Marketplace - How's that grocery bill looking?

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Grocery prices rose less than 2% in March, according to the latest consumer price index. The cost of some staples, including eggs, butter, and cheese, fell from spikes last spring. Certain produce prices moved in the opposite direction. In this episode, how the global economy affects your grocery bill. Plus: The war in Iran ripples through big banks’ earnings, fuel economy regulations soften the blow of high gas prices, and Kai visits Southern California’s Little Saigon ahead of a trip to Vietnam.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.

Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast experts set up on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.ca or the Wayfair app. Wayfair, every style, every home. Coming up on the program today, things that are happening in the economy while everybody is watching the war. And we will start the latest set of stories from our series, The Age of Work, from American Public Media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizzdahl.

It is Monday. Today, this one is the 13th of April. Good as always to have you along, everybody. The global news of the day, I'm going to guess you are up to speed on negotiations not happening. Blockade happening. Markets, having, it seems, grown accustomed to the whiplash and the misdirection, were mostly okay with it all. Even oil, without too much argument, the economic bellwether of,

this war, up only a couple of percent for the global benchmark. So in an attempt to separate the signal from the noise, we are going to spend the first part of the program today on the nuts and bolts, the ways the economy keeps on grinding while geopolitics does its thing, and then as promised, we will get to the first of our Vietnam reporting. The big Wall Street story today is of the big banks, which are going to be reporting earnings the next couple of days. Goldman Sachs started things off this morning. Profits were up in Q1, almost 20 percent, compared to the same time a year ago, thanks in part to the revenue it earned advising companies on mergers and acquisitions and other kinds of corporate deals of which one should say there have been many

this year. But as Marketplace's Justin Ho reports, it is also likely we're going to see some signs this week. The war is affecting bank earnings. There are a few ways that the war can actually boost profits at big banks. For one, they do a lot of stock trading on behalf of their clients. And over the past month, stock markets have been volatile. Increased volatility. is oftentimes very favorable for trading results. That's Gerard Cassidy, with RBC Capital Markets. He says banks earn fees when they execute trades for their clients. And because of increased volatility, clients of these companies trade more frequently.

The effect that the war is having on energy prices is also boosting revenue for energy companies. Nate Tobik, CEO of Complete Bank Data, says that can also help the banks that lend to the sector. Some of these companies are going to say, hey, we finally have a need to do some of these bigger capital projects, to expand, and that's going to be increased loan volume for really any banks that have that sort of energy exposure. But Tobik says there are plenty of companies that are being harmed by this war, either because they're directly exposed to the conflict or because they're just less confident. Stephen Bigger, a bank analyst with Argus Research, says banks could see revenue slow in the near future

because many companies might hold off on mergers and acquisitions or IPOs. It's just a pause and activity until you get some clarity on the global ramifications of these conflicts. Banks are also concerned about the effect that the war is having on the U.S. economy, says David Schiff, with FTI consulting. If prices continue to stay high and inflation stays at an elevated level, particularly around fuel and energy costs, that starts to have a ripple effect across the consumers, which then has an impact on small businesses. And Schiff says that means banks will start to worry about their borrowers. And as a result, on the one hand, you see credit underwriting standards tightened, on the other you see provisions start to increase for potential losses. All of that, Schiff says, will limit how much the economy can grow. Some of that is just businesses themselves, not wanting to grow, and then it gets magnified

as financial institutions pull back on credit lending. So it really raises that specter, the longer this goes on. If the war does drag on, Schiff says we'll likely see evidence that banks are pulling back in the next two or three quarters. I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace. Wall Street to start the week, traders not at all upset by the geopolitical turn of events. We will have the details. Yeah, when we do the numbers. Oil and energy costs, as we told you last week, drove inflation higher in March, 9-10% month-over-month, 3.3% year-over-year.

Although is not grim in the world of price levels, one category that bucked the trend and saw a little inflation slowdown, not to be clear, falling prices, but prices going up more slowly than expected. That category is an important one. Food at home. Grocery prices, in other words, grocery inflation came in at a relatively tame 1.9% annually. Marketplace's Kristen Schwab has more on that. In recent years, there's been a lot of turmoil

among specific food commodities. Matt Hammery, who leads the global grocery practice at Alex Partners, says there's been heat-damaged coffee crops, low cattle supply, and disease. If you think back to what was happening, a year ago. Really, remember then we had the wake of avian flu. Good news, egg farms fared better this winter, which has egg prices down nearly 45% year over year, according to the March Consumer Price Index. Other categories that saw some relief

include butter and cheese. Despite those drops, though, grocery prices are still up 1.9%. All of this conversation about inflation still involves prices going up just slower than they might otherwise be or had been. It means there are categories rising enough to more than make up for the lower price of eggs. Take tomatoes. They cost 22% more than they did a year ago. Ricky Volpe is an agricultural economist at Cal Poly. There's a little question that tomatoes is sort of a case study in the ongoing impact of the current administration's tariffs. There's a 17% tax on tomatoes imported from Mexico,

a tariff that was not struck down by the Supreme Court and remains in place. Plus, Fulpe calls the vegetable slash fruit a sort of inflationary perfect storm. Tomatoes are labor-intensive. They're very energy-intensive. They require transportation. They're heavy. They're spacious. And all three of those, labor, energy, and transportation are current sort of long-term structural pain points in the food supply chain. Transportation and energy is going to become increasingly key as diesel prices climb because of the the war. David Ortega is a professor of food economics at Michigan State. The canary and the coal mine here are really the perishable food products. They are the least processed, require the most travel, and are time sensitive.

Ortega says any food that lives on the perimeter of the grocery store will see price hikes first. That's going to trickle down, down the supply chain here in the coming months. As of March, the USDA forecasted that in 2026, the cost of food at home will increase more than 3%. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace. Even as drivers are staring down rising prices at the pump, $4.12 a gallon a day, so says AAA. The cars and trucks we are driving have, on the whole, gotten slightly more fuel efficient. The Energy Information Administration says gasoline consumption fell about 1% last year from 2024, and it was down 4% from the pre-pandemic high in 2000. And that is happening despite the fact that we're driving more. Vehicle miles traveled is the government's measure of our driving habits, up more than 1% last year.

And as Marketplace's Henry App reports, that's in keeping with a decades-long trend of slowly rising fuel efficiency. One thing that made the oil shocks of the 1970s especially bad was that cars back then weren't very fuel efficient. Daniel Spurling is a professor emeritus at UC Davis. When I was young, a car got 13 miles per gallon. Now they're getting 30 miles, and some of them are up 50, 60 miles per gallon. And that's largely thanks, Spurling says, to federal regulations that were created in response to those oil crises. The industry has been obligated to continually supply more efficient vehicles. But because we tend to drive our cars for a long time, the average vehicle on the road is nearly 13 years.

years old. Those more efficient vehicles take a while to change our overall gas consumption. Joshua Lynn is a professor at the University of Maryland. We still have a lot of vehicles on the road that have relatively low fuel economy. They were produced back a long time ago when those standards were weaker. The federal government started bolstering those standards about 15 years ago, so as newer models keep cycling into traffic, will keep seeing overall fuel economy rise, says Rebecca Ches at Purdue University. And that price at the pump? It will hurt slightly less because the average fuel economy, even on these older cars, is much higher than it was in previous years. The federal fuel economy rules have also pushed companies to make more electric and hybrid vehicles. Carl Brower at

iccarves.com says over the last 20 years, hybrids especially, have become a lot cheaper for car companies to produce. The cost of the batteries has been dropping. The cost of the motors has been dropping. The space and the weight that both of those things take up has been dropping. That's made hybrids way more common and popular. But last year, Congress and the Trump administration rolled back the federal fuel economy standards. And some car companies have started making more trucks that don't get great mileage. So fuel efficiency, Brower says, could eventually plateau or even get worse. I'm Henry App for Marketplace. We're near Brooke Carson.

I was just going to say the heart of Little Saigon. Southern California has the largest population of Vietnamese people outside Vietnam, and that community is concentrated in a part of Orange County called Little Saigon. I'm embarrassed to say that I've been in L.A. for 25 years. I've never been down here. Which is bad on me, I guess. Best Vietnamese food in the world here in Vietnam. I think that's our next stop today.

All right. Great. I finally came down here for our continuing series The Age of Work, which is about the aging of the U.S. labor force and those in other wealthy countries, and the younger increasingly dynamic workforces in some developing economies. And over the next couple of days, we're going to be bringing you stories from Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, about the growing role the labor force there is playing in shaping the global economy. But we're starting here in Little Saigon with three.

Three stories of generational change. Little Saigon's made up of four cities now. Oh, is that right? We're in Garden Grove, Westminster, Santa Ana, and Fountain Valley. Tam and Lynn Wynn are outside Advanced Beauty College. It offers courses in cosmetology and manicuring, hairstyling, lots more.

It is obviously a family business, you two are siblings. Yes. Not, you didn't start it, though. Nope. Mom and dad started this. We came from Vietnam after the war in 1975. Let's set the stage here.

You were like, you were a little kid, right? I was one year old. And you were sort of, your mom was pregnant, right? Yeah, my mom was pregnant. I was in her tummy. So the war ends in 1975. Mom and dad flee here, came with nothing and saw a need and created the beauty college because Vietnamese were coming over in tens of thousands being processed.

So dad being a South Vietnamese Navy guy created something so that Vietnamese could have an economic opportunity. Stories like this are what this community is built on, the stories of people who came here after the fall of Saigon in 1975. The United States and Vietnam, of course, have a complicated history. But diplomatic relations normalized in 1995. And after 2018, when President Trump's China tariffs sent companies looking elsewhere for manufacturing, the two economies have become even more closely connected. They're also connected, though, by people, like many of those, coming through this beauty school.

Come on in. Oh, wait. Is our class actually to have class? All right, I don't want to know class. So, no, we're not interrupting class. Yeah, they're finishing up their theory class right now. Come on in. There were rows of salon-style chairs.

There was a hair washing station, and students with their eyes focused right up front. This is our cosmetology class. Hi, sorry. That's Miss Jenny. I'm really sorry. And then we teach the students. We're approved to teach it bilingual

in both Vietnamese and in English, which is amazing because we're here in Little Saigon so they can learn different ways. Upstairs, we saw students putting that schooling into practice. Man, waxing the eyebrows? Yes. Oh, God. And we got a whiff of the manicuring class.

Oh, you can smell the nail polish, man. That's right. In the almost 40 years that this school has been operating, around 50,000 students have come through. There's some statistic like 50% of the nail technicians in this economy are Vietnamese, right? That is correct. So over 80% of California nail salon. and nail salon professionals are Vietnamese and more than 50% nationwide in America.

It's kind of this unknown economy that just was started 51 years ago by the Vietnamese. Can we talk for a second about the Munez diaspora here, right? The economic engine that this place is, as it relates now to what's happening in Vietnam, right, which is a rising global economic power. How much do you guys think about that, right? And the roots. Oh, we think about it every day. As Little Saigon and Vietnamese business owners were deeply connected.

In fact, our team now actually has hired a virtual assistant from Vietnam. Is that right? Yes. She cost a fraction of the cost of the labor. She's bilingual and English and Vietnamese college educated, an amazing team member now for Advanced Beauty College. Yeah, the company that we actually work with that we hire her through, they work with businesses all around the world that hire workforce from Vietnam.

So that's one story. about the economic relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam today. Businesses here, hiring workers there. But you want to talk about generational change here in Little Saigon? You've got to see the Asian Garden Mall. Where's the inn? It's got both an American flag and the flag of South Vietnam flying out front. An important symbol to a lot of the first-generation immigrants

who came here as refugees 50 years ago. When this mall opened in 1987, it was the first Vietnamese American shopping mall in the country. Clearly a bunch of old Vietnamese guys. That's a regular table sitting there reading the paper. There are still shops selling traditional Vietnamese food and clothing. Oh, Al-Dai's. I think it's how you say that. And in one corner, a much newer store called Little Saigon Official.

How are you? I'm Kai. Good to see you. Chris Tran owns it. He started this company in 2020, selling Little Saigon branded hats and T-shirts, other streetwear inspired merch as well? With just wearable goods that represent us from the past of history and now going forward. Why does this community need to be branded? We, I'll be honest with you, we had an identity problem with amongst ourselves.

Growing up, born in Vietnam, raised here. You were? Yes. So, you know, a lot of us used to say that we're the 1.5 generation born in Vietnam, but raised all-American. Yeah. Trying to acclimate to both. As a kid, I came here as two years old. So once you're at home, you're full Vietnamese.

Once you leave the doors, you have to be American. Show me some of the merch, and then I have some questions I want to answer. So some of the merch are like these, you know. A little sweatshirt and a hoodie. A little sikon. Sorry, a little sikon. Where my story begins. So this right here, actually, I saw it on a shirt maybe 20 years ago.

And people had to say, where does your story begin? I did not even know how to begin that. Does it begin in Vietnam? Does it begin in America? Or does it begin when I became a little bit more mature? I want to make people proud of where they came from. One of the really interesting things about Little Saigon and the Vietnamese community here are the economic ties that they have with folks back.

Keep going. So you pick it up from there. Well, the economic ties, here's the thing. I deal in pop culture. I don't deal in political culture. And what I'm seeing out of Vietnam is fashion, music, food, even technology is amazing. In the 50 years that I've witnessed things, that blossomed here.

Like, to me, we held the mantle with the first 25. They're taking the baton and running with it now. The young people now got that. You know, they got their cousins and they're, you know, they've watched now that with the internet. They've seen what America, Western countries have done

and what Vietnamese have done. And they're next. That baton passing? It's coming up after the break. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial's up. 301 today, that is six-tenths of 1%. Closed at 48,218.

Did the blue chips. And ASDAQ grew 280 points, about 1.2%. Finished at 23,183. S&P 500 improved 69 points, 1%. 68 and 86. Justin was talking about bank earnings, record profits for Goldman Sachs, but shares down 1 and 9 tenths percent on the day. Bank of America up 1 and a half percent.

Wells Fargo hopped up 1.5 percent. City Group also expand the. about one and one-half of one percent. McDonald's is plenty on selling what they call craft sodas and energy drinks. That's according to the Wall Street Journal. What? They're supposed to be cheaper, I guess, in the versions of the big coffee chains. McDonald's down four-tenths of one percent today.

Bonds up, yield on the 10-year Tino down. 4.29er percent. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. We're in Little Saigon in Orange County, California today, telling three stories of generational change in one neighborhood in this economy, home to the biggest Vietnamese population outside Vietnam.

Hello, how's it going? How are you? Good to see you. I'm a pleasure. Nice to meet you. Tommy. Tommy, when they're all of 25 years old? Tell me where we are. What's going on? Yes. So we're at Bunme-Sagong out here in Garden Grove, California, a low-sigone. And we've been here in Low Seagong for over 30 years. You, however, have not been here for 30 years, just looking at you. You're a young guy. This bakery is older than me. So this is my parents' first child.

Their parents first child, that's right. But you're running it now, right? Is that the deal? Yeah, so I'm part of the second generation that's hopefully helping my parents retire and taking over. I've been in the business for about three years, working alongside my cousin. This lunch spot has a deli counter to order sandwiches up front, a fridge with Vietnamese desserts off the one side, and a lot of cooks you could see working in the kitchen. For those who don't know, what are what is a bond meat? Yes.

So Bunmee is a product. I'm pronouncing it wrong. It's Bunme. Yes, Bunmeen. Yeah. So a Bunmee is a product of French colonization and Vietnamese resistance. We basically turned all of the ingredients that the French brought to Vietnam, and we made it better. It's a twist on a French baguette filled with patte, butter, Karen Dycon, any type of meat you really want to put on it. And it tastes really, really good. I'm actually going to buy one so I can eat it on the way home. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Can we go back in the kitchen, just look around?

Yes, absolutely. Please walk in. See this being? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was busy back there, half a dozen people slicing meat and vegetables and herbs and making bun meat to go. So this is our assembly line. These are some of our ladies, some of the strongest woman I've ever met. This is Anna. She comes here at 3am every single day to help us start the store.

Are you making the bread? Is that what you're doing? So she's actually preparing some of the seasoning for our meats. This is our baguette, right? Do you make your own? Yeah, we make it fresh every single day. Why are you running this business? I mean, you're a young guy. You went to like USC or something, right?

Yes, that's correct. But you decided to come home. Yes. How come? That's a great question. I didn't really know my parents growing up. They spent a lot of time away, as most parents do who run a very stressful business. Yeah, yeah.

Working at the business. And when I saw them, they were always stressed, tired, covered in flower. And they really wanted me to kind of become that model minority that I feel like a lot of Asian-Americans, parents want their kids to be, right? Go to school, focus. Did you feel that job? You felt that, right? Of course, of course. And I was on that path for a long time. But as I saw my parents' age, I knew that now was the time to help them to get to know them better, to learn the trade. And it was sort of a now and never moment.

First, though, you went back to Vietnam to work for a couple of years. Yes, I was there for a year. What was that like? It was. American kid of Vietnamese descent going back to Vietnam. Yes. Oh, it was everything. I mean, it was funny because during my interview with the embassy, they asked me that. They're like, why do you want to go back to Vietnam?

You're living in Los Saigon. You're Vietnamese. And I was like, you have a point. But from all my life, I've only known Vietnam through someone else's lens, right? From the lens of Hollywood media, right? Through my parents' story from their trauma. And I've never gone to see it through my own eyes. The Vietnam that is right now. I think that's the big struggle about our perceptions of Vietnam

is that for the past, you know, 50 years it's been characterized by larger forces instead of seeing the country for what it is. The Vietnam right now is not your parents' Vietnam. Absolutely. And so that's their memory that they gave you, and now you went to see it for yourself. Yes. Yes. Vietnam today is among the fastest growing economies in the world. The labor force there is right in that demographic sweet spot. There are about two working-age people for every one dependent. A recent study from Harvard Kennedy School projects Vietnam could lead the world in GDP growth per capita in the next decade.

Talk to me for a second about the connection between what happens a little, Saigon. Yes. And what happens in Ho Chi Minh City today, right? Because there are businesses here that do business over there, right? You've been back there. Yes. Do you feel that connection? Absolutely. I mean, Vietnam and the Vietnamese community is so intertwined in many ways, sometimes complicated. But in reality, it's a place of collaboration. Because it is a drive for us to come back to Vietnam, especially the younger generation. All right, as I said, I need one for lunch. Help me order. The best one you've ever had. That's the one I want. Okay. So let's go. Okay.

Tell you what, grilled pork bond me makes for a pretty good lunch on the way home. Coming up on the program tomorrow, we'll take you to the Vietnam of today. This final note on the way out today, just one of those context and facts really matter items that come in handy in times like these. Bloomberg has been tracking the number of ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz every single day. Today, four. Normal times? More than 100. Also, and not for nothing, the last fully loaded tankers that pass through the straight on February 28, that is before the war started, they are going to be reaching their destinations over the next week or so.

So even if the straight opens tomorrow, there is a crude oil delivery gap. They're in a lot of places right in the face. Saw this from a market research firm called Commodity Context, by the way. Miribawa, Caitlin Ash, John Gordon, Nooy, Carr, Steve Mullis, and Stephanie Seek are the marketplace editing staff. Kelly Silvera is the news director. I'm Kai Risdahl. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM. Hi, I'm Maggie Smith, poet and host of The Slowdown. Each weekday, I share a poem and a moment of reflection, helping you turn listening into a daily ritual. It's five minutes to slow down,

pay attention, and begin the day with intention. Find it in your favorite podcast, and make the slowdown your new daily poetry practice.