Do you buy the retail sales number?
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Retail sales were down in January, but the Census Bureau report — with its mish-mosh of data — can obscure nuances in consumer spending. In this episode, we talk to economists and other experts about how they cut through the noise. Plus: An American city and Canadian city with interlaced economies brace for tariffs, Americans love their meat sticks and the women behind a wine shop-restaurant-bookstore tell us about their business.
Transcript
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| 0:58.3 | Your discussion prompt today, |
| 1:01.5 | this economy, this week, |
| 1:03.4 | what happened and why. |
| 1:05.3 | You have six minutes. |
| 1:07.7 | Ready? |
| 1:08.9 | Go! |
| 1:10.2 | From American Public Media, This is Marketplace. |
| 1:18.9 | In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Ristall. It is Friday today, the 14th of February. Good as always to have you along, |
| 1:29.3 | everybody. It has been a week in this economy. Inflation, of course, retail today, and, you know, |
| 1:37.7 | all the rest. Rachel Siegel is at the Washington Post. Jordan Holman is at the New York Times. Hey, |
| 1:42.0 | you two. Hi, Kai. Hey, Kai. Jordan, I would like to begin with you and the topic of retail sales, and I would |
| 1:48.0 | like to point out that those sales were down according to the information we got this morning. |
| 1:52.5 | Also, consumer sentiment is not great in this economy. Here's what I want to know. |
| 1:57.5 | What is your tell on consumers in this economy? What is the canary in the coal mine that |
| 2:03.4 | you're looking for to say, you know what? This is turning into a problem. Yeah, so retail sales |
... |
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