Marketplace - Your car company also wants to be your bank

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

The FDIC has approved proposals by GM and Ford to launch their own banking units. That means the automakers will be able to provide their own auto loans to customers. In this episode, a confluence of market conditions drove Ford and GM into banking. Plus: The Super Bowl of livestock shows highlights high cattle prices, changes to online search behavior affects digital ad revenue, and “Marketplace” host Amy Scott talks to Jordyn Holman at the New York Times and David Gura at Bloomberg about the week’s economic headlines.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.

The state of the New World Economic Order post-Davos, advertisers adapt to AI, plus a visit to the cattle auction from American Public Media. This is Marketplace. In Denver, I'm Amy Scott in for Kai Rizdahl. It is Friday the 23rd of January. Good to have you with us. The World Economic Forum wrapped up in Davos, Switzerland today after a week of fiery speeches behind-the-scenes. diplomacy, and general hobnobbing among the global business and economic elite. So with us to talk about what went down and the rest of the week's business and economic news

are Jordan Holman of the New York Times speaking to us from Davos and Bloomberg's David Gurra in New York, right, David? That's right. Hey, Amy. Hey, thanks for being here, both of you. So Jordan, as I said, you are in Davos. You've been talking all week with CEOs there. What have you been hearing? Yeah, so the week started off with everyone thinking the topic to juror would be AI. It quickly

turned into geopolitics as Greenland became a topic for President Trump, and then everyone just started anticipating his arrival. So I really wanted to understand what CEOs care most about, and it's really across the spectrum. But the main thing was that there's so much uncertainty, not knowing how they should make investments, not knowing what our relationship with Europe would be. and I had the chance to talk with European CEOs who especially were concerned about the future relationship with the United States. Yeah, well, David, of course, the theme we were hearing back home from Davos has been what Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called a rupture in the world order as the United States has retreated from global cooperation, increasingly antagonizes its allies. how would you describe the U.S. role on the global economic stage right now? Yeah, I think that speech from Prime Minister Carney continues to reverberate around the world.

So he talked about this not being a transition, about it being a rupture. And I think he said what a lot of people were thinking going into Davos, as the president kind of made clear his designs on Greenland. And he spoke to the fact that there are all of these kind of middle economy countries around the world who are rethinking their relationship with the U.S. and other multilateral institutions. And so Davos for him was the last stop on this trip that took him to China in the Middle East. And we've seen Canada kind of reposition itself in light of what the U.S. is done when it comes to trade policy. And I think he was voicing what a lot of other leaders are thinking that if the U.S. is going to be this kind of unreliable partner,

if there's going to be the kind of uncertainty that Jordan was just talking about, countries have to make other plans. And that really is, I think, the legacy of this, the first year of President Trump's second term, how leaders of companies, leaders of countries are navigating that uncertainty. and amidst all of that, trying to plot a path forward, trying to plan, and increasingly it's on a different kind of map on different kind of routes than they would have done before. Yeah, so sticking with you for a moment, David, as you mentioned, we have just completed a year of the second Trump administration, and therefore we're a year into this new Trump economy. We did have some macroeconomic data out this week on inflation and GDP growth. How would you characterize that economy one year in?

I think that there were a lot of signs of resilience to this economy, and that's true on the kind of consumer side as well. The consumer for many, many years now has proven more resilient than I think a lot of people would have expected. But we talk a lot about this case-shaped economy, those who are doing well and those who aren't. And so, you know, this week you got personal spending data. There were signs that consumers are kind of hanging on and still spending. But we're talking about certain consumers who, if you have property, own property, own cars, are able to make those big purchases. I look at the hard data. I look at the soft data as well.

And consumer sentiment data, sentiment data among executives too. And we're seeing that start to kind of come up better than it had been before. I think there's a bit more confidence, a bit less focus on tariffs and trade policy. But there is still this kind of underlying frustration with the fact that things are still expensive. There's concern about kind of the strength or integrity of the job market. And that's kind of manifest in everyday Americans living their lives. I think it's something that policymakers are paying more and more attention to, Amy, as well, just sort of how strong, how long this economy is going to remain, the labor market's going to rain as strong as it has been. Yeah, so Jordan, you talked to corporate executives at a lot of consumer-facing companies.

Were you surprised to see that consumer sentiment hit a five-month high in January, according to the latest from the University of Michigan? I mean, we should say it's still low, you know, 20 percent lower than this time last year. But what do you make of that improving sentiment amid all the turmoil we've been talking about? Yeah, this is a really confusing economy. We are coming just off of a strong Christmas holiday season, which is always an important part for consumers. But I think the fear that I'm hearing from executives is that the other shoe is going to drop, that right now they have been so expecting that things would get back to normal, that maybe things would even out. but because some of the other elements of the supply chain of not knowing exactly where growth would come from outside of their company,

that that's a confusing thing, especially there would be mentioning the K-Safe economy, that the growth is really being fueled by the higher income Americans, the income Americans. So that's still a signal that they're looking at, the bifurcation of the consumer market right now. So just to close with the Fed this week, David, the Supreme Court heard arguments over President Trump's efforts to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. And then, of course, we have next week's FOMC meeting, which everyone will be watching for interest rate policy. What is the state of Fed independence as it stands right now? There is so much going on. And so that Supreme Court case, those arguments are certainly really

important. That meeting seems like a kind of done deal that the Fed's not expected to do anything with rates at that next meeting and Fed Chair Jerome Powell just has a couple meetings left as chair. I think that the big thing on the horizon is who is President Trump going to pick to be Jerome Powell's successor at the Fed. That list just keeps getting shuffled around. The president said he's finally finished interviewing candidates for it. But as we kind of look ahead to what's to come, I think that's going to be kind of the defining thing. Who ends up getting the nod from the president?

And if that person is going to have an easy run of it going through the Senate. All right. David Gura is at Bloomberg. Jordan Holman is with the New York Times. Thanks both so much and have a good weekend. You too, thanks. On Wall Street today, a little up, a little down. We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

The U.S. economy is about to get some new banks. This week, federal regulators approved applications from Ford and General Motors to set up deposit insurance for new banks the automakers are creating. Ford Credit Bank and GM Financial Bank are planning to start offering online savings accounts along with auto loans. These banks owned and operated by corporations are known as industrial banks, and according to the FDIC, there are only 23 of them in the U.S. Marketplaces, Justin Ho has more. Industrial banks operate basically the same way as traditional banks.

They take deposits and make loans. Karen Petru is managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics. She says industrial banks are also eligible for FDIC insurance. which backs deposits up to $250,000. Petru says when a bank can provide that safety, it doesn't have to pay as much interest to its depositors. And the lower you can drive your funding costs, the lower you can drive your lending costs,

and the more competitive you get. Auto companies have plenty of reasons to offer competitive loans right now. David Wiston, an auto analyst with Morningstar, says sticker prices are being pressured by rising input costs and tariffs. And right now, wealthy people are making up an outset. share of the market, buying expensive cars with fancy trims. People who are not at that price point, I know we're near that price point, and just want a car, they frankly can't afford a new one.

An average new one right now for the whole industry is just under $50,000. That's why Wiston says auto manufacturers are trying to give customers some relief without having to lower the sticker price. And then instead you give your customers help on the loan or leasing side. The FDIC hasn't always been enthusiastic about Indeastern. industrial banks, says Julie Hill, Dean of the University of Wyoming College of Law. She says one concern is whether industrial banks are taking business away from smaller community banks, for instance.

We're trying to do lending in this space but aren't solely focused on the type of lending that the industrial banks are doing. Hill says traditional banks and their holding companies are also subject to more regulation than the corporations that own industrial banks. But Hill says whether the FDIC is okay with that depends on the administration. And I think that you're seeing an uptick now in applications for them because we think the current administration is more likely to approve them. That's why Hill says other companies could start launching their own banks in the coming years. I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace.

It is no secret that the American-made apparel industry, like much of domestic manufacturing, has been shrinking for decades. 97% of clothing, shoes and accessories bought in the U.S. are important. which means it can be challenging to buy American. Good thing, there's a book for that. Here's the next installment of our series, My Economy. My name is Alex Goulet. I'm the co-author of Crafted with Pride, along with Willie DeCanto. Crafted with Pride is a directory of clothing, footwear, and accessories made in the United States.

We kind of informally call this the Yellow Pages of Made. USA. It's got over 1,400 brands from high-end designer apparel to the more kind of functional pedestrian active wear, workwear. So you're basically just kind of flipping through looking for things you need within these different categories. Willie and I met about a decade ago. Both of us started our interest in American Made gear with more of like a vintage perspective. Both of us were working in vintage clothing industry. And I think that the turning point of just like a casual interest to something more serious came when a factory that we were visiting in Connecticut just went out of business one day. this company was manufacturing hats for some of the biggest menswear companies in America.

Things started rolling our heads were, you know, thinking, geez, like how do we, how do we do something to prevent more of these companies from going out of business? We had a little short list that we had put together, and I think it was something like 200 companies. At some point I said to Willie, well, we're pretty much near the end here. I think we got them all. a year later, after months and months of research, we had had that list grow to 750. The second edition has 1,400 companies, and then the new edition coming out is going to have almost a thousand more companies. It was priced at 35 for this past edition.

We found a great publisher. We've been working with New Hampshire. For us, it was very important. that if we're making a book about American-made gear, that the book also be printed in the United States. You know, I think we've created something interesting that people have been organically interested in. We have all sorts of people reach out to us.

Hey, you know, I have a company. I'd love to be in the book. Or, hey, you forgot this company or that company. Making money is important. Obviously, supporting ourselves is important, but Maine USA is about supporting jobs, supporting the businesses that are in this book, and we're kind of hoping to change people's perspective on how they buy things. And if we can just do a little bit of that and make a couple people shift their mindsets on how they buy things,

I think we're succeeding. Alex Goulet is co-author of Crafted with Pride, along with Willie DeCanto, new edition coming out this spring. And as always, we want to hear from you. You can get in touch with us at marketplace.org slash my economy. Coming up. Big bodied sound usable females. Don't worry.

He's talking about cows. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 285.6 tenths of 1% to close at 49,098. The NASDAQ added 65 points, 3 tenths of a percent to finish a 12. 23,501, and the S&P 500 crept up by two points. Basically flat, though, to end at 6915. For the week, the Dow slipped half a percent. The NASDAQ dipped one-tenth percent.

The S&P 500 dropped four-tenths percent. Homeowners, snowplow operators, and power grids are all preparing for a giant winter storm this weekend. Hundreds of flights have been canceled already. Southern Company, the biggest power company in the South, basically stayed flat today. Lowe's Company. companies, purveyor of shovels and ice melt rose 6 tenths percent. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Amy Scott.

Ads are coming to chat GPT. OpenAI said last week it would start testing out advertising with its free and lower-cost subscription products. For the company, it's a way to get some more cash flowing to help pay for all those infrastructure investments. And for advertisers, potentially a way to keep reaching consumers. when chatbots are surfing the web for answers, instead of humans doing it themselves. Marketplaces Sabri Benishore has our story. We can ask chatbots pretty much anything.

Hey, chatypt, can you open the pod bay doors? Oh, you're pulling the good old Howe 9,000 line on me. Well, I promise I'm a little less rebellious than Hal. If we had pod bay doors, I'd happily open them for you. But while chatbots are opening the pod bay doors of information, They are also closing them for certain advertisers, or at least that is the fear. It simply summarizes our content without a link and gives you everything you need and satisfies the user's demand, and then they don't click through to our content so that we can make money off of it.

Danielle Coffey is president of the News Media Alliance, which represents thousands of news organizations and publications. She says some websites have experienced 20 to 96% drop-offs in click-through. The last vestige of hope that we could, you know, capture some revenue to continue to invest. That's going away and it's going away quick. The whole nature of the Internet is changing dramatically right in front of our eyes. Gil Luria is head of technology research at D.A. Davidson. So how are advertisers who are used to a world where website visitors are human going to adapt to one where the visitors are AI? The short answer is we're not quite sure yet.

The longer answer is we're very motivated to find out so we will. ChatGPT serving ads is one way, but this new world has also spawned an array of startups offering their own solutions. There's like kind of two webs that are forming, right? One that's human-facing and one that's agent-facing. Dan Goikman is co-founder of a startup called Dapier. And we provide you the tools to put your content in. into a format that AIs can easily ingest. That parallel internet will at least get company's product on the radar of chatbots.

So if someone is searching for a new blender, their product can show up in the options. But Goikman says people aren't going to totally abandon websites and social media. They will still see ads. The website will still be a tent pole for many brands and publishers. So another strategy, Dapier and others are pursuing, is to put AI in those ads. ads and websites. Michael Rubenstein is co-founder of a startup called First Hand. So instead of seeing a traditional static advertising experience, they'll see something AI powered that will invite them to engage and will adapt on the fly. So an ad for pants on social media that would let you talk to it.

Do you have these in my size? Do they come in blue? What material are they made of? Or, says Rubinstein, advertising AIs can straight up ask consumers what they want. And then delivering information in real time around specifically what it is that they're looking for. That, he says, can mean AI ads won't have to know a bunch of your personal information and preferences ahead of time. But then again, AI could be used to know exactly that and take personal targeted advertising to a whole new level. Catherine Tucker is a professor of management at MIT. My big AI allows content or format actually potentially really resonate. for the person who's seeing me at.

But at this point, if the nature of the internet is in fact changing before our eyes, it is wide open what its future will actually look like. In New York, I'm Sabrina Benshore for Marketplace. The National Western Stock Show wraps up here in Denver this weekend. The annual trade show and festival is known as the Super Bowl of livestock events.

There are rodeos, horse and livestock shows, music and dancing, and of course, auctions at a time when beef prices are at record highs. Colorado Public Radio's Dan Boyce checked out the merchandise. The Stock Show has a lot going on. Bucking Broncos and trick-roping, live music and petting zoos, pristinely primped farm animals are presented to stadium crowds judged on their every minute physical trait.

Unfortunately, he lacks some underlying muffling. And then, past all that, on the north end of the Stock Show grounds, a more fundamental piece of the livestock industry is on display. We're overlooking a pen of five heifers here. Willie Altenberg's a volunteer superintendent, helping run cattle auctions out here at the stockyards. These cows aren't all done up for the beauty pageants inside. They are ready to sell.

Commercial cattlemen like to come to Denver. and see the cattle that are in their working clothes, you might say. Lots of stock shows have auctions, but few in the U.S. are on this scale. Rachel Showalter's out here with 12 young calves from her Western Colorado ranch. Do you play favorites? Yeah, this one right here. She's a favorite. She's like a pet.

You can pet her. It's her first time trying out the Denver auctions, and there's high demand for what she's selling, breeding heifers, future mama cows to make money. more cows elsewhere. Hopefully they'll go today to a new home this evening and get to contribute to that ranchers herd. Prices are high. Heifers like these can each fetch three, four thousand dollars or more. Five years ago, it was closer to 2000. So Willie Altenberg says the yards have been totally booked for some of the auctions here. They've actually turned cattle away. I mean, these pens will be

plumpful. There's so much optimism in the industry. optimism for those selling the cows, that is. For the ranchers buying these heifers, it's more like sticker shock. I'm talking on the phone yesterday to a young man, and he's wanting to rebuild and buy some of these heifers to put back in, and what are they going to cost? And I said, you know, it's not cheap, is it? Cattle are a commodity, and buying any commodity at its record high price carries risk. Will these prices stay at those record highs?

so ranchers can recoup these investments and battle inflation across their operations. Equipment, labor costs, insurance costs, all of that stuff has went up. That's Justin Sidwell. He's selling 44 calves and heifers from his ranch. Big bodied sound, usable females. He says he's not getting rich from today's beef prices. They're finally for the first time in many, many years where they ought to be. At these prices, He says he can finally cover his rising expenses and make a profit.

And we just hope and pray that we can keep them from falling drastically in the next few years. The Trump administration is increasing beef imports from Argentina in an effort to bring down prices for consumers. Many U.S. ranchers are frustrated by that. Still, industry analysts say those Argentine beef imports are pretty small in the grand scheme of things. And rancher Rachel Schoelalter says much of that foreign beef is a lot leaner than the grain-fed beef produced in the U.S. Leaner meat coming in helps kind of fill the void of lean ground beef while a lot of our animals turn into high-quality steaks. So your fatty, grain-fed American steak dinner is likely to stay at a record high as well. At the National Western Stock Show in Denver, I'm Dan Boyce.

for Marketplace. This final note on the way out, hundreds of businesses, including bars, restaurants, and museums reportedly closed throughout Minnesota today in what organizers called a general strike to protest the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. Though Reuters reports, the biggest Minnesota-based companies have stayed publicly quiet, including Target, United Health, Best Buy, and General Mills. Our theme music was composed by B.J. Leaterman. Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fergali. Joanne Griffith is the chief content officer. Neil Scarborough is the vice president and general manager.

And I'm Amy Scott. Have a good weekend. Stay warm. We'll be back on Monday. This is APM. I'm Rima Grace, and this week on This Is Uncomfortable, fellow podcaster and host of scamplencers, Sarah Haggy, joins me to sort out your work drama. We answer your questions about scammy bosses, managing workplace friendships, and coworkers who pushed boundaries a little too far. I'm going to stay at your place for a bit while I'm breaking up,

and obviously I'll need a key. And that is how you get a squatter. Listen to This Is Uncomfortable on your favorite podcast app.