War sends cargo to the skies

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 8.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2026

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Military conflict, like the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, can wreck carefully planned cargo routes. While some ships were sent around the Horn of Africa to avoid the Red Sea, other merchants are pivoting to a costlier measure: transporting goods via airplane. The catch? Air cargo often travels through major airport hubs in the Persian Gulf. In this episode, logistics economics and geopolitical conflicts collide. Plus: Retailers release holiday earnings, vehicle sales may have rebounded, and Compass clashes with Zillow over online listings.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm just going to go ahead and say that risk is still macroeconomic worry number one.
0:07.7	From American public media, this is Marketplace.
0:17.0	In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Ritz.
0:23.2	All it is Tuesday.
0:24.4	Today, this one is the third of March.
0:26.3	Good, as always, to have you along, everybody.
0:28.2	We are four days into things in the Middle East, and the only thing that is clear is that there are a whole lot of things that aren't clear.
0:35.9	So we're going to talk about that and what that means economy-wise. Greg Ipp is at the Wall Street Journal. He also joins us on the occasional
0:42.3	Friday. Hey, Greg. Hey, Guy. How are you? I'm all right. Thanks. Test my premise. Risk. What is your
0:48.1	assessment of the risk tolerance, the risk atmosphere out there? Well, you wake up to a new war in the Middle East,
0:55.2	and obviously people are worried, and that adds to the risk in the whole geopolitical economic
1:00.0	situation. And this comes out of time when people are already kind of on edge about, like the AI
1:04.4	bubble bursting, or maybe everybody losing their jobs to AI, still some inflation pressure
1:09.4	out there. So it kind of adds to an overall mix of anxiety
1:12.1	out there. Now, all that said, I would say that the reaction in the two days of trading we've had
1:17.1	since the war began has been muted. On Monday, oil rose, but it didn't rise as much as a lot of
1:23.9	analysts had expected. Stocks fell off, sold off, but the end of the day, mostly
1:28.2	unchanged. Tuesday, we wake up, and it's almost like a delayed reaction. It says, oh, wait a minute, there's a war going on. Oil goes up some more, and stocks fell. But even so, you know, I've been through a lot of these things over the years. Right now, it still feels like a muted reaction by the markets to what's going on in Iran.
1:45.8	Talk to me about the dollar and bonds, would you? Because the dollar's been rallying,
1:49.8	bond yields are going up, which means people are selling bonds. Explain all that.
1:54.0	Sure things. So let's talk about the bonds part. That's a little bit easier to explain.
1:58.6	So when people worry about inflation, for example, because
	...

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