that Erin McLaughlin with the Conference Board knows we're sick of hearing,

but when it comes to the manufacturing sector, uncertainty is slowing things down a little bit. The Institute for Supply Management found new orders decreased in several industries in February. McLaughlin says price uncertainty has made it harder for manufacturers to plan for and source materials. A lot of end users may not want to stock up on inventories and backlog because they don't know if the prices are going to go down or up or if they have to source from other places. And prices are up for manufacturers even though Trump's tariffs haven't taken effect. Theresa Fort is with Dartmouth.

The uncertainty is equivalent to a tariff. He doesn't even have to put a tariff on to be raising firms costs. She says the expectation of a tariff can raise costs because firms become unwilling to say, take a chance on a new production line. If firms basically think that there's a good chance that that tariff is going to come along, they're not going to import the good. They're not going to invest in importing that good. And so then our supply is still limited. And so when supply is limited, then prices are higher. Regional federal reserve banks also collect manufacturing data.

Dallas Fed economist Emily Kerr says those have been a mixed bag in terms of Texas. I think a lot of that optimism is there. I think the spike that we're seeing in February in particular is an uncertainty. Since the election, firms have been optimistic about a business-friendly climate. Now it's less clear. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace. Wall Street to start the week as I alluded to, not so great. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. You might have seen over the weekend that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was asked

whether the cuts that Elon Musk's operatives are making to the federal government could lead to an economic downturn. Lutnick had a simple sounding but sideways answer. Why not just cut government spending, he said, from how we calculate gross domestic product? Why not indeed? Marketplace's Kristen Schwab takes it from there. I feel like every economist I called this morning had some version of the same answer when I asked, what if we just deleted government spending from US GDP?

They would be more likely like a publicity stunt. It's completely goofy to take it out. I laugh because it would be something insane to do. That's Guido Lorenzoni at the University of Chicago, Wendy Edelberg at the Hamilton Project, and Gianluca Clemente at NYU. Government spending is a key component of GDP for countries across the globe, says Lorenzoni. These are like international agreed accounting standards. Set by the International Monetary Fund.

Something that goes back eight years or more. Eighty plus years of standards that help us measure international economies against each other and help us measure our economy against itself over time. And government spending is a part of that because it is a part of the economy. About six and a half percent of GDP in the U.S. Here's Wendy Edelberg. So it's everything from buying pencils to paying federal salaries to building tanks. She says untangling those federal transactions from GDP doesn't make sense because they are

inherently tangled up with private businesses and consumers. And though measuring the dollar value of a product like a tank is easier than measuring the value of, say, a federal worker analyzing the need for a tank, those kinds of services are relevant. For sure, you want to think about what federal spending is doing to demand. And whether the economy can meet that demand and how prices react. And besides the element here of accurately measuring the economy, there's the element of trust. Withholding pieces of tried and true data, says Gianluca Clementi, is a tactic from governments like China or Argentina.

Countries from the developing world, where routinely they do these type of things. Where they fudge the numbers to make the economy appear better than it is. I'm Kristin Schwab for Marketplace. Since virtually the first day of the second Trump administration, Elon Musk and his operatives have been dismantling federal agencies and claiming as savings the billions of dollars those agencies spend on aid and assistance and contracts and research the whole smash. One of the, if not the, agencies hardest hit has been the US Agency for International Development. Among the programs funded by USAID and soon to be shut down are 19 university labs across

the country focused on soybean research. Peter Goldsmith is the director and principal investigator of the Soybean Innovation Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Mr. Goldsmith, welcome to the program. Good to have you on. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Let us know what the Soybean Innovation Lab does.

Yeah, the Soybean Innovation Lab was established in 2013 with the mission to establish the foundations for the soybean market in sub-Saharan Africa. Big picture here, sir. Why do soybeans matter? Soybeans matter for a number of reasons, principally because they've shown to be a superior economic engine for an economy, meaning when a country adopts soybean as the base source of protein and oil, a lot of good things happen. For economists, we call it, it has high industrial multiplier. So a lot of people benefit. But it's also good for the US agricultural economy and the agribusinesses, the farmers, because we have

what's called a comparative advantage. We're really good at producing soybean. And when other regions of the world adopt soybean, they become markets for our soybean. So it's very good for trade. So with a nod to David Ricardo here then, what happens on, as I understand it, the 15th of April, when your soybean innovation lab shuts down because USAID funding, once you get most of your funding is being closed.

Yeah. So our work is dead stop and we'll mothball all of our Yeah, so our work is dead stop and we'll mothball all of our technologies. From the larger picture, SIL was truly impactful at executing its mission. SIL, the Soybean Innovation Lab. Sorry about that, the Soybean Innovation Lab. So currently the dominant food oil in Sub-Saharan Africa is palm oil. And so was affecting significant change, having the processors, the industry switch over, which would have been very good for US growers

creating a new market in a region that is the largest and fastest growing region in the world that is the largest and fastest growing region in the world that doesn't know soy. So this was, it's a huge opportunity loss for US growers. On the theory that nature abhors a vacuum, now that America is departing the field in so many fields, but specifically now soybeans, leaves an opportunity for others, right?

The Chinese Chinese the Europeans Absolutely, absolutely and those of us. I mean we're we're on the ground in 31 countries and both the Chinese are quite active other countries as well and There isn't a plan B Europeans for example, they have a preference for non-GM products. The US industrial standard is based on GM technologies. And as you said, nature abhors a vacuum. All countries outside of South Africa currently are non-GM.

That means US beans are not welcome. And that to me would be a problem. And that's what is the opportunity lost. Fair to call this your life's work, Mr. Goldsmith? Yes. Those who know me, I have had several careers. But since 2012, when I wrote the original proposal, I've really focused on soy to address poverty and malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. So it was my life's work at the time. So how are you feeling now?

It's rough. I mean, I think not only did we know we were having impact, but we were doing a good thing. There were really no losers. The private sector was taking over in a number of places and US growers were potential winners in the future. US industry was already, we were closely partnered with them, they were already intrigued. It was just win, win, win all the way around. And we just got caught up in an unfortunate storm that, yeah, we're dead in the water.

Well, good luck to you, sir. Peter Goldsmith, he's the director of the Soybean Innovation Lab at the University of Illinois. Mr. Goldsmith, thanks for your time, sir, I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for your interest. Take care, bye bye. Coming up. You can't be scared of the technology. You got to find out what it's going to do.

I mean, you can be scared of AI, but you do have to find out what it's going to do. First, though, Let us do the numbers Yeah, the wah-wahs again down industrial is down 649 today one and a half percent forty three thousand one ninety one That's actually a bounce off the low of the session the Nasdaq shed 497 points about two point six percent eighteen thousand three fifty the S&P 500 down 104 1 and 3 quarters percent 58 and 49 there some crypto currencies jumped today after President Trump announced certain assets he wants to include in a strategic crypto reserve Bitcoin up 2.4 percent still TBD though how Congress plans to fund said reserve bonds rose yield on

the 10-year T-note down 4.16%. 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 today at Marketplace.org slash subscribe. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdal. As distressing as this is to point out, chances are you have experienced a financial fraud or scam at some point. According to a bank raid survey that came out today, about two-thirds of Americans have, about a third

of us in just the past year. And as Marketplace's own most recent fraud victim, Kaylee Wells reports, could happen to anyone. Let me start by saying I'm really careful. And yet, on Tuesday, someone managed to steal from my checking account. So I felt a little better when Sarah Foster, the equally careful bank rate analyst, said she was a fraud victim recently too. Someone somehow had accessed my personal information and was opening cell phone accounts in my name. My credit score had dipped by about 100 points.

Perhaps you heard my gasp there. Nearly three quarters of respondents who said they're already doing things to protect themselves against fraud experienced it anyway. And I think that it is becoming a lot harder to protect our financial information and scammers are getting a lot more advanced. Baby boomers are scammed or defrauded more than any other generation, according to the survey.

But con artists and thieves have found effective ways of targeting Gen Z, too. There are a lot of fraudsters that reach out to my dog Instagram and are like, hey, we want to give you this product for free, but we just need you to pay shipping. Staff researcher and dog owner Selena Larsen works at the cybersecurity company Proofpoint. You see this and you just think it's kind of normalized because, oh, well, you know, influencers get this all the time. Larsen says the proactive steps we all already know, avoiding suspicious links or requests, two-factor authentication, those are important, but they aren't enough to stay safe.

Scott Talbot at the trade group Electronic Transactions Association checks his accounts every day and still had someone try to file a fake tax return in his name. Unfortunately, you also have to be reactive and that when you see fraud, take steps quickly to shut it down as you did. In my case, being proactive didn't stop the fraud. Being reactive did. In my case, being proactive didn't stop the fraud. Being reactive did. I froze the account right after the first transaction came through. So I lost a total of $5. I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. There is, I kid you not, a monthly report put out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture

titled Chickens and Eggs. And from it, the February issue, we learned that in January of this year, 8.86 billion eggs were laid in this economy. A lot, yes, but 4% fewer than last year. And part of the reason a dozen grade A large now cost you, as a nationwide average, $4.95. It's also wise, you might have seen, the Agriculture Department's going to spend another billion dollars on top of the two it's spent the past couple of years trying to contain the bird flu outbreak.

Marketplace is Samantha Fields Fields has more on that. Ali Khan has been worried about bird flu ever since it first appeared in the mid-1990s when he was a disease detective at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It had all the hallmarks of potentially becoming the next pandemic. It spread quickly, mostly through wild birds and poultry, and a limited number of people also got sick and died. Despite that, it's been almost 30-odd years. It has not yet become the next pandemic.

But Khan, who's currently Dean of the University of Nebraska's College of Public Health, is worrying more about that prospect again now. My concern increases when there's more virus in the community, in people, in animals. And these days, there is a lot of virus all over the world again, this time in birds, pigs, cows, cats, all sorts of wild animals and in people. The U.S. government's response to the outbreak so far, depending on who you ask, in public health has been mixed, disappointing, reactive, inadequate.

Jennifer Nezzo, Director, Brown University School of Public Health It just feels very sluggish, very underpowered, very slow, and I think in some cases in denial. Jennifer Nezzo is director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University's School of Public Health. She says that $2-plus billion the federal government has put into bird flu monitoring and preparedness so far has gone to important efforts. There's been money allocated to vaccine companies. There's also been money allocated for the provision of testing on farms and money to reimburse farmers whose animals experienced lost milk production as a result of being

infected. And there's been money for developing better tests and antivirals and helping hospitals and communities prepare for the possibility of a bird flu pandemic. But Nezzo says more needs to be done, especially to ramp up surveillance on farms. Making money available to farmers is really important, not just to protect us against the economic damages that this virus can pose, but also to incentivize farmers to test their animals so that, you know, if their animals test positive, that they can be reimbursed for that. More also needs to be done to encourage dairy workers to come forward if they're sick.

Right now, Elizabeth Strader with the United Farm Workers Union says that's not happening. There are so many workers that are sick and are not being tested or treated because they fear retaliation from their employer. Or because they're afraid of being forced to take unpaid time off from work if they test positive. These are workers who are some of the poorer workers in the United States. These are people that are excluded from a lot of the social safety net. And so they simply can't afford to be directed to go home by the public health agencies and go unpaid.

On top of that, J. Stephen Morrison at the Center for Strategic and International Studies says many dairy workers are undocumented. And imagine how willing and prepared are those workers to come forward and get themselves tested and enter a system of observation and tracking and surveillance if they feel like that itself may enhance their risk of sudden deportation. Incentivizing testing of dairy cows, their milk, and dairy workers

is going to be critical to preventing a pandemic. That's one of the main places more money needs to go, Morrison says. So far the the Trump administration's strategy seems focused on addressing outbreaks in chickens. They're worried about the strain on the industry, on the poultry industry, and they're worried about the price of eggs. It doesn't speak to the evolution of the virus and the presence in the dairy industry. However, it tells us that they recognize the complexity and the long-term nature of this problem. That bird flu is not going away. Jennifer Nuzzo at Brown's Pandemic Center says there is no scenario in which the administration won't have to put more money and time into dealing with the virus.

And the reason why I say that is that this is an important economic threat. This is an important occupational threat. And an important public health threat. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. Christy's, the auction house, has been running its first sale of art generated with the help of artificial intelligence. You've got about two more days if you want to get in on the action. It is attracting big dollar bids this sale is, but also controversy.

Thousands of artists have signed an open letter calling for it to be shut down, but the creative professions seem to be split on AI. Some artists are fighting back, other art and design professionals are embracing it, as Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino reports. Last year, designer Paula Scherr was leading a project with some unique constraints. The federal government hired her firm Pentagram to help create the website Performance.gov. It translates long, wonky government reports into bite-size, user-friendly summaries for the public. The goal was to make it really completely

self-operating, that the report would automatically turn out in the appropriate typeface and the appropriate layout and format that we designed. It would even generate a unique graphic logo for every topic, from veterans' health to roadway safety and space technology. To make a library of 1,500 pictograms on a limited government budget, Pentagram started with a small sample of their original illustrations, made with paint and cut paper. Then, using an AI tool called Mid Journey, they applied the design language to make the rest of the logos. They used text prompts to tweak the style and color palettes. It's a series of accidents and corrections, just like all art is.

But much faster than doing it by hand or with traditional illustration software. Saving time. Oh my gosh. I mean, if I had the ability to do what I do now, I would have saved myself maybe years off my life. Elise Swoaps is a surrealist digital artist who also works as an Adobe evangelist, sharing how she incorporates Adobe's suite of AI tools in her workflow. Features like Generative Fill, which allows users to remove parts of an image and fill in the background with AI. I would feel limited in some aspect if I didn't give myself the opportunity to learn it and to acknowledge it and to add it to my bank of different skills that I have. Adobe's AI is unique in that it's trained only on licensed images.

Most other image generators don't disclose what's in their training data, which raises ethical and legal questions, says branding designer Eric Vasquez. A lot of the companies that I work with, they're very skeptical about AI and they don't want AI to be in the final output of anything that they are going to have as like a client facing image or campaign. To avoid potential copyright infringement, he only uses AI for brainstorming and early mockups. But AI could offer new business models for artists like Lisa Vlemming, who works with smaller clients. She designs posters, logos and event invitations in a retro groovy style.

My work is extremely time consuming and my pricing reflects that. I get a lot of people that want to work with me, but they can't afford my services. She's trying out a new AI feature launched by the freelance marketplace Fiverr, which allows creators to train personalized AI models on their own body of work. Prospective clients then use those to generate images. And they can take that and come to me and say, here's what I created. Can you keep that, change this, or just use it as an inspiration?

Artists retain control of the models. They set their own prices and conditions for what's generated. Lemming says she hopes it will allow her to take on more clients at lower price points. This could feed into concerns the technology will devalue artists' skills. But after five decades in design, Paula Scher at Pentagram says there's no use in hiding from AI. I've gotten through the notion that you can't be scared of the technology.

You've got to find out what it's going to do. She's already seen the job change a lot since the days of literally cutting and pasting images by hand. I'm Megan McCarty-Corino for Marketplace. This final note on the way out today, a quick follow up to Kristin's story about gross domestic product. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has a widely and well-regarded model that tracks expected gross domestic product. And for the first quarter of 2025, that is the quarter that we are in, it ends at the end of the month,

the Atlanta Fed's model shows the economy shrinking, that is getting smaller by 2.8% on an annualized basis. Our daily production team includes Andy Korbing, Nicholas Guion, Maria Hollenhorst, Yuru Ekmanobi, Sarah Leeson, Sean McHenry and Sophia Terenzio. I'm Kai Rizdal, we will see you tomorrow everybody. This is 8pm.