Marketplace - Should there be an oil export ban?

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

As high gas costs pile up for drivers, Big Oil is getting jumpy. That’s because one way to bring prices down, at least temporarily, is an oil export ban. The Trump administration hasn’t signaled support for such a ban, but oil firms are being proactive, by lobbying the White House to find alternatives. Also in this episode: CEOs are sour on this economy, a major university invests big in artificial intelligence, and we analyze the difference between Fed Chair Warsh and former Fed Chair Powell’s public statements.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.Read the stories in today’s episode:Big oil is not up for another export banCan you spot the difference between Warsh and Powell's FOMC statements?Why you should care about CEOs' confidence in the economyThe FIRE movement: How soon can I quit?USC pushes to expand AI research with $200 million gift

Oil today, the Federal Reserve, and how nice would it be to not have to work? From American public media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizdahl, Thursday to Day 6 August. Good as it always is. Have you along, everybody. At the risk of adding to your war-induced economic news whiplash, it seems reports that the Strait of Hormuz is going to open any day. and that a lasting ceasefire is at hand, we're a bit premature. Not a new development, I know, but market reactions were predictable, stocks down, oil up,

which gets me to this. Oil is the global commodity. Traded globally, bought, sold globally. So it is of note that Politico is reporting that the American oil industry has approached the White House trying to prevent a rumored oil export ban. Marketplace is Elizabeth Trowball gets us going. The U.S. has already lived its oil export ban era. It started during the last global energy shock.

Dan Pickering is with Pickering Energy Partners. Coming out of the Arab Oil embargo, I think the view was all the U.S. resources need to stay in the U.S. It was a very different time for U.S. oil. Production was down and imports were up, says Rice University's Ken Medlock. The fact that an export ban was put in place, it really didn't have much of an impact at all. Fast forward to the 2010s, fracking unleashed enormous and rapid production growth in the U.S. The export ban was lifted in 2015. It actually opened a much larger market up to domestic producers, avoid who you're going to sell to, who you're going to buy from, all of that

increases, and that improves the commercial case for continued expansion of the industry. That helped America get to the oil dominance it enjoys today as we face another global oil crisis and higher gas prices. Jason Bordoff is with Columbia University. There's political pressure for politicians to do whatever they can to help consumers or even look like they're trying to help consumers, whether the tools are effective or not. He says a new export ban, especially one that also bans fuel exports, would cause more harm than good. You would worsen the economics of domestic refineries. You'd worsen the economics of domestic oil production. At first, consumers would benefit, says Ryan Kellogg with the University of Chicago. Okay, prices are great. Consumers celebrate and start driving around. But that's just not going to last very long.

There would eventually be even less oil and fuel. So prices would come right back up. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace. Wall Street today, like I said, stocks down, oil, up, details, numbers when we get there. You know those games you see in Kids Magazine sometimes where you have to spot the difference between two pictures showing basically the same scene? We are going to do a version of that, but much more fun with the statements the Federal Reserve sends out after its meetings announcing what it's done on interest rates. Our fodder for this exercise in compare and contrast are the two meetings that Kevin Warsh has now shared. as we all try to get a handle on the changes that are happening at the central bank. Martha Olney is a professor of economics, Ameri, at the University of California, Berkeley.

Also a close reader of those Fed statements. Welcome to the program. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. So the first thing I want you to do is we will go through the last statement of Chair Powell's tenure, which I have here in front of me. It's a page and a half-ish. Yep.

Basically, what's the gist of the typical Powell statement? So the typical PAL statement, this April 29th statement, you can compare it with the statements from about the 15 previous meetings, and you will find very little difference. So it starts out recent indicators as opposed to available indicators, suggest that economic activity has been expanding at a solid pace as opposed to a moderate pace. And so it was very much, there were always one, two, three, four, five paragraphs. what was going to be in each paragraph was always the same. Each paragraph had three sentences. And so it was very much like those books that we used to have when we were kids that were that choose your own adventure books.

Right. And we, those who follow the Fed, would spend a lot of time comparing those words, right? And checking out the differences. Yeah. Okay. Chairman Warsh comes in. He's now had two meetings. We now have two statements from the Warsh Fed, June 17 and July 29.

The first thing I will say, just looking at them here on the desk in front of me, they are short, man. It's like a half a page. Yep. We've gone from five paragraphs of three sentences each to four paragraphs of two sentences each, and each sentence is short and declarative. Yeah, we'll get to the declarative thing in a minute because I find that really interesting. But the first thing after noticing how short it is, is you notice that the format is different, right? Powell starts with talking about the economy.

Warsh does not do that. That's right. That's right. The order of the paragraphs is completely reversed. So Powell ended with what the vote was, and the war statements start with what the vote is. Just completely reversed. All right. Let's pause here for a little analysis before we go on to the rest of the text. What do you make of that? A couple things. I think one, in terms of the reading of the statements, you certainly can figure out what happened at the meeting much more quickly with the new statement than you could with the old statement. Those of us who read the old statements knew where to look, right? We knew to skip down to the beginning of paragraph three to find out what the decision was, to flip the page over, to find out what the vote was. And now you know the vote straight off. And then there's two very short paragraphs that summarize economic activity. Let's skip to the bottom of the Powell statements where he basically says, in assessing the appropriate stance of monetary policy, the committee will continue to blah, blah, blah. So that's forward guidance right there. It is telling people what the Fed is going to be looking at.

There ain't none of that with Chairman Worm. There is no forward guidance. There is nothing about what they will watch. There's nothing about what they will do. There's no if-then statement. I've always talked about forward guidance as being the if-then statements. If this happens, then we will do this. Right.

None of it. It's gone. By clear intent. I mean, the chairman said that. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He indicated from the very beginning that he didn't think forward guidance was appropriate

and that it was not going to be part of the statements. Yeah. And now to that declarative thing. So Chairman Warsh, in both of these statements, the last sentence is the committee will deliver price stability. That's just, we're going to do it. Full stop. Yep. Yep.

It's declarative and vague at the same time. What is price stability? Is price stability an average of 2%? Is it inflation as measured with the CPI, with the PCE, with the core PCE? So they're very declarative. They're going to deliver price stability with no definition of price stability. So we're taking this word for it. I guess.

Or it's sort of a roar shock. sort of an economic or shock, whatever you believe price stability to be. You know, I asked Chair Powell at some point, I was interviewing in front of, I think, the San Francisco Fed or something. I asked him if we, those of us who cover the Fed, pay too much attention to the Fed. And if we parse their words too closely. And without missing a beat, he was like, oh, yeah, I don't, I'm paraphrasing, but he said, I don't even know what you guys are doing.

It does seem insane, with all respect to you, me, and the people listening. It seems insane that we're having to do this. Yes, I suppose it seems insane that we're having to do this. At the same time, there's a couple things. We're trying to figure out what the Warsh regime is going to be like as opposed to the previous Fed chairs. We also, I don't want to get too much into politics, but it's hard to think about the Warsh regime without thinking about the politics behind it. So we know that he was nominated to be chair with the understanding that he has some pretty strict, clear, guidance from the president. And so I think this statement, the committee will deliver price stability,

declarative, forceful, yet vague, is, as they often say, perhaps for an audience of one. Let me just, we're going to go a little sideways here, but just on the news of the week, you know, I'm sure you've seen that since the most recent Fed meeting in which they didn't move interest rates at all. Six members or alternate members of the Federal Open Market Committee have come out and said, yeah, we'd raise. I'm ready to go. What do you make of that? Well, I make of it that we're probably going to have an increase in rates pretty soon. It was, in short, you know, the June statement, they said it was a 12-0 vote to maintain. The July statement was a 9-to-3 vote. You know, if they are going to forcefully deliver price stability, then the way that we know that the Fed

typically has tried to deliver price stability is through manipulating interest rates with the hopes that that will slow the inflation rate. To wrap it up on the statements, Professor Long, let me ask you this. If I'm a person in middle America going about their daily life, grinding it out, what does a Fed statement matter? I think the Fed statement, gives clues as to, I think the Fed statement traditionally has given clues as to where the Fed is going to take interest rates. And I think that matters to Middle America because Middle America is either borrowing or saving. And traditionally, you know, we've had the pundit class parsing these statements to try to give a short little report on the news about where the Fed is taking interest rates. The challenge is that these new short statements, the June and July statements, don't really give a clue as to where the Fed is going to take interest rates in the future.

Martha Only, Professor of Economics Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley. Martha, thanks very much for your time, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it as well. Okay, here's one. CEOs. They're just like us. I mean, richer, sure, and maybe not exactly just like us, but in one very important way, they are in it with us. CEOs of major companies are not feeling particularly good about this economy right now, slightly more confident at the moment than there were a couple of months ago right after the president started his war with Iran, but not by a whole lot.

That's the upshot from the latest survey from the conference board and the business council. And as Marketplace of Samantha Fields reports how CEOs feel does indeed matter to the rest of us. It has been one shock after another for CEOs these last few years. Tariffs last year, which they adjusted to Ukraine before that, and now the Iran situation and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Steve Odland is CEO of the Conference Board. He's also former CEO of both AutoZone and Office Depot. CEOs are looking at all this. Their supply chains are not normal.

the rates of inflation are not normal. The rates of borrowing are not normal. And so they're sitting here waiting for things to get back to normal. Whatever normal even is anymore. Kevin Jake, a former economist at the Treasury Department, says some uncertainty is just part of running a business. But the degree of uncertainty lately has made it hard for CEOs to make key decisions. Like, How many people do I hire? To what degree do I invest in new plant and new equipment and new machinery? to what degree do I raise the price of my product? And all of those decisions add up to have a big effect on the U.S. economy. It's important for CEOs to be confident. We want the companies to grow.

We want them to be profitable. We want the economy to grow. And right now, that's not really happening to the degree most people would like. Matthew Hassett is founder and CEO of Lofty, which sells alarm clocks and sleep products. My confidence level in the U.S. economy is probably at the lowest I've felt since 2008. Because of oil and freight prices, supply chain challenges, and tariffs. It's very hard to plan and to invest when you don't know what the price of your good is going to be when you actually sell it. And it's hard to grow the business or higher when it feels

like at any minute, something major could happen and change the entire calculus. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. Coming up. So, you know, robots. Oh, sure. Uh-huh. Yeah, everything's fine. First, though, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial's down 464 points today, 810%, 53,885. NASDAQ subtracted 15 points. We'll call that flat percentage-wise.

26,348, S&P 500, down 13 points. That is nearly 2 tenths percent there, 77 and 9. Ford has what it's called a new affordable, mid-size electric truck. truck coming next year. Today we learned that's going to be called the fathom. And it's going to start at less than $30,000. Quick, what is a fathom? Can you define that for me, please? Please. It's going to be put together in Louisville, Kentucky. Today on Wall Street, Ford's brought her to two and four-tenths of one percent. Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year t-note rose to 4.66%. It's a nautical term. That's a hint. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. Even those of us who love our jobs, think with probably varying degrees of frequency, how nice it might be

not to have to do them anymore. Allow me then to introduce you to the movement known as fire. Aki Ito wrote about it the other day. She's a chief correspondent with Business Insider. Welcome to the program. Hi, it's great to be here. For those unfamiliar, what is the fire movement? Yeah, so it stands for financial independence retire early, the people who are in the movement I knew about were really high-earning tech workers who were, you know, eating instant ramen every day and living in like these tiny studios or living out of their cars or something. And the movement really took off in the pandemic. And, you know, now the main subreddit has 2.4 million followers. Which is, which is a bunch of people. So present day now, once we've moved past those rich tech workers eating ramen, what is a typical fire person?

What's their lifestyle? Yeah, so it really depends on who you talk to. You know, one group is called lean fire. They're super, super frugal, really intense frugality. And other people, you know, they just have really high salaries and then live, like, average lives. But they're not living the kind of lifestyles that their rich friends would be living. The interesting, well, many interesting things, which we will get to. The first one is fire, financial independence, retire early. The interesting thing about this piece is that once these folks have financial independence, they don't necessarily retire. That in and of itself is not the goal here. And that's what I found so interesting. I always assumed this was a group of people who just hated work and wanted to escape it as soon as possible. But, you know, there was this researcher named Laura Sonday.

He's a professor of organizational behavior at UNC Chapel Hill. And she spent years studying the movement by going to these meetups and these retreats. And what she found was that a lot of people actually, even after they reach their financial independence goal, they keep working. And in some cases, you know, they're going, they can finally leave their unfulfilling job to do something that's less lucrative, but more meaningful for them. And in other cases, people actually stay in the same exact. job, but they kind of form this like totally different relationship to work that they like much better. And that actually is the second thing I wanted to talk to you about, because this isn't, yes, there's a sociological aspect to this, right? It's interesting, just sort of anthropologically

or whichever social science you want to subscribe to. But it's a relationship with our work story more than anything. Yeah, Laura Sonday, the researcher, there was one guy in her study who kept this, like letter of resignation in his binder at all times. And it was this like physical reminder to himself that he had the freedom to leave his job if he was asked to do something that he didn't want to do. And he actually eventually presented that letter to his boss when his boss was pressuring him to lay off his loyal employees. You know, having this like freedom to leave the job, he was able to live more according to his values. And that totally changed. the way that he saw his job, it changed his relationship to work.

It's really interesting because, you know, for generations in this country, it's been keep your head down, do your job, right? You work the extra hours, you do the extra thing, and now there's a generational twist coming, which is it's about the pandemic, it's about the economy now, it's about a bunch of different things, but it's a market shift. It is. And the thing that with fire that's really different is it provides you this method of being able to achieve that freedom regardless of the state of the job market. With my fingers crossed that my bosses are not listening to this, you know, the company doesn't care about you, you know? No, it really doesn't. And the thing is, you know, this whole idea that we should devote everything to our jobs, that comes from a time when companies kind of did care about you. That social contract doesn't exist anymore, but, you know, people are still expected to give everything to their jobs anyway.

One imagines this movement just keeps on growing, right? I would think so. I would think so. I mean, like, there are a lot of criticisms of this movement that are really legitimate. It really does feel like it's something that's achievable only for relatively privileged Americans. That said, at least it's a solution. things like quiet quitting, like just didn't stick around. And fire has.

So I think that really says something. And I think it's cool, you know, that people are coming up with ways to, I guess, achieve this, like, different relationship to work, to find a way of working that works better for them. Yeah. Aki Ito, chief correspondent at Business Insider. Thanks for your time. Interesting, Pete. Of course.

Thanks so much for having me, guys. There is, it is perhaps obvious to point out, no shortage of news of artificial intelligence. Bubble, no bubble, data centers taken over the world, you catch my drift. AI and higher education is an increasing part of that news mix. Universities are struggling to understand how and where AI fits into what they do. The University of Southern California is going to spend more than $200 million to figure it out. Marketplace is Megan McCarty Carino. Paid a visit and checked it out.

The offices of USC's new Stephen's School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence still kind of look like a building site. There's scaffolding up and lots of bare rooms. Smells like construction. Some people haven't moved in yet, actually. Yeah, brand new. Brand new. Grand new.

Gorov Sukatme, the school's director, shows me around a lab for physical AI. So, you know, robots. Yeah, looks like arms. Those two robot arms, they're using modern sort of techniques to learn how to collaborate with each other, to do bimmanuel tasks. The new school recombines some existing programs within engineering and adds new tracks, a dedicated AI major and minors for non-Sem students to apply the tech in disciplines like art or history. We have a very project-driven curriculum, which allows us to refresh the projects that the students do as part of their degree programs, and we keep changing those projects and updating them. But moving at the speed of AI isn't really what universities are built for, and the state-of-the-art is expensive. Training one of today's advanced models is estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

One of the things university is really good at is posing questions not about what's happening today, but about what might happen a decade from now. It is having the freedom to think about entirely new ways of doing things. And the freedom to keep humans at the center of that inquiry. That's a beatboxer captured with real-time MRI and mapped with AI. So what you're seeing here is, you know, it's a cross-section of a person's head. Shriene Orionan runs USC's signal analysis and interpretation lab, which uses AI to analyze patterns in human signals to tackle big clinical questions,

like studying beatboxers to understand how vocalization works, to help preserve it in cancer patients, or identifying early signs of autism or depression, when treatment can make the biggest difference. For me, humans are at the center of everything, right? But AI that can infer details about our health, mind, or identity carries real risks as well as real benefits. Can we do it in the right way? And this is not something just computer scientists can do. He says these questions demand expertise from clinicians, social scientists, even philosophers.

It's this kind of cross-pollination USC is aiming to foster with its focus on applying AI across disciplines. I will always be a conservation girl. That'll always be the work that I'm most passionate about. Hannah Murray is a PhD candidate in computer science who created a tool using AI to map global airports that are likely to be used by animal smugglers. Two airports in the U.S. actually came up as some of our most highly confident undetected hotspots, which we had Dallas-Fort Worth was one of them, and then also in Denver. USC has been a they can scale this approach, teach students across campus to use AI for the questions they are passionate about. But can they embrace AI without the tool becoming a hindrance to learning itself?

Director Gorof Sukh Kami says they have to try. There are very few times when you get these sort of massive disruptive technologies and an entirely new set of innovative ideas can be harnessed. So I think that's exciting. But when you get rapid pace of change, it is also tricky. Like the fresh offices still under construction, much of higher education is racing to build something new and figure out what it means at the same time.

I'm Megan McCarty Carrino from Marketplace. All right, we've got to go. Way too much of me talking today. Not enough time in this program. Andy Corbin, Mika Ellison, Maria Hollenhorst, Sarah Leeson, Sean McKenry and Sophia Taranzeo, are the Daily production team. Will Story is the Super Bowl.

Supervising Senior Producer, and I'm Kai Risdahl. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APN.