Marketplace - Nuclear power payment plan

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

Nuclear energy can lower one cost that has seen rapid inflation in recent years: electricity bills. But nuclear power plants aren’t cheap to build. In one state, legislators wade into a debate over whether taxpayers or utility companies should shoulder the burden. Also in this episode: Kevin Warsh faces war-driven inflation ahead of his first FOMC meeting as Fed chair, MAHA movement drives up cotton demand, and advertisers leverage the World Cup to reach Latino consumers.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 setting up to be a big news week. We've got a preliminary deal to end the war in Iran. A Fed meeting, some economic data dumps. Where should we begin? From American public media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kyrisdal. It's Monday, June 15th, and it's great to be here with you. I know the big news of the day is that we might be nearing the end of the war in the Middle East. The United States and Iran have signed a framework agreement. Details of the deal haven't been released. And listen, when it's all really, truly over, we'll pick apart the economic effects.

But for now, let's focus on what in this economy is certain. The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee meets this Wednesday, and it's Kevin Warsh's big debut as the new chair. He's gotten a lot of pressure from President Trump to cut interest rates and make borrowing cheaper. But markets don't expect the Fed to. to touch rates for now, because Warsh enters the Fed at a tricky time. Even if the war does officially come to a close soon, the effects are still churning in the background, including its toll on inflation, now above 4%. Marketplace's Henry Epp looks at how the Fed might navigate this moment. Here's why this current bout of inflation is tricky for the Fed. It's driven by a spike in energy

prices caused by the Iran War, and energy and food prices tend to be too volatile to inform the Fed's decisions, says Andrew Clinton, head of Clinton investment management. That's why historically they've looked through headline inflation, that is, that include food and energy, to the core inflationary numbers. Core inflation last month was a lot closer to the Fed's target of 2%. Fed officials might be tempted to think this spike in inflation is temporary, except that's what they did a couple years ago, and it didn't work out. Peter Conte Brown is a professor of financial regulation at the Wharton School.

The Fed's error in 2021 was precisely this, was to assume that the supply shocks were temporary, transitory in the word of the day, and they were caught flat-footed. They don't want to make that mistake again. So the bond market has started to indicate that it thinks the Fed will probably have to deal with inflation, says Derek Tang, an economist at the research firm MPA macro. They do expect more of a chance the Fed might have to raise its policy interest rate sooner around. better than later, and that's making some of these bond yields rise. But the guy in the White House keeps pushing for the Fed to go in the opposite direction. President Trump does have a history of saying he wants lower interest rates. And a recent history of threatening the Fed.

The Justice Department opened criminal investigations into former chair Jay Powell and Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who Trump also tried to fire. So what's the new chair Kevin Warsh to do? One option, says Peter Conte Brown, is to say less. The more opaque the Fed is relative to its future policy position, the harder it is to be pinned down by politicians who want to beat up on it. But there's a challenge in that for Warsh. He's just one of 12 members on the Open Market Committee, and they might not all want to stay quiet. I'm Henry App for Marketplace. Wall Street today, the promise of a deal and a drop in oil prices makes for a lot of optimism.

We'll have the details when we do the numbers. Electricity prices are one of the many things contributing to inflation. And even as energy prices have been rising, so has demand. Now some customers and lawmakers are advocating for a reinvestment in nuclear energy as a long-term carbon-free source of power. But that's set off a debate on who pays for the cost of building new nuclear plants. From KBIA in Columbia, Missouri, Jana Rose-Schleis reports. State Senator Mike Moon would like to be a lot. like to see more nuclear power plants in Missouri. Now, do I want nuclear? Absolutely. Is it expensive?

You bet you it is. However, his colleagues, Bill Irwin, Mike Steinmeyer, and Joe Nicola strongly disagree on who should pay the cost for building more power plants and when. If you pay up front, it's always cheaper. If you pay later, it's always more. While some people are afraid of high utility rates, I'm afraid of sitting around the dark. I don't agree with using, my constituents with rate payers as a bank for a free interest loan. This year, Missouri politicians have debated what's called construction work in progress, more commonly referred to by its acronym, Quip. Quip allows utility companies to charge customers for new power plants as they're being built.

Some lawmakers believe the policy can jumpstart energy investment and save residents' money on utility bills. But as power plants go, nuclear facilities take longer to build, cost. costs more and often run over budget. John Kaufman, an attorney for the Consumers Council of Missouri, says nuclear power plants are a dicey investment. It seems kind of the worst of all possible worlds. We're paying for power plants that are no longer serving us, and they're asking us to start paying for power plants that are coming in the future. It's just we get it coming and going, right? Rob Dixon is a lobbyist for utility provider Ameren. He says if customers help pay for nuclear

power plants as they are built, energy companies don't have to take. on as much debt. It's going to keep costs lower because you're not paying higher interests over time, and that means utility customers pay less. Now, while the country again faces increasing electricity demand, states such as Missouri, Kansas, and North Carolina have passed varying degrees of the power plant financing policy in recent years. Energy economist Michael Sycuda says it's difficult to suss out whether having a policy like quip has a measurable impact on the amount of power a state has, whether the policy spurred investment or not. But he says there is certainly anecdotal evidence.

Without quip, utilities have less incentive to invest, especially for very expensive projects, and therefore we don't get them built. Unless states and utility companies can agree on a way to pay for pricing nuclear power plants, increasing electricity demand will have to be met with other sources. In Columbia, Missouri, I'm Janer Roche-Lyce. for Marketplace. Every once in a while, Instagram and Facebook forced me to look back at some memory that happened a decade or so ago.

And wow was the internet a different place. We wore wedge sneakers. We loved grumpy cat. Remember planking? Maybe the best trends to come out of that time, though, were the ones tied to charitable giving. I'm talking about the Ice Bucket Challenge and other campaigns that made getting involved easy and fun.

But the vibes today are a little different. which is why this story caught my eye. The headline, How Generosity Became Cringe. Sarah Hershinder is a fellow at Vox's Future Perfect. Sarah, thanks for joining us. Of course. Thanks for having me. So take us back to the early 2010s when social media felt maybe a bit more innocent. What did charity movements look like online back then?

Yeah, I think we had this really kind of seminal moment where for the first time more Americans were like on social. media on platforms like Facebook for the very first time than off of it. And I think a lot of people felt like there was possibility in that. So we saw Facebook being a really important tool used in movements like Occupy Wall Street. And when it came to charity, we sort of saw the same thing. And one of the most prominent was the ice bucket challenge. So if folks remember back in 2014, there was this challenge where to raise money for ALS, people would pour, or, you know, buckets of ice water on their head and tag a few friends to do it. It really took off and millions of people ended up participating. But it's something that we saw just kind of broadly on the internet at the time,

because it was sort of an earnest place, people were really kind of bragging about their charity to one another. Yeah, the ice bucket challenge almost became a cool thing to be tagged in. I mean, it was regular people, it was celebrities. What were some other things you saw trend at that time? There were other very sort of short-lived, massive trends like the aspect of challenge. We also saw Movember, if people remember, those kind of silly little mustaches that people would draw back in, like, 2012, 2013. That was also a charity trend to raise awareness for men's health every November. And then we also saw some more enduring movements pop up around that time. One was Giving Tuesday, which began as a hashtag and sort of like as a counterweight to black friends.

And that was a movement to get people to donate. This all happened in like a four-year time period where society just seemed to be kind of optimistic online in a way that feels a little bit distant now. Yeah. Things have changed so much. I mean, hashtags aren't even in the conversation anymore. Yeah. Okay. So let's fast forward because the headline of your story is how generosity became cringe.

When do you think it became cringe? And what was the turning point that you saw? Yeah, that's a good question. I think something really important happened in 2014. And that was the killing of Michael Brown and sort of the Black Lives Matter movement. There were people who in their feed or on their Twitter timelines were seeing like a lot of Black Life Matter movement stuff. And there were other people who were just seeing the Ice Bucket Challenge. We started to see social media platforms like Facebook.

really prioritize algorithms over those sort of person-to-person connections. Fast forward to the pandemic. And by then, people are feeling a lot more cynical. One of the sort of, I think, good examples of that is, if you remember, Gal Gadot made that Imagine video as sort of like a way to soothe society. And people hated it. And something I think about, and I think a big reason that they are. hated it was because it felt cringe. It felt toned out. And I think that applies to a lot of the sort of

performative earnestness that we used to see earlier in the internet. How has the cringe part of this impacted how much organizations have been able to raise? Yeah, I mean, we're seeing a real impact. Most people or most young people do prefer to give online these days. And the fact that they're just not seeing that kind of friends tagging friends and bragging about giving to charity is having a real impact on how Americans give. And over the past decade or so, we've seen fewer and fewer everyday Americans giving to charity. What I've heard from charity leaders is that it's just harder to get your cause in front of people these days. I spoke to the leader of charity water, for example. It's like an international aid organization focusing on getting clean water around the

world. It was like a huge celebrity darling in the early 2010s. Justin Bieber was doing these fundraisers for his birthday on Facebook. And he straight up told me, like, we do not raise money like we used to. Our sort of influencer culture just doesn't prioritize charity in the same way that the internet used to. Is there a world, do you think, where we want virality back when it comes to charity? And is that even possible? I think there's a world where we want earners. back. When I talk to people in the charity world about what they want to see, more often than not, they tell me that they look offline for it. So they're thinking about ways they can engage people

directly in their communities. That's where people still seem to feel earnestness and that sort of responsibility to one another that really undergirds philanthropy and generosity. That might not be such a bad thing, actually. Sarah Hershinder is a fellow covering philanthropy at Fox. Sarah, thanks for sharing your reporting. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. It's only a handful of days into the World Cup, and the event is already breaking records.

During their first match, the U.S. men's national team had more viewers tune in than ever before. And of the nearly 25 million people who watched, some 9 million were watching in Spanish. As Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval reports, The sporting event is massively important for advertisers that want to reach Latino consumers, whose purchasing power grows increasingly relevant. Despite being a proud Colombia football fan, Julian Bakero says his immigrant dad

still cheered on the U.S. men's team against Paraguay during their first game. He felt embraced by the U.S. in such a way that there's no other choice but to be supportive of the team. Bakero with Big Oak Tree Media says, of course, they watch the game in Español. The Spanish broadcasting when you listen to it, it's contagious. It's contagious the energy that you feel when you hear them. The World Cup is the place for brands to connect with Hispanics, says Isabella Sanchez with the ad firm Zubi. Marketers can really tap into what makes Hispanics tick, which is their language, their sports, their home team. And it's an important market. Latino GDP has grown to $4.4 trillion, according to the most recent data from the Latino donor

collaborative. Anna Valdez is CEO. They grow as consumers. They grow in capacity. They grow in number. They grow in workforce. To engage that market, Rodrigo Vallejo with Road 2 media says authenticity is key. I think that it's got to be more insightful from people that understand more the sport, understand more the culture, to understand how the fashion that the Hispanic audience has for the sport and for the World Cup. Though Franco Caballero with marketing firm Dieste says there's also a broader community, advertisers can tap into beyond that core Spanish-speaking World Cup audience. That's when you start to bring in all these other cohorts. Some of them who are so obvious and often ignore,

which could be spouses, cohabitants, and immediately adjacent neighbors and community members. He says it's good business to think inclusively. Anyone can appreciate a good... I'm Elizabeth Troval, her marketplace. Coming up... I hate social media, but it's a necessary evil. You can't run a business without being online. But first, let's do the numbers.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 468 points, 9 tenths percent, to finish at 51,671. The NASDAQ added 700. 195 points, 3 and 1 tenth percent, to close at 26,683. And the SMP 500 gained 122 points, 1 in 2 thirds percent, to end at 7554. Oil futures were down. Brent crude flowed down 4 and 110 percent, and West Texas intermediate lost 4 percent. That was bad news for oil stocks, but good news for travel companies. Airbnb rang up 5 percent. American Airlines Group ascended 3 and 2 tenths percent. Bonds rose the yield on the 10-year T-note fell to 4.47 percent. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm

Kristen Schwab. The cultural campaign against plastic has focused on different products over the years. First, single-use water bottles and shopping bags, then kitchen items like Tupperware. Now the conversation is all about what's in your closet. Social media is filled with influencers rallying against synthetic fabrics like polyester and pushing natural material. like cotton. Sounds like a no-brainer, but it turns out that making the best decision about what you wear is more complicated than it seems. Mia Sato is a reporter at The Verge where she wrote about Americans' renewed obsession with cotton. Mia, welcome back to the program. Yeah, always happy to join. So I have to admit that I am one of those people that has been paying more attention to fabric content

these days. But I didn't realize there's actually a government push behind some of this. Tell me about the Great American Cotton Plan. Yes, the Great American Cotton Plan was announced by the Department of Agriculture and HHS earlier this month, so it's still relatively new. But it is kind of building on existing marketing, especially, that has already existed. So one element of the plan is subsidies for American cotton farmers. But another part that maybe will be more public-facing is the fact that, Federal government will promote the National Cotton Council's Plant, Not Plastic Marketing Campaign. And it basically, you know, tries to encourage consumers to buy products made with American cotton over, let's say, polyester.

And you talk about in your story about how some of this comes from cotton farmers actually having a tough time here in the U.S. Tell me more about that. Yes. So, you know, cotton farmers are under pressures, especially price pressures. And some of it, as I wrote in the piece, comes actually from, at least in part, from federal policy. So the tariff war, the trade war that the Donald Trump administration has been waging, has raised prices for cotton farmers, equipment costs more, fertilizer costs more. So it's partially to sort of prop up this industry that has been hit hard. And also the other side that we can get into more is that.

that the Make America Healthy, again, the Maha movement, is kind of also taking on cotton as part of its one prong of its strategy or ideology. Yeah, what about the health side of this? Is it better for your body? That's something that has come up a lot in marketing language, especially, and sort of influencer types. And the science is complicated. We know that there are microplastics in the human body. What effect that has on the human body is less defined. And it's also, there's a lot of disagreement among scientists about how to measure this. So the science, I think, is still evolving, but the branding has really taken on this sort of anti-microplastic, low, quote-unquote,

low toxicity marketing language. I mean, even Cotton itself isn't always so innocent, right? It's treated as a product in the field, maybe treated after a garment is finished? Yes, absolutely. And this is sort of the response to the Great American Cotton Plan that I was most interested by was actually some Maha influencers said that the plan was like greenwashing, basically. First of all, it's a very water-intensive crop. If it's not organic, it's being fertilized with chemical fertilizers and pesticides and things like that.

And cotton can be treated with chemicals that make it more ring. wrinkle resistant or stain resistant, for example. And so then there's a question of like, okay, are these chemicals good for me? So it just ends up becoming this sort of like circular, sort of a maze of consumers trying to find the quote unquote best or healthiest option. And I think people will quickly find that it's really not so simple. Well, how do you make choices then when you walk into a store? Did your reporting change how you shop or how you look at your closet? It's something that I've thought about for many years. I love.

shopping. This is like a very fun hobby for me. But yeah, it's really not easy. I think my tactic has really been by as little as humanly possible and when I can and when I have the money to do so support, you know, small organizations or companies that are transparent about where their products and where their materials come from. Mia Sato is a reporter at The Verge. Mia, thanks for coming on the show. Anytime. Thank you so much. There are some big economic bullet points to watch this week. We already talked about the Fed meeting happening Wednesday. Also out that day, retail sales for May.

We'll be watching those numbers to get the 50,000-foot view of how consumers are doing. But while we wait, let's get the five-foot view. Philip Rawlins runs the record and comic shop offbeat in Jackson, Mississippi. He gave us this update. Business is surprisingly good. this has probably been one of the better years that we've been having so far. Yes, I'm surprised. I drive a Ford Escape and I pay, it takes 50 bucks to fill it up, which, you know, I'm in Jackson, Mississippi.

So that's a lot when I was paying like 30 bucks. So I'm like, dang, that that's going to hurt. But I have had customers, like, you know, scale back on, like, we have pool lists. So they'll get like these comics a week. So I've had people scale back due to. you know, budgeting for other things. I hate, I hate social media, but it's a necessary evil. It's the best thing for advertising. I always ask like somebody I don't recognize or I'm very absent mind and I'd be like, oh, how did you hear about the store? And they were like, oh, I saw it on

TikTok. And I'm like, well, I need to be on TikTok more. And the most, the things they get the most hits is when my big face is on there. So I had to put my big face out there and talk and do 20 takes until I like one and then edit it and put it out there. You're not going to catch me doing like a dance or anything. But, you know, highlighting the things that we got here showing also that Jackson isn't just, you know, this perception of what the world thinks it is. It's like, no, we have cool stuff here. Philip Rawlins doing the socials for his store offbeat in Jackson, Mississippi. This final note on the way out today saw this in Reuters.

Reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not going to be like flipping a light switch. Maritime security experts say it could take weeks to make sure the waterway is safe from mines. Meanwhile, stateside, U.S. oil reserves have hit a 43-year-of-low. Amir Babawi, Caitlin Esch, John Gordon, Noia Carr, Steve Mullis, and Stephanie Seek are the Marketplace editing staff. Kelly Silvera is the news director, and I'm Kristen Schwab. We'll see you back here tomorrow. This is APM. Hey kids, have you ever heard terms like capitalism, socialism, or communism? The truth is, people have been debating the merits of these isms for a really long time.

And in our latest episode of Million Bazillion, Ryan and I finally tacked, one of the biggest economic questions of the last few centuries. What's better? Capitalism or socialism. What? No, we're just going to talk about the differences between these systems and understand how they came about in the context of their eras in a way that makes it fun and educational for kids. And then we settle this once and for all. Which isom works the best for society?

Capitalism, Communism, or Socialism. No, we're not doing that. This is just a normal episode of Million Bazillion. Listen to Million Bazillion on your favorite podcast app. Then tell us which ism you think is best. Brian, No.