Marketplace - The deal with steel

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

President Biden blocked a nearly $15 billion deal for Japan-based Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel, citing national security concerns. Both firms say they’ll go to court to keep the deal alive, but can they prove the acquisition won’t put the U.S. in a vulnerable spot? Also in this episode: Small businesses win an anti-gentrification victory in a Los Angeles neighborhood, new car sales are up despite high prices and Orlando, Florida, gets a romance-only bookstore.

From all of us at Marketplace, we want to say Happy New Year and a special thank you to everybody who stepped up to donate and help us plan for the year ahead. The support of our Marketplace investors is so important to keeping our public service newsroom running strong. If you didn't have a chance to donate, it's never too late to support the news you rely on, you know. Give now at Marketplace.org slash donate and thanks. This week, our feet were planted firmly in both 2024 and 2025. So we'll take a look at the economic week that was and also look ahead at what's to come from American public media. This is Marketplace.

In New York, I'm Kristin Schwab in for Kyra's Doll. It's January 3rd, the first Friday of the year. Good to have you with us. Like we do every Friday, we'll start the show by tackling the biggest topics of the week. And with it being the first week of the new year, we'll also try to make some predictions about what's ahead. With me now is David Gurra at Bloomberg and Rachel Siegel at The Washington Post. Hello, you two. David Gurra Hey there. Rachel Siegel Hi. Gigi Huffington So this week, we got a lot of housing data

pending home sales, home prices, and yesterday, Freddie Mac reported average mortgage rates nearing 7%. Rachel, I'm wondering what you think this means as we start the housing market in 2025. I think it's remarkable that that 7% figure is one that just hasn't budged a whole lot, right? The expectation was that as the Federal Reserve trimmed interest rates starting last year, that we would start to see some movement on the mortgage market there too. And there just hasn't been that linear story. Mortgage rates have even been ticking up a bit. And I think that's really a reflection of a couple of things. One, that we aren't necessarily going to see mortgage rates drop,

either to levels that people may have been familiar with from before the pandemic, or definitely from those more emergency months in 2020 and 2021. And that might just be a little bit of a signal of a new normal. And it also reflects the sense that the rest of the economy, which I'm sure we'll touch on, could be stronger this year and will necessitate fewer cuts from the Fed itself. So you kind of have this mixed bag. I think it'll be interesting to see what that does to demand, how forcefully that cools demand while we're trying to get supply to catch up in the meantime. But I think we were hoping to see some sort of five handle at the end of last year and

it just didn't happen. Yeah. Well, David, I'm wondering, as Rachel was just saying, mortgage rates are actually a little higher than they were a year ago, even after the Fed has made cuts to the federal funds rate. So what's going on here? Just to pick up on something Rachel said, I think with regard to that new normal, I think there's an interesting thing happening here with consumer psychology that we've had these elevated rates now for a couple of years really. And I think there is some impatience among prospective home buyers that they would like to get a new house. I think

people who own houses are thinking of selling them. They want to probably offload those as well. And so I think that there's a sense that they're getting accustomed to rates being where they are. And we'll see sort there's a sense that they're getting kind of accustomed to rates being where they are, and we'll see sort of how that plays out in the year ahead. But as for rates going up, I think it's kind of this story that's kind of percolating throughout the entire economy, which is by and large things seem pretty good, pretty decent, but there's a ton of uncertainty about what's going to happen in the year ahead when it comes to trade policy, when it comes to immigration policy.

And I really think like across the board, there's a real kind of apprehensiveness or kind of maybe not worry, but nervousness about what's going to happen in the year. It's like a lack of confidence about where the economy is headed. Hmm. Well, David, along those lines of a sort of mixed view, the other data point we got today was manufacturing numbers from the Institute of Supply Management. They were up slightly for the month, but still down overall. We also got construction spending earlier in the week. Those numbers were mixed. How do you make sense of all of it? Yeah, it's very much part and parcel of what I was just saying a moment ago. So I think like the manufacturing numbers could be a good sign that we're seeing a kind of rebound

or growth in the manufacturing sector. When you look at those construction figures, I mean, I think about that in the context of what President-elect Trump has proposed doing that is to impose more tariffs on Canada, for instance, and what that could mean for supplies that home builders and other construction workers would need here in the US, through the effect that that might have on labor and the construction sector as well. So again, I think it's that layer of uncertainty about what's to come that's kind of affecting and kind of suppressing both of those sets of numbers. Well, Rachel, I wonder, is this just part of the bumpy path the Fed talks about as it makes its way to 2% inflation? Or does any of this surprise you?

I mean, it certainly feels and sounds and looks like bumpiness. I think another element to this too is that, you know, if we might have new resolutions for January and turn a page in our calendars, but the economy can still look in many ways the way it did last year or even just a couple of days ago. You know, a lot of this is this lingering, you know, normalization or sense of trying to figure out where the economy is going. We're obviously about to add policies from a new administration to that. And so I think that even though we're technically in this, you know, new calendar moment, a lot of this is very familiar. A lot of this is the same kind of bumpiness. I think David just registered our first use of uncertainty

for the year, and a lot of those things are going to be familiar, even as there's obviously a lot that's still going to shake out over the next couple of weeks and months. Hmm. Well, I kind of almost hate to ask this next question because I kind of see where you're all going with it. But I want to look ahead to 2025 a little bit because we aired a segment earlier this week looking at 2024. We rounded up a bunch of economists and kind of got their word for the year. We got a lot of uncertainty, underappreciated, those kinds of things took the win. I'm wondering what your predictions are for 2025. What's your word and why? David, let's start with you. I'm torn here between decent, which I think might be a good one. I think the economy is doing pretty decently. I think remarkable is a word that

Rachel used at the top. The economy has been more resilient than I think a lot of people have. I guess all of that kind of colors my sense of like, the Fed says over and over again, it's a trope that they're data driven. I think we are still in this posture where we're just trying to see sort of what's happening here month after month, data point after data point. And I think that's just going to persist here in the year ahead. So I won't I won't lean on uncertainty. I'm not going to be guilty of that.

But I do I do think that it's going to be a year ahead where we're kind of like, again, very much focused on on the data and just sort of seeing how all of this stuff manifests itself in the economy. Hmm. Are there any data points you're looking at in particular coming up? I think it's the labor market chiefly and I think that's something a lot of folks would say including the Fed share. I think there was such a huge focus on inflation and getting that down. The Fed has been so successful in doing that, not all the way there, but is pretty close

and now it seems like the focus now shifts to, how resilient, how strong can this labor market be in the year ahead? And Rachel, what's your word and why? Yeah, I could see myself writing the phrase in a twist a lot this year. And I think that that might have to do with just what some of the specifics of policies actually look like.

I mean, there's a lot we're waiting on when it comes to the incoming tax debate, the new Congress, tariffs, immigration, executive orders, Fed policy. You know, these are all things that maybe we have a little bit of a sense of, but could look very different once the details and the nitty gritty of the tweets and the announcements actually come out. So I'm just sort of curious to see how much of our predictions or sense of where things might go actually, you know, comes to fruition and how that ends up changing the economy in the meantime. And same question to you, what data will you be looking at to sort of parse all that out?

Yeah, I would echo what David said about the job market. I mean, inflation, obviously, even though hopefully things continue on that path. I think it just sort of comes down to nitty gritty on policy. It's not necessarily one data point, but what some of these policies that will end up shaping all of that look like. Is our expectation around immigration reform actually what happens? What kind of impact does that have on the job market? Do tariffs have the kind of impact on inflation that some economists think they could? It just is going to depend on a lot of the specifics, and I just don't think we know yet. David Gurras at Bloomberg, Rachel Siegel is at The Washington Post. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good weekend. Wall Street Today was in the green

after a week of red. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. President Biden today blocked Nippon Steel's nearly $15 billion deal to buy U.S. Steel. Nippon is a Japanese company, and the president said putting a large U.S. steelmaker under foreign control would create risks for national security. But Nippon and U.S. Steel disagree, and they aren't giving up. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer looks at what's next and what's at stake. Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel are threatening to go to court to keep their deal alive. In a statement today, they said President Biden's decision left them no choice but to take all appropriate action to protect their legal rights. Christine McDaniel is a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center. She says it could be tough to prove the deal wouldn't hurt national security.

If the U.S. government and the president firmly thinks that it will, it's hard to see a court overturning that decision. The steelmakers could appeal to the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Trump did say just last month that he's against the deal. Still, McDaniel says there might be a little wiggle room. A committee of cabinet members that evaluates foreign deals, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, could decide to take a second look at it. Let's say Trump comes in and he's neutral.

The new people on CFIUS decide that it's worth taking a second look at. They could continue the investigation, keep it open. There's a lot at stake here, of course, for Nippon and U.S. Steel, but also for some powerful interests arrayed against them. Henrietta Treys, co-founder of VEDA Partners Investment Advisors, says there are real national security concerns. Concern about having a foreign ally, in this case Japan, own, nonetheless, a very critical part of U.S. infrastructure. There's another powerful voice against the deal, the United Steelworkers International Union. Nippon and U.S. Steel have promised

to honor existing union contracts, but Sean Higgins of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Free Market Think Tank, says he understands why the union is wary. It would be difficult for them to negotiate with a foreign owner. It always is if you're a U.S. union. But Higgins adds the deal with Nippon could give U.S. steel employees some job security by helping the company they work for grow and compete with China. I'm Nancy Marshall Gensert for Marketplace.

Every morning David Brancaccio and the team on the Marketplace Morning Report get up way too early to help you get the news you need to start the day so give them a listen. GENTRIFICATION It's an important story, but one that usually follows the same narrative, right? A developer buys a building in a mostly minority, working-class neighborhood in a big city like New York, Austin, or Los Angeles. They have plans to tear it down and build new apartments and trendy coffee shops, leaving the current residents powerless. Well, that's not always the case. KCRW's Megan Jamerson brings us this story about

a fight over gentrification in LA that didn't go exactly the way you'd expect. Jose Prada is stocking up the bar at El Apatito, a restaurant in LA's historic Mexican-American neighborhood Boyle Heights. His moms owned this place for 17 years. Now the neighborhood is changing, including his customers. I've seen it, you know, with my own eyes. They used to be full of mariachis, norteños. They're still here, but not like before. Pada also lives in this building with his mom and grandma.

One day last year, they got a letter from their landlord. The building owner had permits to demolish all three apartments and five businesses gone and replaced by a 50-unit apartment building and commercial tenants. Parra's mom, Rosa Garcia, feared the worst. She says Los Angeles is full of people who live on the streets. We could be more of those people because the whole family depends on this place. The building is also home to Riarte Centro Literario, an indie bilingual bookstore. Viva Pedia is the owner.

Small businesses are what makes the community what it is. If it wasn't for the panadería across the street and it wasn't for the panahaderia across the street and it wasn't for the check cashing place across the street and the Mexican restaurant that's been there for 50 years. I mean this is what keeps us fed, connected to the community. Often there isn't much tenants can do to change a developer's plans but the city of LA does have an appeals process. So Padilla argued that the demolition and replacement building would gentrify the neighborhood. By no means are we trying to kind of, you know, take away any of the culture. This neighborhood

is changing. We want to be part and parcel of that change. Will Tiao and his wife bought the building four years ago. He's been buying and managing real estate in Boyle Heights for more than a decade and joining neighborhood organizations like the local Boys and Girls Club along the way. I think that there are ways to make things change that are inclusive and that's what we're trying to be. Five of the 50 units will be very low-income apartments and current residents would have first dibs.

And to keep the commercial rent lower, the current residents would have first dibs. And to keep the commercial rent lower, the first floor would be an airy open marketplace with a food hall and vendor stalls. Earlier this year, the city heard the appeal. Tenants argued that the displacement would have a negative mental health impact on the neighborhood. Ultimately, the city agreed. Padilla's gentrification argument actually worked, and for now, the building can't be demolished. It's crazy still to think that it happened. I mean, I'm still processing. It's not a done deal, though. California state law basically says gentrification and

displacement isn't a valid reason to stop new projects, especially because of the state's housing shortage. And so will Tiao's company sued the city of LA to keep the project alive. The case is still in court. California is invested in building more housing with developers like Tiao. After all, his plan is to demolish one building with three apartments and replace it with another that has 50 apartments. And the idea is that like actually the more supply you have, the lower the rents are for

everybody else. Our hope is that it actually makes the area more affordable. Still, all of this is leaving the actual current tenants like Rosa Garcia in limbo. She says this daily stress needs to stop because it isn't life. You're not really living. The pressure grabs hold of you because you say, what's going to happen when tomorrow comes? If Garcia lost the apartment because of a demolition, local laws say her family would be entitled to at least $8,000 in relocation assistance. But she says it would be difficult to find another apartment with the below market rate she currently pays. These days, the average

rent in the neighborhood costs $2,300 a month. In Los Angeles, I'm Megan Jamerson for Marketplace. Coming up... I was a little kid in a candy store. I was like, I get to order all of these books. The sweet satisfaction of a good plot. But first, let's do the numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 339 points, 8 tenths percent, to finish at 42,732. The Nasdaq added 340 points, one and three quarters percent, to close at 19,621. And the S&P 500 gained 73 points, one and a quarter percent, to end at 5942.

For the week, the Dow slipped six tenths percent, the NasdaQ gave up 0.5%, and the S&P also subtracted 0.5%. President Biden's decision to block the acquisition of U.S. steel that Nancy Marshall Genzer was telling us about? It sent the company's shares down 0.6%. Would-be buyer Nippon Steel gained 0.1% and 0.2% in Tokyo. Checking in on three Detroit automakers, Ford Motor accelerated 2.4% and General Motors sped up 3.25% and Stellantis hit the brakes to the tune of 3.5%. Bonsfell, the yield on

the 10-year T-note, rose to 4.59%. You're listening to Marketplace. I'm Kristin Schwab. The car market has been a pretty bumpy one over the last handful of years. But here's a new sign of strength. More new cars were likely sold in the U.S. in 2024 than in any year since 2019. Thing is, if you squint at some underlying data, the picture is still a little precarious. Consumers have been taking on bigger financial burdens to buy new cars. Almost one in five people who bought new cars in the fourth quarter have a monthly payment of $1,000 or more, according to the car shopping site Edmunds. And the rate of borrowers delinquent on their loans was high in 2023 and ticked up in the first half of 2024. With that in mind, Marketplace's Henry Epp reports on whether stronger new vehicle sales are sustainable as we start the new year.

At Stivers Ford Lincoln in Waukee, Iowa, 2024 was the most normal year they've had since the pandemic. Owner Scott Polite says that's because they finally had strong inventory after chip shortages limited auto production for years. But he says, what we're seeing is a more cautious buyer. Because he says some of the incentives car companies used to offer like 0% interest on a car loan for several years are not that common anymore. So customers took their time to decide whether to buy. It takes them longer to come to that realization that it's a new environment for buying vehicles out there. Because car companies aren't over producing these days, dealers aren't desperate to get

them off the lots. The cars they are making are larger and have more technology. That's pushed up prices. And yet, says Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmonds, People are still buying vehicles and they're still buying vehicles at these high prices. Which means for those who can afford to take on a big loan for a new car. What looks like is happening is people are just forced to allocate more money into their car budget. Those high prices likely drove lower and middle income buyers to the used car market, she says.

The new car market did really pick up in the last few months of 2024 after the election and another Federal Reserve interest rate cut. Partly says Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive, because lenders started to lower auto loan rates, but not all that much. They're still being fairly selective with regards to the terms that they're offering, the level of down payments that they're requiring on the loans. So he thinks there's still plenty of room for interest rates to come down, which could boost new car sales, at least temporarily. I feel a lot more confident about the next three to six months than I do for the full year.

Because, he says, potential policy changes from the next Trump administration, tariffs and changes to the electric vehicle tax credit could disrupt the car market once again. I'm Henry App for Marketplace. Music Small businesses are becoming a bigger part of the economy. According to the Treasury Department, applications for new businesses averaged around 430,000 per month in 2024. That's 50% more than the monthly average in 2019. And one group's impact is expanding here, Latino entrepreneurs. A survey out earlier this year from the Stanford Graduate School of Business shows strong growth in the number of Latino-owned businesses. Here's one business owner who's part of

that trend in the latest installment of our series, My Economy. My name is Jane Rodriguez and I am the owner of The New Romantics, Orlando's first romance-only bookstore. It was always a dream of mine to have a bookstore. And when I realized that I can have a genre-specific bookstore, it just made the dream more of a want. The name of the new Romantics was inspired actually by a Taylor Swift song called the new Romantic. Well, it's called new Romantics. And I think that I was literally just listening to it one day and I was like, wait a minute, this would be a really cool name for a romance only bookstore. Prior to me opening the new Romantics, I was and have been an entrepreneur. Like I knew how to establish an LLC and get your EIN number, but I didn't even know where to get books from. So the

first time that we placed book order was for our first pop-up event back in April. And I was a little kid in a candy store. I was like, I get to order all of these books. And I remember actually when I, it was three full boxes of books, it was about 100 books total. And I genuinely cried when the books arrived at my store because I felt like the first step in

the good dream coming true. As small businesses it's really hard to secure business loans with any prior like bank statements and stuff like that so I was applying for grants left and right I was applying for loans and no one was really giving me any attention. So it got to the point where I decided to take loans out from family members and I was grateful enough that they were willing to help contribute and make the dream come true. And they were there with me holding the ribbon at our ribbon cutting ceremony. our ribbon cutting ceremony.

I think that right now we are in a phase of our business where we're facing lots of massive revenue boosts because of the grand opening and because of the holidays. So I am going about things in a very cautious way. So I don't feel like we're going to have any issues paying rent and payroll, and eventually I'll be able to make us an lottery myself. But it's one of those things that I want to pretend doesn't exist until I know exactly

what a regular month looks like. I have always just loved romance stories and the butterfly feelings it gives you. If we're reading like an enemies to lovers story where they start the book hating each other you're just like how are they going to fall in love and being able to follow along on the characters journey to that is something that is so fascinating to me and I will never ever get tired of the feeling that I feel whenever I read romance books that scratch that itch that I've been looking for. That was Jane Rodriguez, owner of The New Romantics in Orlando, Florida.

This series only works with your help. That was Jane Rodriguez, owner of The New Romantics in Orlando, Florida. This series only works with your help. Tell us how your economy is doing at marketplace.org slash my economy. This final note on the way out today, saw this in Axios, the number of prescriptions for GLP-1 drugs, the most commonly known brand is Ozempic, the number of prescriptions grew 10% between 2023 and 2024. The states with the highest growth rates were Rhode Island at 68%, Massachusetts 48%, and New Jersey 35%. Now, it's unclear how often these drugs are being prescribed for obesity versus diabetes versus heart disease, but let me tell you, it's not just the pharmaceutical and healthcare

industries taking note. As we've reported before, executives at food and drink companies are really worried about the idea of Americans consuming less. Our theme music was composed by BJ Lierman. Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fargoli. Donna Tam is the executive editor. Neil Scarborough is the vice president and general manager. And I'm Kristin Schwab. Have a great weekend. We'll be back here on Monday. This is APM.