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It's Black Friday. so you know we're going to talk about shopping and the almighty American consumer, plus Chinese consumers as well.

From American public media, this is Marketplace.

In Washington, D.C., I'm Kimberly Adams in for Kai Rizdahl.

It's Friday, the 29th of November. Good to have you along.

The sales may have started weeks ago, and the decorations have been out for ages,

but today, Black Friday, is supposedly the official start to the holiday shopping season.

And even though nowadays more of us may be swiping in our soft pants rather than scrambling for a TV in a big box store, it's still a very big weekend for retailers.

So for more on this and a look back at the Economic Week that was, I'm joined by Jordan Holman,

a business reporter at the New York Times, and Rachel Siegel, an economics reporter at the Washington Post.

Welcome, ladies.

Hi, Kimberly.

So, Jordan, let's start with you, since retail is your thing.

How is Black Friday looking this year? What were you hearing from folks heading into the weekend?

So for retailers, Black Friday is still so very important. It used to be this peak. It's now more of a hill as executives would describe it.

So they still have to staff all of their stores, make sure all the merchandise is there.

But the reality is they have been pushing deals since the beginning of November. And it's just kind of

flattens out the day. It is still a big day that you're going to see the 60% off or 50% off and you're

going to have higher foot traffic in store. And it kind of now is just important to set the tone

for these next four weeks that they have before the Christmas holiday. A shorter shopping season

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