Trump and truckers, Poland prospers, and a booming ant biz
The Indicator from Planet Money
NPR
4.7 • 9.5K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s episode: The Trump administration cracks down on immigrant truck drivers, Poland becomes a top-twenty economy, and the booming business of … ant smuggling?
Related episodes:
A trucker, a farmer, and an entrepreneur walk into a global supply shock
You Could Always Go To Poland
The little pet fish that saved a town in the Amazon
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | NPR. |
| 0:02.0 | This is the indicator from Planet Money. |
| 0:13.4 | I'm Darym Woods. |
| 0:14.7 | I'm Waylon Wong, and we are joined today all the way from Planet Money by One Miss Mary Child. |
| 0:20.7 | Hello! Hi, you guys. Thank you so much for having me. It is always so excited. all the way from Planet Money by one Miss Mary Child. Hello. |
| 0:21.6 | Hi, you guys. |
| 0:22.2 | Thank you so much for having me. |
| 0:23.3 | It is always so exciting to have you, especially because today is indicators of the week. |
| 0:31.4 | We are here to tell you about the most interesting numbers in the news this week. |
| 0:37.3 | On today's episode, we have new regulations for immigrant truck drivers. We have... We are here to tell you about the most interesting numbers in the news this week. |
| 0:41.0 | On today's episode, we have new regulations for immigrant truck drivers. |
| 0:43.8 | We have a Polish economic renaissance. |
| 0:44.9 | And ants. |
| 0:46.7 | A whole lot of ants. |
| 0:48.4 | That's all after the break. |
| 0:54.1 | All right, indicators of the week. Let's start with you. Waylon. My indicator is 200,000. That is the number of foreign-born truck drivers that could be losing their jobs under new regulations from the Trump administration. These new rules went into effect this week. And they affect people who are here legally on temporary |
| 1:12.7 | visas like refugees and asylum applicants. They also apply to Dreamers who are here under DACA. |
| 1:19.9 | And for the most part, they will not be able to get commercial driver's licenses. And just to put |
| 1:25.8 | that 200,000 number in perspective, the government says that |
| 1:29.1 | that affects around 5% of active commercial driver's license holders as of 2024. |
| 1:34.9 | So the U.S. could be losing 5% of truck drivers with this one policy change. So do you think |
| 1:41.7 | we'll all notice the impacts right away? It'll probably be more gradual. |
... |
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