The Indicator from Planet Money - ICE raids, cooling on capitalism, and a Murdoch settlement

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

It’s … Indicators of the Week! Our weekly look at some of the most fascinating economic numbers from the news. On today’s episode: the concept of capitalism is cooling in American minds; the U.S. policies behind the Hyundai ICE raid; and an influential family’s succession saga comes to a thrilling (and expensive!) conclusion. Related episodes: Salvaging democratic capitalism, with Martin WolfHow to pass on a global media empireFor sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong. I'm Adrienne Ma. And coming over to the indicator side of the street this week, one Mary Child. Welcome. Hi, hello.

Thank you for having me. Do we have like crosswalks on Indicator Street? Yes, it's very safe. I would never jaywalk. Safety first. Mary, it is awesome to have you here. And I don't have to tell you both. You know what time it is, right?

Indicators of the week's time. We. That's right. We have looked at interesting numbers in the news this week, and we are here to tell you all about them. So on today's episode... A lot of Americans are not too hot on capitalism these days. The U.S. policies behind the Hyundai plant ice raids. And one long family succession saga comes to an end. Indicators of the week, Adrian, what's your indicator? So my indicator comes from a Gallup poll release this week. In this poll, Gallup asked about 1,100 people whether they had a... favorable or unfavorable view of capitalism? Any guesses as to what percent of respondents say they have a favorable view of capitalism?

Hmm, 32. Okay. I'm going to go a little high. I'm going to go 47. Playing by the Price is right rules, Whalen is the winner here because the actual answer is 54%. Just over a majority of respondents said they have a favorable view of capitalism. And that is my indicator this week.

So a majority of respondents say, you know, capitalism, I'm into it. But 54% is actually a seven-point decline from when Gallup first asked this question to people in 2010. And before we declare capitalism on the skids, the majority of people, the vast majority of people in this poll said they are in favor of small business and also free enterprise. But as capitalism has been losing its luster in recent years, interesting. people's views of socialism has actually improved. And we have about 39% of people in this poll saying they have a favorable view of socialism. What is that compared to 2010? Okay, so that compares to 36% back in 2010.

Okay. So it's like a slight increase. Socialism kind of holding strong. Now, were they just asked, like, capitalism, what do you think? Socialism, what do you think? Or were these terms more defined? So the question was phrased like this. off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following?

And then they would put in the word, capitalism or socialism. You would get a hundred different answers. Maybe a lot of people could interpret this question different ways. But one of the big takeaways, at least according to a Gallup analyst named Jeffrey Jones, is that overall there is a decline in how warm people feel about capitalism. And at least socialism kind of creeping up the wrong. ranks a little bit for Democrats, especially younger Democrats, thanks to politicians like AOC.

But this analyst also says that what's going on here might also be a shift in rising populist sentiment among Americans. And that could be kind of dampening the capitalist fervor. And finally, he says just younger people in general seem less hostile to the idea of socialism than people from older generations. And that even goes for young Republicans. Oh. Socialist Republicans.

I'm going to have to sit with that one. Yeah. That's my political economic indicator. Mary, you want to go next? My number is 475. That is about how many people were detained after a raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia last week. I read about this. Yes, it was big news.

Many of those 475 were South Korean nationals. So the ice raid on the plant targeted workers who were in the country, without the correct papers. And many of them were there to build a battery manufacturing facility in a joint venture between Hyundai and LG. So obviously, we've heard a lot about ice rates lately, of course. And we might be hearing more of this flavor because the FT and the journal both reported that there are a lot of other Korean facilities here in the U.S. with similar visa issues. And it's all because of this sort of absurd tension between two U.S. policies. So on the one hand, the U.S. federal government is saying, we want, in.

international investment in this country and we're coaxing other nations to pour resources onto our shores in exchange for, for example, lower tariff rates. But then, according to this reporting, the U.S. government is just not supplying enough visas for the workers required to enable the actual projects to succeed. I feel like the question here is then, like, couldn't these companies hire Americans to fill these positions? You might think so, but no, not really, because there just aren't enough workers. I mean, the unemployment rate right now is 4.3%. But more importantly, there aren't enough workers with these technical skills. We just haven't been doing manufacturing here so our workforce does not have the experience or the expertise in these areas. So maybe

domestic workers could get trained, but certainly not on the timelines that these projects mandate. Are you saying that these projects have to get done really quickly? Yes. A lot of the companies have gotten government grants, which have mandatory deadlines. And if those deadlines are not met, they could lose out on that money. So, in order to get their projects up and running fast enough, apparently they were just cutting corners on visas. So workers have been coming to the U.S. to work on visas, like, for example, the B1 visa, which allows entry for business purposes but doesn't allow working for pay while

here. And apparently, this has been an open secret for many years, but U.S. authorities just were not enforcing anything. And some of the news coverage I read said that maybe contractors were involved in doing the hiring, right? So it's a little bit like maybe the companies are saying, oh, we worked through this intermediary and we don't know what they were doing. Yeah. This does seem to make things a little bit awkward between U.S. and South Korea.

Yes. The raid just so happened right as the U.S. and South Korea were nearing the finish line on a trade deal. South Korea was going to create a $350 billion investment fund to spend in the U.S. as part of the deal with the U.S. and the U.S. would set tariff rates at 15% down from 25%. This sounds like something that, I don't know, the administration might frame as like an art of the deal thing. The latest news on this is that the Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with South Korean officials, and most of the South Korean nationals who were detained are flying home. Thank you, Mary.

Super interesting to see how that is going to play out. Last and the most, is that you raised? I'm always the most. The opposite of most. Bring it home. All right. So did you two catch the Succession series finale? Obviously.

I did. Also, it was two years ago. Yes? Loved it. No, I'm actually not talking about the finale that aired on HBO. I'm talking about the finale to the real-life succession saga involving the Murdoch family, which actually was the inspiration for the Roy family in the TV series. You know, the Murdox, the Uber wealthy family that owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal,

the New York Post, among others. My indicator is $3.3 billion. billion dollars. That is the size of a new deal announced this week that cements oldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, as the heir to the family empire. So I guess unlike the TV show with the Murdox, it's actually the oldest son who gets the keys to the kingdom. Exactly. He did prevail. Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are essentially buying out three of Lachlan's siblings, James, Prudence, and Elizabeth. They each get $1.1 billion. And just to give you some background on this, whole drama. Under the terms of a trust created back in 1999, these four children were supposed to get

joint control of the family business after the death of Rupert Murdoch, the patriarch. But the kids aren't all ideologically aligned. So there's been a lot of tension since then. Lockland is considered more conservative and closer to his father than the other three. Do you think he watched Succession and took notes? He's like, okay, don't do that. No big birthday party. Didn't? All bangers all the time on the birthday playlist. Rupert Murdoch sued the other three, right? Yeah, I mean, talk about mess. Rupert asked a court to change the terms of this trust to give Lachlan's sole control of the family business.

And what's interesting is that the argument he used is that he basically said the company's value would be best preserved if Lachlan could run things without his siblings trying to, you know, take the company in a more moderate direction. Oh, interesting. Okay, so best for business means kind of maintaining Fox News's conservative political stance. Yeah, and Lockland, you know, is the guy to do it. And so now there's a new trust. Lockland siblings will not get a say in how the company is run. But you know what? They are each a billion dollars richer.

I wonder how they feel about capitalism. This episode was produced by Andrea Carreras with engineering by Kuizi Lee. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and edited by Patty Hirsch. Kicking Cannon is our show's editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR.