Marketplace - The ongoing cost of ICE raids on Latino entreprenuers

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

It’s been more than a year since the Trump administration intensified ICE raids in immigrant communities across the U.S. Latino entreprenuers say the toll on their businesses has been worse than the pandemic. In this episode, the ongoing economic harm caused by Trump’s relentless deportation agenda. Plus: Small businesses grapple with more tariff uncertainty, Canada posts strong GDP growth, and we break down Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s first Jackson Hole speech.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:Was that forward guidance we just heard from the Fed Chair?Canada's economy is growing as it heads to a trade war with the U.S.Tariff uncertainty means halted production for this camping chair companyImmigration enforcement leaves Latino businesses struggling for monthsHow a 21-foot-tall space cowboy has revitalized a strip of Route 66

Riddle me this is an outline the same as a trail map, the same as forward guidance? From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kaira's doll. It's Friday, August 28th, and it's great to be here with you. When some people picture Jackson Hole, Wyoming, they think beautiful mountains and wildlife. When we picture Jackson Hole, we see Kevin Warsh, in a suit, talking economic policy. The Fed Chair gave a 30-ish minute speech this morning about AI, the job market, and inflation. And we're going to take some time now to sort it all out.

Catherine Rampel is at the bulwark and MS now. Stacey Vanek-Smith is at Bloomberg. Hey, you two. Hey, Christa. Hey, I want to start with how Orsch more or less started his speech today, or how he set up his speech. Let's give it a listen. You can call it an outline and call it a trail map, but please just don't call it forward guidance. Stacey, you know, I alluded to this in the top of the show. I'm not sure I really understand the difference between these words, but I'm wondering what you would call the kind of information Warsh gave us this morning.

Well, I really appreciated the trail map because I feel like it's very on brand with Jackson Hole and the Great Outdoors. It was forward guidance of a sort. I think maybe, I mean, the market certainly reacted that way. interest rates rose on his speech, it certainly reacted as if it were forward guidance. It may be that he's just signaling that his style of forward guidance is going to be different, that the market's not going to get as much transparency, as much information, as much disclosure as it did under Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell. So it may be that he's easing us off of forward guidance, but this definitely seemed forward guidance adjacent, if not full on forward guidance. Catherine, what about you? What do you think about Warsh cracking the door open this morning?

Well, markets certainly heard the speech as hawkish. I mean, I don't know if I would call it forward guidance or anything else, but he talked about how inflation is above target, which everybody obviously knew, but also indicated that he did not think that financial conditions were particularly restrictive right now, which implies at the very least that he thinks maybe they need to be tighter. And if you look at how markets reacted, the chance of a rate hike at their September meeting went from something like 35% yesterday to 60% today. So again, markets clearly heard this as hawkish. I don't know if Warsh intended it to be because, as Stacey pointed out, he kind of doesn't want to sound like anything, right?

He doesn't want to indicate one way or another where he is heading. But markets seem to hope at the very least that this is the plan for getting inflation under control. Yeah. You know, Stacey, another thing I picked up on this morning is that, you know, the word transitory is a very scary word we don't like to use anymore. It is. Or she started using the phrase upside down or upside, sorry, inflation risks. Is there a difference here and does history matter? I think there is a difference and it is funny.

Every Fed share comes in with different turns of phrase that they like to use. Upside inflation risk is essentially just, you know, a chance that inflation is going to come in higher than we expect. Whereas transitory was more like, oh, don't worry, this is going away. This is not a fundamental. nothing fundamentals happening that's raising prices. This is just supply chain snags in the case of the pandemic. Today, when he mentioned upside inflation risk, he was talking about commodity prices specifically. So I took that to mean oil and Iran. So it may have been signaling, you know, there's a conflict with Iran. It's pushing up oil prices. Oil prices can push up everything. But hopefully that will be

resolved soon. Although now, you know, we've got a potential trade war in the works with Canada, also a huge supplier of oil and natural gas, especially to us. So I don't know, upside inflation risk to me, it just, it signaled to me that he was just warning like inflation might come in higher than we want. Gotcha. Catherine, I want to talk about a piece you wrote this week on how Wall Street seems to have soured on Besson and Warsh already. What sides of unease are you seeing and why should we care. Well, both of these men came in and were chosen because markets trusted them. There are a lot of other, shall we say, unconventional picks, peopleing the Trump cabinet and throughout the administration. These two had relatively traditional CVs. They've both taught, lectured at elite

institutions. They both worked on Wall Street. They were people that markets trusted. because there's a lot of money at stake. I don't need to tell our listeners that. What seems to have shifted, particularly with Bessent, is that markets, I think, based on at least bond market behavior, do not seem to trust that he necessarily knows what he is doing, or at least that he will be as effectual as he thinks he will be. The obvious case and point being his recent announced buyback, bond buyback plan, which was clearly intended to reduce long-term bond rates and instead ended up pushing them up a little bit higher because market participants seemed to see through the fact that this was too puny of an action to actually make a difference in the grand scheme of

things for why long-term bond yields were going up. Debt, inflation, you know, private companies issuing bonds to finance AI investments, etc., etc. So it does seem a little bit like he has less control. And likewise, if you looked at market reaction after Kevin Warsh's most recent press conference, not the Jackson Hull speech today, but it definitely bond rates as well went up, even though he did not seem to indicate that they were about to raise rates. So it just seems like where they would like markets to be going has become a little bit unmoored from where markets are going. And I wonder if that signals a deeper distrust of economic leadership and the ability for these two men to achieve the tasks at hand, i.e., getting back to stable prices and making

sure that we have smooth functioning financial markets. More to come. Catherine Rampel is at the bulwark and MS now. Stacey Vanek-Smith is at Bloomberg. Thanks again, you two, and have a good weekend. Thanks, you too. Wall Street today saw a rate hike in its future. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. We got some updated GDP numbers this morning, not for our economy, but for our neighbors to the north. Canada's gross domestic product grew 3.3% in the second quarter, the strongest growth the country has seen since 2023.

Now, it's not every day we make a big fuss about the performance of Canada. Canada's economy, but this has not been a typical week in U.S. Canada relations. Trade talks between the two countries fell apart last weekend. The U.S. announced 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian imports on Monday, and Canada fired back with an equal amount of tariffs on U.S. products the next day. Marketplace's Henry Ep reports on how stronger economic growth could help Canada withstand a trade war. Canada's economy basically stalled out when President Trump first started threatening to put huge tariffs on the country's exports last year, and it stayed that way, says Doug Porter at the Bank of Montreal. And I mean basically zero GDP growth, starting at the end of the first quarter of 2025 to the end of the first quarter of 26.

Uncertainty around the trade relationship with the U.S. caused Canadian businesses to pause capital investments, says Nathan Jansen at RBC Economics. But they couldn't hold off forever because eventually businesses have to replace equipment. So I think we're seeing some of that investment come off the sidelines. Plus, Canadian consumers spent more, and Jansen says the buildout of AI data centers is expanding north of the border. Overall, Canada saw a pretty broad economic rebound in the second quarter. And that could give Canadian leaders a psychological boost, says Julian Carragessian at McGill University. The stronger growth in the midst of 18 months of trade tensions, I would say gives them some courage to stick to their guns and negotiations. One other positive in Canada's second quarter, exports. Most of those go to the U.S., Keregessian says, especially oil and natural gas, but a growing share heads to other countries, and that's by design.

The government of Canada is laying the diplomatic foundations for expanded relationships. with Europe and with the entire global south, and lessening its reliance on exporting to the U.S. I'm Henry App for Marketplace. Whether it's trade policy between the U.S. and Canada, or trade policy between us and really any other country, at this point, it seems fair to say that tariffs are the Trump administration's tool of choice.

And I know sometimes it might feel like, okay, Kristen, another day, another tariff. But for small business owners, another day, another tariff, has the power to unravel plans. Ben Nepler is the co-founder of True Places, a company that makes camping chairs. They're based in the U.S., but their production and supply chains are overseas, which means Ben has been navigating the tariff situation for over a year now. Ben, it's great to talk to you. It's great to talk to you again.

So the last time you and I chatted, the future of your business was pretty uncertain to the point where you stopped production of your chairs because you couldn't afford to pay the tariffs on them. What's happened since then? Yeah, we're still in the same kind of position. We stopped production, like you said. We went through many months of just trying to keep the business alive, which fortunately we've been able to do, but we haven't been able to produce again, so we've had to cut everything back all payroll, including ourselves. Hopefully we can get back to growth in the future, but at the moment, there's just so much uncertainty that we're not able to do that.

Yeah. Well, we'll get to the business stuff in a second, but I mean, how are you doing? I imagine that takes a toll. Yeah, it's very difficult. It's almost like going through different stages of grief. I'm still, you know, personally very, very angry, but really just sad for, obviously for my business, but we're one of, you know, thousands, tens of thousands and lots of people around the country. So I'm sad for the country and the economy as a whole.

Yeah. I did notice you have some chairs, though, for purchase on the website. So how did you, how were you able to stock up a bit? Yeah, a very, very limited number. We had a few extra chairs that just needed sort of one final part that we were able to get. And we've been able to make those chairs available. But it's really like they're very, very small in number. We're not able to really kind of produce normally again anytime soon. So how long now have you kind of been in this limbo waiting period? It's really been about a year. And so since then, we've just been focused on survival mode. We've just been trying to keep the business alive. But as I said last time that we do almost everything in the US, everyone that we work with who's involved in all of those activities, we've just kind of cut back and

stopped. And so it really does have, even though we're very small, these ripple effects through the economy. What about changing your supply change, or is that kind of a moot point of an idea at this stage? Yeah, we, I mean, that's what we already did. We spend about 12 months moving on manufacturing out of China and into Cambodia. You know, that's not something that's very easy to do. It takes a long time. It is very, very costly, especially for a small business. And most significantly, you don't know if the rules are going to change again. And so it's very difficult to make those kinds of longer-term investment decisions when the goalposts are constantly changing. Well, how do you make some of those decisions and where do you see your

business going? Yeah, it's, it's, it's, It's really, really difficult. And when we don't even know what the taxes are going to be tomorrow, let alone in three or four months, it's very, very difficult to justify to ourselves making the decision to produce. Ben Nepler, he's the co-founder of True Places in Pennsylvania. Thanks again for chatting, Ben. Thanks so much. Coming up.

So I thought, oh my gosh. A space cowboy would be perfect. I mean, when is a space cowboy not perfect? But first, let's do the numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid just nine points, essentially flat, to finish at 53,559. The NASDAQ lost 138 points, a half a percent to close at 26,402, and the SMP 500 fell 19 points of quarter percent, ending at 7711. For the week, the Dow gained half a percent. The NASDAQ picked up 8 tenths percent. The S&P 500 also up half a percent. Heading into the weekend, the national average for a gallon of regular gas is $4.8, down a penny from a month ago, according to AAA.

A gallon of diesel will run you $5.61. Bonds fell. The yield on the tenure T-note rose to 4.72%. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kristen Schwab. Immigration enforcement rates have many impacts. Of course, on families, also businesses. Targeted communities often see an immediate drop in foot traffic and in turn a drop in revenue. But months later, those problems continue to hurt entrepreneurs. That's according to a recent study by UCLA that tracked how immigration raids in Los Angeles have hurt small businesses. And as Marketplace, Elizabeth Troval reports, the problem isn't isolated to L.A. Juan has run this tire shop for three decades in Houston's East End, a historically Latino neighborhood. He's never seen business this bad. He calls it a crisis. Juan asked to use his first name only. He's afraid immigration might target his business. He calls this the worst recession he's experienced since he immigrated. to the U.S.

Rent and utilities are higher and higher, but immigration policy has slowed foot traffic and demand for tires. People in his community aren't driving less, he says, to avoid getting pulled over. And most recently, a fatal shooting by ICE of a local community member stopped business in its tracks. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed near Juan's tire shop earlier this summer. Juan says people are scared. He's offered discounts to bring back customers, but it's tough. He worries he may have to close his shop.

It's hard to imagine business bouncing back as long as the Trump administration is in control of immigration policy. In Chicago, small businesses are still recovering from ice raids conducted last year. Hilda Alvarez is with the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Key commercial corridors in the city turned into ghost towns almost kind of overnight, and they've had that lasting effect. Immediately, sales revenue dropped. Most of the business we had talked to were behind and rent payments for months and inventory bills, trying to work something out with their utility companies. Latino business owners said the economic impact of raids felt worse than COVID.

Because at least during COVID, there's a general kind of effort to restimulate the economy afterwards. In response, the Chamber is giving up business grants to help affected businesses stay afloat. And more than a year after immigration rates hit L.A. County, Amada Armenta with UCLA, says small businesses like food trucks, restaurants, and retail shops are still hurting. The struggles include things like, fewer customers, but they also include things like people taking on really enormous debt to keep their doors open. She says people are afraid to go out and are spending less money. There's also been pressure on staffing.

Employees afraid to come to work. Employers afraid about their ability to keep their employees safe and their customers safe. Businesses changing their hours, either out of fear or because there wasn't enough customer based to sustain, you know, longer hours. In East L.A., Elie Valdivia has sold candles and artsy products for four years at her shop, Earthy Corazon. We have, like, our Virgenita, like, statues, like made of crystals. We have Selena artwork.

We have, like, a mystical Lottery deck. She says the neighborhood was much different before the ice raid started. We would be able to walk outside and be in our neighborhoods. and not have to look twice about what that vehicle looks like. Foot traffic last summer was super slow, she says. And over the last year, she realized the business wasn't sustainable. So she decided to close the store. She remembers how kind customers were that last month.

I remember a lot of them sharing that, like, they never seen or experienced a place like this. It was definitely a really hard decision to make. A decision she says she probably wouldn't have had to make, were it not, for the immigration raids. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace. All this week, we've been bringing you stories from small businesses along Route 66 in honor of the historic highways' centennial. Travelers far and wide have been driving down the 2,500 miles of open road to see America from the rear view mirror, and maybe even stop for an attraction or two. My name is Mary Beth Babcock, and I am the owner of Buck Adams Cosmic Curios, which is

695 miles from the beginning of Route 66 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So I got into retail, and as you get older, I feel like it hit this moment when my parents, they'd always go to antique shots. And I remember kind of drifting off by myself, and I saw this. giant golden antique cash register, and it literally lured me in. And from that moment, I was, I was mesmerized. So I went to OSU and got a degree in retail merchandising. And I started a shop downtown Tulsa on the old alignment of Route 66. And the building sold rent went up, so forced me to make a change. And I said, I want to do retail, but something small. And 30 minutes later,

this 1950s Pemco gas station got posted on Facebook on Route 66, and it was immediate. Owning a shop on historic Route 66 means to me that you have got to get a roadside attraction. That's part of the fun, part of the lure. And so right off the bat, I needed a mascot. So I thought, oh my gosh, a space cowboy would be perfect. I was introduced to Mark Klein of Enchanted Castle Studio who builds these giants, these historic giants that were originally made in the 60s.

I gave him a picture of Buck Adams, Space Cowboy, he sketched him out, and now we have a giant. At the end of the day, with my giants, say at the end of the day around $50,000. I sold commemorative bricks. I sold statues, like these super cool custom-made. statues. This was all, I'm going to figure this out. Once Buck Adam went up, 21-foot-tall space cowboy, it was really exciting. The neighbors saw. I've seen so much change in the neighborhood.

There was a business next door to me that was a full-on transmission shop. He ended up selling the building to an investor, and there's four gift shops now in that space. The fun seeing that people come up and taking pictures with him, knowing that they're making memories. Like, I remember as a child seeing this giant pink elephant water fountain that's stuck in my brain forever. So I'm like, I know how that impacted me, and I hope things like this impact other people.

And make people smile, stop, be friendly to each other. And also sell some souvenirs while we're at it. That's Mary Beth Babcock, owner of Buck Adams, the shop, and Buck Adams, the 21-foot fiberglass giant in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Back in April, our reporter David Brancaccio traveled Route 66 to see how the economy has changed in the last 100 years. You can find those stories and our coverage from this week at Marketplace.org. Too much Fed talk today, so there's no time for a final note. So on to credits. Our theme music was composed by B.J. Leatherman. Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fargolly.

Joanne Griffith is the chief content officer. Neil Scarbro is the vice president and general manager. And I'm Kristen Schwab. Have a great weekend. We'll be back here on Monday. This is APM.