Marketplace - What if Trump does roll back steel and aluminum tariffs?

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

The White House may roll back steel and aluminum tariffs, according to the Financial Times. Sure, President Donald Trump has announced or enacted tariffs just to reverse course many times. But the difference is steel and aluminum are crucial materials in the production of, well, just about everything. In this episode: How might such a rollback affect your wallet? Plus, market conditions make for a stronger manufacturing sector in 2026, restaurants expand menu offerings that cater to GLP-1 users, and we explain how the Fed actually changes interest rates. 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.

Holiday week or not, the economy doesn't stop, and neither does the flow of economic data. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kai Rizdal. It's Monday, February 16th. Good to be here with you. It's just one of those weeks that can only be described as a data dump. We're going to get the latest GDP figures on Friday, and a bunch of numbers about housing, consumer spending, and inflation along the way.

Let's take it one day at a time, though. Tomorrow comes manufacturing data from the Federal Reserve and some of its regional banks. Early indications suggest manufacturing activity has been picking up so far in 2026. Marketplace's Justin Ho looks into whether that could continue and whether that could translate into more manufacturing employment. Last year wasn't exactly a stable one for the manufacturing sector, thanks to tariffs, high interest rates, and a shaky global economy. But this year, manufacturers have a few things working for them, says Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. The tax environment is favorable if interest rates at least stabilize. There'll be some relief for consumers and for businesses.

Paul says lower interest rates might spur more demand for appliances, vehicles, and other manufactured goods. Plus, the big wave of AI investment will push up demand for the equipment that goes into data centers. So I think there's a lot of potential areas. for growth that could aid in the demand for manufacturing as well. Manufacturers surveyed by the Institute for Supply Management last month said new orders picked up for the first time since August. But the same report found that employment shrank at the same time.

Even if new orders come back, it's going to be a bit before folks start being comfortable making permanent decisions like hiring people. Susan Spence is chair of ISM's Manufacturing Business Survey committee. She says the big factor causing manufacturers to hold off is tariff uncertainty. That's kind of frozen action on folks to say we don't know where the next one's coming from. And even if something gets struck down, if the administration turns around and levies it in a different way, we're in this for a while. Spence says manufacturers have also just been through a year of slow demand, so they have plenty of capacity to make goods without hiring new staff. They can, you know, put additional shifts on or pay overtime. And I imagine,

that's what they're going to do until they see that the order book is a little more solid. That's why Spence says manufacturing employment tends to lag behind manufacturing activity. I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace. The latest in the will he or won't he tariff's situation is that a rollback on aluminum and steel taxes might be on the horizon. The decision could affect everything from ovens to beer cans. White House officials say no verdict has been made yet. And yes, I know it's something. kind of impossible to keep track of every bit of tariff news coming out of this administration.

But we're paying special attention to this one because a change to aluminum and steel tariffs could affect more goods than any import tax rollback yet. Marketplaces Kaylee Wells explains why. Sure, these metals are in cars and cabinet hinges and pie tins, but it's also used in just about everything, says Philip Luck, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Everything you consume either has some steel aluminum or steel aluminum was used to move it, power it, or make it. Even, say, paper needs a metal blade to cut down the tree and a metal-laden truck and forklift to ship and move the logs. A supply chain just has these heavy elements, these heavy products in them throughout. The question is, how much would that rollback impact most of us?

The larger consumer pain points aren't going to be, you know, fundamentally shaken by what happens on these metal tariffs. Economist and UCLA law professor Kimberly Clausing says consumers are struggling with the cost of health care and housing and groceries. Steel and aluminum just don't account for that big a chunk of those costs. When you look at the groceries, some of them do have metal. They're cans and their pithins and there are things like that that are affecting people. You know, realistically, if they got rid of all of the metal tariffs, tomorrow we're only talking a very small impact at the grocery store. The Department of Commerce didn't respond to a request for comment, but Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University, says now that this possible tariff is in the news, there's a pretty good chance President Trump will make it happen. Because if he doesn't, now it's, oh, I was hoping to get this gift or this discount.

You're going to help us on prices. And now you're not doing it. What's happening? A rollback might not change the biggest bills, but Wheaton says if you're hoping to pay less for a new washing machine or a Ford F150, it'd still be a welcome change. I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. Wall Street today was closed for the President's Day holiday. But since the stock market is not the economy, we'll have some other highlights for you when we do the numbers. Something like 12% of Americans are on GLP1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic, according to

to a recent poll by the health policy organization, KFF. And it would only make sense that a big shift in how people eat and how much they eat would worry restaurants. But it turns out households with at least one person on a GLP1 actually spend more on eating out. Dina Schenker wrote about this in Bloomberg. Dina, welcome to the program. Thanks. I'm a big fan. So psych to be here. So the title of your story is OZMPIC users actually spend more dining out. And to me, that logic doesn't really just follow, so make it make sense for us. So number one is it's GLP1 users' households that we're tracking. And what do GLP1 users talk about when they say the impact on them? It's not just that they eat less. It's that they think about food less. The food noise drops out. So if you're the person in charge of feeding a household, you are usually the one you're going grocery shopping, your meal planning. Even like on a random time during the week, there's probably some list

in your head at some point of the foods you need to buy and the foods you need to prepare and the meals coming up and what needs to happen for them. But you go on a GLP1 and all of that disappears. So what happens? It's 6 o'clock. It's dinner time. Your family. is hungry and expecting to eat, and you haven't thought about it. So what happens? You guys go out to a meal. And so just that alone, you can see pushing a lot of GLP1 users as well as their families into restaurants more. So that's one explanation. The other is that restaurants are becoming increasingly user-friendly, I'd say. Menus are becoming like a design-your-own. Choose your own sides, choose your own protein, choose your own base, et cetera.

For a GLP1 user, that is kind of perfect. And then there's a lot of ways that restaurants are leaning into this, which is likely, I think, to drive more of this traffic into their restaurants. Yeah, well, tell me about some of the creative, other creative menu solutions you've seen. I mean, these are not necessarily just for GLP1 users, right? I mean, there's the protein craze, the snack craze, I don't know, maybe cheaper meals because of inflation. Yeah, that's right.

We're seeing like a confluence of trends in the food space. As you mentioned, there's high protein. You know, we're in an economy where people are really trying to save their money. So there's people looking for smaller options just for the affordability aspect. Snacking is growing. So a lot of people want to just get like more a snackable options at a restaurant. So we're seeing a whole bunch of things that cater to these trends. So for example, Del Taco.

they offered a micro meal. It was a limited time offer where they did a mini burrito, a handful of fries, and one single donut bite. So the idea behind it was driven by value or a low price, more than it was driven by GLP1 users. And then you have very specific GLP1 menus like Cuba Libre, which is a four-location restaurant group in the Northeast, that created a very specific GLP1 menu using items that they're. they were already using in their kitchen. So they weren't starting something from scratch and offering something that would require a whole new prep line for the cooks.

They just made things a bit different. But for GLP1 users, that can make a huge difference. Do you think restaurants have a choice with how popular these weight loss drugs are becoming and just how much their user base has grown? It's a really interesting way to ask that question, because a lot of restaurants are dealing with customers on budgets who are being choosier and choosier about where they're going and where they're spending their money. Now, you have a group here that is growing that has specific needs that seems to be spending

more money at restaurants according to multiple data sources. So why wouldn't you cater to them? And also, it's not just GLP1 users. I mean, so many people want smaller meals. for a variety of reasons. I'll just say like yesterday I like really wasn't that hungry for lunch, but I knew I wanted something. And I was like just like wishing that I could go to one of my salad places and get like a mini salad. Like I don't want the whole thing. I just want a mini one. But such a salad did not exist in my vicinity anyway. And so you know what I did? I bought that

full size salad. I ate the whole thing. And then I felt terrible. Dina Shanker is a food reporter at Bloomberg. Dina, thanks for sharing your story. Thank you so much. Right now, we are stuck squarely between two Fed meetings. The last interest rate decision we got was at the end of January when the Fed held rates after a run of cuts. And the next decision we'll get is in mid-March.

In the meantime, the Fed is taking in lots of data during this data-filled week, and in the weeks to come. In other words, the Fed, it's keeping busy. Marketplaces Sarah Leeson looks at what that means. When we talk about how the Federal Reserve works, we sometimes talk about it in terms of a toolkit, as in a rate change is the tool that the Federal Open Market Committee is using to guide monetary policy. But there's no actual tool, per se. Instead, there's a lot of work being done by Fed employees. Basically, what the Federal Reserve does is instruct the debt, the New York Fed to carry out the policy, as stated. Tim Dewey is chief U.S. economist for SGH macro advisors,

and he's going to help us explain the open market portion of that federal open market committee. The New York Fed is the agent for the Federal Reserve that buys and sells or purchases and sells charging securities in order to follow the objectives of the FOMC as far as interest rate policy. The FOMC decides rates, open market operations make them happen. Traditionally by buying and selling government securities to change the money supply and influence interest rates. And it's all happening in the open market where banks and dealers can get in on the action. I mean, you also might want to talk to somebody who's really needy, greedy into the details, right? True. So I did.

My name is Julie Ramate. I'm the deputy manager of the system open market account. In other words, she works at the desk in charge of open market operations at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. So let's say this is a day when the policy rate has been changed. While the rest of us are still waiting to hear from Chair Jerome Powell at the FOMC press conference, that open market desk at the New York Fed is receiving marching orders. At that meeting, the committee would at the same time issue an implementation note that would outline various changes that are relevant for the trading desk in New York to support monetary policy implementation.

That implementation note is like a set of open market operations instructions. For example, in December, after the Fed cut rates by a quarter point, that implementation note included action items such as, and I quote, increase the system open market account holdings of securities through purchases of treasury bills

and, if needed, other treasury securities with remaining maturities of three years or less to maintain an ample level of reserves. Such a mouthful, but it really just boils down to the FOMC saying to the open market desk, New York Fed, go buy some treasury bills and help us lower rates. And that task is not limited to Fed Day. We are staffed throughout the trading day through the U.S. session. And then as needed, if we'd anticipate an event or responding to events in the markets,

we might be fully staffed 24 hours. Analysts at the New York Fed are doing more than just trading and managing assets, too. We're trying to sort of understand and get a pulse on what's happening in markets and think about the variety of policy questions that are important to policymakers. That market insight gets added to the mix of price data, employment reports, and all kinds of other numbers that the FOMC looks at when deciding how to guide monetary policy next time they pull out their toolkit. I'm Sarah Leeson for Marketplace.

Coming up. Empty envelopes, empty cassette tapes, like big boxes of air. There's something poetic to be said here about how nothing can actually be something. First, though, let's do the numbers. U.S. markets were closed for the President's Day holiday. The U.S. officially recognizes 11 federal holidays. The countries that have the most, according to the Pew Research Center, are Myanmar with 30 and Bangladesh with 29. The country with the fewest, Switzerland, has one.

Federal Holiday, Swiss National Day on August 1st. Tomorrow is Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday in New Orleans. According to the Visitors Bureau, 90% of the rooms in the downtown French Quarter were reserved as of the end of last week. A Tulane University study estimates the economic impact of Mardi Gras on the city at 891 million. Fun fact, that's 3% of New Orleans GDP. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kristen Schwab. The Campbell's Company, the food giant that manufactures everything from Swanson Chicken Broth to Goldfish Crackers to V8 Juice, it announced in January that it would be closing its Cape Cod Chip Factory in Hyannis, Massachusetts. The company acquired the chip brand in 2018, and the factory, it's been a big part of the community on the Cape. WBUR's Solan Kelleher looks at the end of Cape Cod chips being manufactured in Cape Cod.

people have known the Cape Cod Chip Factory on Cape Cod better than the founder's daughter, Nicole Bernard Dawes. Now, she's a thriving food and beverage entrepreneur in her own right. But in the early 1980s, she was a kid on Cape Cod with a mom who owned a health food store and a father who was building what would become one of New England's most well-known brands. Growing up, I spent a lot of time at the factory. Like after school, I would very frequently go to the factory and do my homework there or occasionally, would help out, like, sorting the chips. I mean, I just was there all the time.

Dawes returned to the factory as an adult. She served as director of marketing and played a big role of the company. Have you ever seen the reduced fat Cape Cod chips on the shelf? That was her idea. Maybe she accompanied you on one of the factory's walk-through tours. Here she is on a 1998 episode of the PBS show Arthur, in which she led a group of school children through the chip-making process. This is where all of our chips are made.

This truck right here is carrying. 50,000 pounds of potatoes right now. We did crazy PR things. When Seinfeld was going off the air, we came up with this idea that if someone sent us nothing, you know, because it was like the show about nothing, that we would send them a free bag of chips. We got so many things.

Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of nothing. It was like, you know, empty envelopes, empty cassette tapes, like big boxes of air. Her father sold Cape Cod chips to snack company Lance in 1999. Dawes moved on to found successful organic snack brand late July, and more recently, the sparkling beverage brand, Nixie. Although it's been years since she worked for Cape Cod chips, the recent news of Campbell's decision to close the factory still feels like a loss.

My heartbreaks are the people who lost their jobs, because, you know, this is a tough time to lose a job. It's a tough time to get a job. And the American food factory jobs are incredible jobs. Dawes cites the ability of workers to move up within a factory as one of the reasons that closures like this are a loss to the community. Campbell says 49 jobs will be affected when the factory shuts down in April. The company said it's moving operations to more modern, efficient facilities in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. The news is also a personal loss for Dawes, who still calls Cape Cod home.

I will admit, it hit me pretty hard. My father passed away a number of years ago, and there was just something. about, you know, every time I would drive by that plant and smell the potato chips cooking, it just felt like a little piece of home. And when I found out that it was closing, you know, it did feel a little bit like losing like that kind of last piece of my dad. Dawes won't see the factory where she grew up continue on. But she says every time she smells a freshly fried slice of potato.

I am immediately transported back to that factory floor and like being with my parents. and being a kid, and that was my childhood. And Cape Cod chips will still be available in supermarkets across the country. They just won't be made on Cape Cod. In Boston, I'm Solon Kelleherp for Marketplace. As I said at the top of the show, it's an across-the-board data-driven week. But there are a lot of numbers coming out specifically about housing. Home builder confidence, housing starts, new home sales.

Regardless of what the data reveal, new house. Old House, people in all kinds of houses often have home improvement on their to-do lists. But, and I speak from experience here, DIY projects can be tricky, which brings us to the next installment of our series, My Economy. I'm Mia Shirella. And I'm Mary Alper. And we are based in Hyattesville, Maryland. And we teach DIY home improvement classes.

And our business name is Eminem Properties. November 2022. one of my friends had just bought a house, and within about a month, his basement flooded, and it was completely ruined. His insurance was not going to cover most of it. And Mia heard about this, and she's like, oh, let's just go fix it all. And I have owned a house for several years, but I didn't know how to do any of this stuff. And so I thought, well, this could be a great opportunity to learn how to do things. And I don't mind if I mess up, because we're helping my friend out.

Sure. So we completely renovated the basement. And I said at the end of it, wow, this would be a great. experience for other people. They should be able to learn from you too. And Mia kept saying, no, no, no one wants to take a class on this stuff. Nobody wants to do this. And I eventually convinced her, let's try it once and let's just see how it goes. I finally caved. And I think June of 2020 was our first class that we did. And I believe it was a drywall class. It was. It was our first one. It was exhausting. It was so tiring. I don't like how we were.

So tired. We had, the class was way too long. It was all day. And the dry wall we practiced on were basically walls that Mia built. They were huge. They were heavy. It took us forever to set up, forever to clean up. And it was tiring. But the class itself was so much fun. People were so excited to learn. They had a great time. They enjoyed talking with each other. They were inspired by all the things they were going to do. So it kept me motivated to want to do it again. Yeah. And I mean, I know that after the very first class, kind of figured out, based on the feedback that we received from so many of the women at that class, there's not a lot like it. And there's not a lot where women can learn how to do some of these skills and how to maintain their own homes without always having to call somebody to make repairs.

We have done a lot of classes. We've been doing about one a month, which is a good frequency for us since we both have other jobs. Our most popular classes are power tools. People love to be able to try out power tools that they might have been a little bit intimidated by before. Also drywall repair because everyone has at least one hole in their wall somewhere, or they will soon. And then tiling as well, everyone wants a nice backslash. And tiling is pretty straightforward. And so we've had a couple clients that have taken our class and then have actually done some tiling in their house. I've been teaching. I've been a public school teacher for 19 years. This is my 19th year teaching. And I've been doing contracting, you know, professionally on the side since 2016. I will tell you at like the 30-year

mark, I would love to retire and teach classes. Why not? It's a lot of fun. I think that it would be neat to do that and just continue meeting interesting people teaching classes in retirement. I work in tech and so the classes are kind of a nice break from that where I actually get to interact with people, help people do something hands on. Honestly, my favorite part about the class, It's just the environment of it. People are talking to each other and interacting and making friends and sharing stories. And it's just, it's great. That was Mia Shirella and Mariel Alper in Hyattesville, Maryland.

If you're in the business of fixing or teaching or really in the business of almost anything, we want to hear about it. Tell us your story at marketplace.org slash my economy. This final note on the way out today saw this on CNBC. The Olympics doesn't pay athletes any. With lots of hard work and a little luck, they collect glory and hopefully a medal. But some countries do offer their own prizes. Who makes the most?

Medalists from Singapore and Hong Kong come out as the number one and two highest paid athletes, with gold earning them more than $750,000. Then there's a steep drop-off at number three, Malaysia, paying around $250,000. The United States falls at number 16 on the list, with gold medalists gifted just under $40,000. It's not all about the cash prizes, though. Some countries give athletes jewelry, paintings, and cars.

Amir Babawi, Caitlin Esh, John Gordon, Noia Carr, and Stephanie Seek are the marketplace editing staff. Kelly Silvera is the news director, and I'm Kristen Schwab. We'll see you here tomorrow. This is APM. Hey, everyone, I'm Rimares,

and this week on This Is Uncomfortable, I'm joined by my fellow podcaster, Sam Sanders, for a special love advice episode. We tackle listener questions about money and relationships, everything from secret investment accounts to parents making risky financial choices. I have told people all the time, when you are experiencing an adult in your life who is acting like a child, that is the time at which you most need to be an adult. Listen to This is Uncomfortable on your favorite podcast app.