There’s still money to be made in Russia

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2022

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Potato chips. Razors. Air fresheners. These are just a few of the items some of the world’s biggest brands are still selling in Russia after they said they’d suspend sales of nonessential products. But what’s classified as “essential” seems to be in the eye of the beholder, and some of the companies say they’re sticking around to support their employees.

On an abbreviated show today (scheduling snafus happen to the best of us), we talk over the decision some companies have made to keep doing business in Russia even though pressure to cut ties has been mounting since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Plus, are Democrats really considering moving on from Iowa?

Help us keep independent journalism going strong! We’re $28,000 away from our $100,000 goal, and our deadline is Wednesday! Give today to support Make Me Smart. And thank you!

Later, listeners call in with their hot takes on plug-in hybrid minivans and “The NeverEnding Story.” And, we end the show with a musical answer to the Make Me Smart question.

Here’s everything we talked about on the show today:

For Companies Still Selling in Russia, “Essential” Is a Loose Term from The Wall Street Journal
“Renault resumes car production in Moscow as rivals cut ties with Russia” from The Guardian
Opinion | Biden called Putin a war criminal. He was just saying what everyone can see” from The Washington Post
“Democrats circulate plan for changing 2024 nomination calendar, moving against Iowa and welcoming new early states” from The Washington Post

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Kimberly Adams. Hello everyone and welcome to make me smart where none of us is as smart
0:12.9	as all of us. I'm Cara Rizdal. It is a Tuesday which of course means we're going to do a
0:17.3	wait no we're not because we had to change things up because of people's schedules. It's
0:21.5	just going to be me and Kimberly today we're going to do a little news we're going to
0:24.3	do a little mailbag and then we're going to get out of your hair because you know people get busy
0:29.5	and they can't make appointments and we totally understand that but the thing we're going to talk
0:33.2	about today is really good and important and we're going to do it at a future date. Trust me
0:37.5	when I tell you that. Yes. So very important. Very important. So we'll get to the news. Why don't you go first?
0:44.8	I'm going to do half of mine first because there are lights to yours and then I'll come back with
0:48.7	my other one about that. So the first of my news fixes is an opinion piece an opinion piece
0:55.9	in the Washington Post by Josh Rogan. Now caveat I'm not thrilled with this headline but
1:02.8	bear with me. So the headline is Putin has been a war criminal for years nobody cared until now.
1:09.9	Now that nobody is doing a little bit of a lot there because I think there were certain people
1:15.7	who always cared but the whole premise of the piece is that the things Putin is doing in Ukraine
1:23.5	that people are calling war crimes and saying he's a war criminal for doing targeting civilians,
1:29.2	targeting humanitarian corridors potentially using chemical weapons on civilians.
1:35.5	It's literally the exact same playbook that he used in Syria and this has been going on for more
1:42.6	than I mean since 2015 roughly and there was a really interesting quote from let's see
1:53.8	yes from representative Brennan Boyle Democrat from Pennsylvania who says that Putin is using
2:02.2	the Aleppo playbook like that's how similar it is and the quote there that really struck me was
2:08.8	I firmly believe that if the world had reacted to Syria as they are now there would have never
2:14.2	been a Ukrainian invasion to begin with. Yeah look it's tough to argue. And yeah and I know I
	...

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