Marketplace - Tariff whack-a-mole

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

After the Supreme Court overturned many of President Trump’s tariffs, his administration implemented new import taxes through a different legal avenue. But those are only temporary. Next up in the White House's game plan to claw those tariffs back? Unfair trade practice probes into dozens of countries — including several U.S. allies. Also in this episode: SNAP recipients sue the USDA over restrictive policies, a federal agency considers regulating prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, and e-retailers hawk counterfeit skincare products.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.

Lately, five days in this economy has enough news to feel more like six. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kyrisdal. It's Friday, March 13th, and it's good to be here with you. There are lots of eyes on what's happening abroad. Also, lots of eyes on a bunch of data we got today about the economy here. So let's get into what we can with the handful of minutes we have. Today it's just me and Rachel Siegel at the Washington Post.

Hey, Rachel. Hi, happy Friday. Happy Friday. So before we get into specific data numbers that we got today, I kind of want to ask a bigger question. And that's, does the data matter? Because we're talking about January PCE, January Joltz, fourth quarter GDP. These numbers are all coming from a pre-war economy. They are. And that economy feels like it might be pretty far away. I don't think that. the data is useless. It's always good to know what baseline you're working with. It's good to know what its set of information is the freshest snapshot that policymakers are going to have. And I should say, it's good to know when the data gets revised. You know, we got a little bit of a more clear sense about what happened at the end of 2025. But then you're looking forward and you're trying to figure out what to do with that data. And I think once again, we've got economists and policymakers and

policymakers and businesses and households saying, okay, but now things feel totally different and how am I supposed to make any sense of it? Well, let's look back into some of that data and start with PCE. A core inflation broke 3%. And, you know, for a while, energy prices have helped keep inflation moderate. Now we're kind of, you know, looking at a barrel of crude in the 90 plus dollar range. What do you think that means for inflation? Yeah. I mean, it's never good when a slice of the inflation pie starts to have something going on, right? So for a long time, housing was an indicator that was really keeping overall inflation pretty elevated. And what's, I think, additional about oil and fuel and gas prices is that they can really seep into other

parts of the economy really quickly. There are a lot of industries and businesses that have that pretty baked into their supply chains. And so if you see that, you know, digit on the inflation dashboard starting to go up, I don't think it would be all that surprising that it would start to spread and make overall inflation even harder to tame. Yeah, on that note, you know, another figure we got today was GDP. Economic growth was slower at the end of 2025 than expected growing at just 7 tenths of a percent. And I wonder if that means we should bring the word stagflation into our vocabulary.

Yeah. I mean, it's one that no one wants to have in their vocabulary, right? It's a particularly nasty situation to have inflation that lingers over a normal target and sticks around there for a long time while growth is also slowing. We've also got the labor market stalling out a bit as well. I think that's definitely going to be a question, right, that goes in front of Jay Powell next week because that is the picture kind of regardless of the war in Iran or not. And so to the extent that Fed officials can help us understand what the baseline picture was,

going into this war and how they expect it to progress, I think is going to be really key to having any sense about where the economy is headed. Well, what do you think is going to happen when the Fed meets next week? What do you think the decision will be and what will they be looking forward to make future decisions? This is the question about knowing what's in Jay Powell's mind. You know, there is a lot of, you know, speculating, obviously, about whether they're going to continue to hold, whether they're going to give any indication about whether they're going to push rate cuts further back into the year. I mean, this is a Fed that does not like to commit itself to decisions ahead of time. But I think that what will be more interesting is going to be the way

Powell explains how they're thinking through all of this, because it was still during his chairmanship that we saw a huge spike in gas prices after Russia invaded Ukraine. I wonder if there's going to be any lessons, if that's the appropriate word that the Fed is using to understand whether a spike in gas prices is something that they can treat as temporary, if it's something that they know how to watch for. But, you know, all of this is going to be in explaining what they're going to be able to decide next week, obviously. Yeah. I mean, it speaks to right how much we're kind of in the mud of everything right now, which kind of leads me to a bigger question about, I mean, do you think this is a turning point for the economy? What's your, what's your take? Are you feeling

glass half empty or glass half full? I think I feel encouraged by the fact that consumers still seem quite resilient. Their sentiment might not always be there. But if they're continuing to spend, we've seen that as a pretty good tell on the economy's underlying strength. That said, I feel like we've been talking for years about, you know, needing some sort of prolonged period of certainty to really have any senses to where we're going. And this just feels like moving that goalpost so much farther down the line. So much farther. Rachel Siegel writes about the economy at the Washington Post. Thanks, Rachel.

Thank you so much. Wall Street today, disappointing GDP and inflation reports plus rising oil prices equals, well, I'm sure you can guess. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. Have taken a bit of a backseat for the last couple of weeks, given everything else happening right now. But they're still very much a part of the economic picture. The newest development, the Trump administration has launched, trade practice investigations into dozens of countries. The probes will look into everything from excess industrial capacity to whether countries are doing enough to combat forced labor. The economies involved include allies like Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the EU. And it's not a coincidence that this is happening after the Supreme Court struck down many of Trump's so-called Liberation Day tariffs in February. Marketplace's Nova Saffo takes it from here.

The Trump administration has made no secret of the fact that it wants to reimpose the tariffs the Supreme Court struck down. And the trade investigations just launched. It's the next part of a whack-a-mole strategy. That's Ryan Young, senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. That strategy, temporary tariffs for now, while the Trump administration looks for permanent ones under sections 232 and 301 of two separate laws. Section 232 requires a national security rationale and Section 301, well, that requires a very vague definition of unfair trade practices. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is conducting Section 301 investigations. Tariffs coming out of both of these Section 301 investigations that have been launched this week are foregone conclusion.

Josh Kagan served in the Trade Representative's office during both Trump 1.0 and Biden. He's now at the law firm Kelly Dry and Warren. Kagan says there could be a lot of variation with regards to the tariffs that come out of these investigations. The rates could be different by country, and it's even possible that for some, they could choose to employ some of the other remedies. Like new trade deals. There's also another possibility, says Enumanek, senior fellow for international trade at the Council on Foreign Relations. This time around, compared to Trump won. we may actually see more legal challenges.

Because of the speed, Manick says, with which the Trump administration is acting. It wants to have investigations done and new tariffs in place before the temporary ones expire in July. I'm Novosafo for Marketplace. Here's a trade-related stat that has nothing to do with tariffs. During the 2024 fiscal year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized more than 500,000 counterfeit personal care items. We're talking about unregulated knockoffs of soap, makeup, and face creams that could pose health risks to consumers. Rose Mora Lorry is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter, and she spent a few months looking into copycat beauty products. She's here to talk about what she learned.

Rose, thanks for coming on. Of course. So your story starts with a very vivid description of a lip gloss you ordered. Tell us about what you received. So I purchased a brand name lip balm. It was from Road, which is Haley Bieber's beauty brand. I bought it from Amazon from a third-party seller and took that along with about 12 other products I purchased in a similar way to a cosmetic chemist. I bought two tubes, I should clarify. The other tube of Road Lip-Bomb that I bought I bought from the brand's own website. And this chemist noticed the one that I did. The one that I purchase third party was sort of puffier, bloater. If you felt it, it felt like it had been inflated. Yeah, yeah. Nothing that I had noticed with my naked eye, but it's one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. So she was like, this could be indicative of basically

there's bacteria growing inside the package. Well, I definitely can't unhear it. That's for sure. Before we get too far into this, remind us what third party sellers are, where they sell, and how common they are. Okay. So a third-party seller, you can broadly define as an independent entity that offers, usually quite a big smorgasbord from what I've found, of new or used or sometimes refurbished items. Another way that you might refer to them is as an unauthorized retailer. And they are really more common than I thought. Close to 100%, about 95% of all products listed on Walmart.com are listed by third-party sellers. So it's a really big component of the online shopping that's out there. Hmm. And these are, what are these companies? Are these people selling out of their garage? Like,

it can run the gamut, no? They totally can. And there was a law passed, and I believe, 2022. And one of the goals was to make third-party sales a little bit more transparent, a little less murky. And so one of the things that has to happen now with a third-party listing is the sellers need to make an address, purportedly a business address available. And it might take you a couple clicks from the product page on a place like Amazon or Walmart, but I put in the addresses for all of these. And I saw places that certainly don't inspire confidence or give you the sense that this is an above board or a typically run business. These were more someone doing business quite possibly out of their garage or apartment. Yeah. Well, let's get into

what your actual experiment. So you pick all this stuff, you get it shipped to you, and then what? How did the test work? So we had everything shipped to our office. To look at it, as a layperson, I was like, oh, no, I messed up. This was supposed to be a story about buying counterfeit products. And these all look pretty legit to me, even looking at them side by side. But then we put all that together in one package and sent it to our cosmetic chemist. She ran a series of tests to really look at, not just the packaging, but obviously the product inside. And everything turned out fishy. And by fishy, I mean, almost certainly counterfeit. And at best, other things that felt like red flags, like it kind of look used. You look up the lock code. And this product is maybe older than you would want a product to be. And it being sort of past its prime age-wise certainly is not ideal. Well, what does this mean for shoppers? I mean, has, this experiment change the way you shop yourself?

Yes. Yes. I tell folks whether they're internet commenters, whether they're actual friends of mine, please start with brick and mortar in-person, first-party retail. That means department stores, Sephora, and then like Target. The other thing that I would feel just as good pointing someone towards is the brand's own website. If your next option is to do a big e-retailer, a big platform like Amazon or Walmart, make sure that you are getting product through an authorized partnership between Amazon and the brand. And I cannot tell anyone in good conscience shop third party, certainly again, not for anything that you're putting in or on your body. Hmm. Rose Mora Lori is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter writing about counterfeit products. Rose,

thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you so much. Coming up. It's geolocated. It's tracked. We know where you are. Who made the bet? Sometimes the features that help build confidence in a product also feel a bit creepy.

But first, let's do the numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 119 points, a quarter of 1% to close at 46,558. The NASDAQ felt 206 points 910% to finish at 22,105. And the S&P 500 lost. 40 points, 6 tenths of a percent, to end at 6632. For the week, the Dow slid 2%. The NASDAQ gave up 1 and a quarter percent. The SMP 500 declined 1 and 6 tenths percent. The Federal Open Markets Committee isn't expected to lower interest rates when it meets next week. Banks were a mixed bag today. J.P. Morgan Chase and Co. inched up to tenths percent. City Group also crept up

two tenths percent. Bank of America slipped nine-tenths percent. Wells Fargo and Company down. one and five-tenths percent. Bonds fell, the yield on the tenure T-note rose to 4.28%. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kristen Schwab. There is a real differing of opinions in our country right now about how SNAP recipients should be able to use their benefits. Some 20 states want to restrict people from using SNAP money to buy, quote, non-nutricious items like candy and soda. The federal government has given those states waivers a green light to make changes to what people can buy. Meanwhile, a group of SNAP recipients, along with the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, filed a suit this week, arguing that the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not follow the proper procedures before granting the waivers. Marketplace's Carla Javier reports on how it's all playing out. Now that a handful of states have started implementing the restrictions,

Catherine Dibler Meadows at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice says, recipients who have specific needs to buy specific foods are either shorting their other household expenses or going without. One plaintiff in Iowa, she says, has to stay hydrated to manage his kidney disease, but now can't buy Gatorade with his benefits. Christopher Baso at Northeastern says if you take it at face value, They're doing this because they want to improve the health of SNAP users. But BASO doesn't think diets will actually change as a result of the restrictions. If a family wants to buy soda, they'll do it. They just won't use their SNAP dollars.

He says these limitations on top of other changes to SNAP could have another effect. One could argue that the more that you raise the administrative burdens on SNAP beneficiaries and on retailers, by the way, the more that people are going to opt out of the program. A USDA spokesperson declined to comment. As for retailers, Margaret Mannion at the National Association of Convenience Stores says they have to go through. Item by item, category by category, and try to make heads or tails of these definitions. And how to classify things like electrolyte drinks and granola bars. Mess up too many times and a store could lose the ability to accept SNAP payments. And Mannion says that, on top of other upcoming rule changes, could have stores pulling out of SNAP.

entirely, which could make it harder for people to afford the food they need, especially in rural areas. I'm Carla Javier from Marketplace. Last year, prediction markets like Kalshi and Polly Market handled more than $40 billion in bets, or what these platforms technically call events contracts. How prediction markets work is users take a financial position on everything from sports outcomes, to how many times President Trump will talk about golf this week. If that sounds a lot like gambling, well, there are more than a dozen lawsuits, alleging it is. But as it stands now, prediction markets fall under different regulations for commodities futures like crops or oil.

It means these platforms can operate in states that don't allow gambling and without the oversight requirements of states that do. Yesterday, the Federal Commodities Futures Trading Commission announced its looking at new rules for what should and shouldn't be allowed on prediction markets. It also issued guidance aimed at preventing manipulation. Marketplaces Megan McCarty Carrino has more. NBA player, Jonte Porter, was having an unremarkable season back in 2024. Jackson, on the drive over Porter, and a foul's going to be charged to John. The big man for the Toronto Raptors averaged only about four and a half points a game. He'd barely begun playing in this matchup with the Memphis Grizzlies when he went out with what

appeared to be an eye injury. Change in the lineup right away. I mean, not even three minutes into the game. Days later, he left a game against the L.A. Clippers after four and a half minutes, complaining of eye pain. And later in the season, playing the Sacramento Kings, made it a mere two minutes. minutes and 43 seconds. Porter admitted to coordinating with a group of gamblers to underperform in those two games. And after the first game, the betters cashed in, becoming the biggest money winners for NBA bets on

draft kings that day, which was very suspicious, says Matthew Holt, former head of a company that scours betting data for signs of fraud. What people don't realize is every wager you placed in a license regulated sportsbook is geolocated, it's tracked, we know where you are, who made the bet. Sportsbooks flagged the weird bets, Holt's company investigated, and sent out a system-wide alarm. All states that allow sports betting require operators like Draft Kings to share real-time data with these independent integrity monitors, which also screen out players and other insiders who aren't allowed to bet. Suspicious activity must be reported to sports leagues and regulators, and Now, the NBA restricts bets on the performance of lower paid players like Jonte Porter.

There are people out there saying sports betting regulators weren't doing enough, but they were doing a thousand times more than the prediction markets are. Prediction markets have been operating without the multiple layers of oversight that helped bring Jonte Porter's cheating to light. And the Commodities Futures Trading Commission doesn't have experience policing that kind of activity, says Ben Schifrin at the nonprofit better markets. You can kind of tell by the name it's supposed to be regulating the commodities and the derivatives markets, like making sure that there are fair prices on things like corn, soybeans,

wheat. Now it's charged with ensuring integrity not only in sports, but domains with much higher stakes. I think the opportunity for corruption and prediction markets exist across the board. I just think it's way more pronounced when you're talking about war and military action. Controversy has erupted in recent months over prediction market bets involving conflict in Iran, Ukraine, and Venezuela. The platforms refunded some wagers but paid others out. Last month, Israeli authorities arrested two people accused of using classified military information to profit on polymarket. Now, the CFTC is asking the public to weigh in on whether that kind of thing should be banned,

whether government officials should be allowed to trade, or what constant. Institute's non-public information. John Holden is a professor of business law and ethics at Indiana University. No one wants to put their money into an entity where, you know, one person already knows the result of what's going to happen and you don't. He says the industry does have a business incentive to avoid scandals. In its guidance yesterday, the CFTC encouraged prediction markets to coordinate more closely with sports leagues and integrity monitors and to avoid listing contracts that could be easily manipulated by the actions of a single person. But for now, they're basically suggestions. How much will the CFTC adapt to regulating products like this,

more like how sports books are regulated? Because there's going to be mounting pressure on them to do so. But there are also mounting pressures to avoid the appearance of similarities with legal sports betting, which could help make the case in court that they are, one and the same. I'm Megan McCarty Carrino for Marketplace. This final note on the way out today, is it just me or is there so much news these days that we either have to skip this section of the show or use it to talk about a big headline. I'm going to do the latter. Today, a federal judge blocked subpoenas against Fed chair, Jerome Powell, subpoenas that Powell says were related to his testimony before the Senate in June about building

renovations at the Fed. In his decision, the judge wrote that evidence suggests the government served those subpoenas to pressure Powell into lowering interest rates or resigning, and that, quote, the government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime. Our theme music was composed by B.J. Leatherman. Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fargolly. Joanne Griffith is the chief content officer. Neil Scarborough is the vice president and general manager. And I'm Kristen Schwab. Have a great weekend, everyone, and we will be back here on Monday. This is APM.