Is U.S. trade policy being run on vibes?

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the Trump administration heads into a weekend of trade talks with Chinese officials, the President is floating a new tariff rate on Chinese imports: 80%. While it’s much lower than the current tariff rate of 145%, it’s still far too high for many businesses. We’ll get into it. And, a recent legal win for Epic Games could shake up Apple’s App Store. Plus, we’ll weigh in on mass producing orchids and going cashless during a round of Half Full/Half Empty!

Here’s everything we talked about today:

"DOJ, FTC open inquiry into the concert industry" from The L.A. Times
"Fortnite applies to launch on Apple's App Store after Epic Games court win" from CNBC
"How Apple Created a Legal Mess When It Skirted Judge’s Ruling" from The New York Times
"Ahead of China-US talks, Trump says 80% tariff 'seems right'" from Reuters
"Revenge RTO: Workers are coming in late, leaving early and stealing snacks as they find small ways to get back at their bosses" from Fortune
"Trump Revives Push for Higher Taxes on the Rich" from The New York Times
"How the Exotic Orchid Became a Mass-Market Commodity" from The Wall Street Journal
"The drawbacks of an increasingly cashless society" from Marketplace

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm trying to get in the Friday mood.
0:06.3	Well, I'm in the Friday mood.
0:07.8	Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today makes sense.
0:11.9	Kai is out today, but we have a smiling, Sabri Benishore with us for Economics on Tap.
0:17.5	Hey, everyone.
0:18.7	Thank you for joining us for our weekly happy hour episode. It is Friday, May 9th.
0:23.6	Yes, and it is. And so we are going to do the thing that we normally do on Friday. We're going to do some news. We're going to do some game at the end. Yes, but first, we're going to do drinks. Sabri, what you got?
0:37.6	I am drinking my lunch.
0:39.8	This is my smoothie.
0:41.4	It doesn't have chicken in it this time.
0:42.8	It's just like a bunch of nuts and seeds and fruit.
0:46.1	For people who are not present, there was an incident where Sabri was on the show, and his smoothie had frozen chunks of cooked chicken in it and I will never
0:55.8	recover from that. You know, that's great. So I have my cross-border cocktail. So I got this
1:04.8	bottle of Canadian maple whiskey from the duty-free shop when I was leaving Canada last week. And I used that
1:12.7	Canadian maple whiskey with this Virginia distillery, malarkey, yes, Merlarky. So I got some stuff
1:24.4	from this distillery that's in Virginia, and this is an old-fashioned elixir.
1:28.7	So I used the Virginia old-fashioned elixir with the Canadian whiskey to make an old-fashioned.
1:36.0	And it's sweet.
1:38.7	It's kind of sweet, but it's good.
1:40.8	Yes.
1:41.2	So it's a very sophisticated drink, I feel.
1:47.0	Also very... It's two ingredients put together. Yes. So it's very sophisticated drink, I feel. Also very... It's two ingredients put together.
	...

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