WNBA franchises are a slam dunk in this iffy economy
Marketplace
American Public Media
4.6 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The WNBA’s first expansion team in 18 years, the Golden State Valkyries, played its first game last week to a crowd of 18,000 fans. Though this uncertain economy may not be ideal for most new businesses, professional women’s basketball is soaring to new heights: three brand-new teams joined the league this season. In this episode, why WNBA franchises are emphasizing community over star power to attract new fans. Plus: falling international student enrollment is bad news for the job market and locals push back against lithium mining in the Andes.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is it, folks. Our May fundraiser ends this Friday, and it's your last chance to help us reach an important goal with federal funding for public media on shaky ground at best. We're preparing for a future where we have to rely even more on you, our listeners. Your support powers trusted, independent journalism about this economy, and it makes it accessible to millions of listeners. |
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| 0:29.6 | Marketplace.org slash donate and thanks. |
| 0:33.8 | Another day, another tariff announcement. |
| 0:36.3 | Four two, four three. |
| 0:40.8 | From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. |
| 0:56.8 | From Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland, I'm Rima Grace, in for Kai Rizdal.. It is Friday the 23rd of May. Good to have you along. You know, normally the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, it's kind of quiet, not a ton |
| 1:02.6 | going on. But we know these are not normal times. And there is a lot of news to unpack today. |
| 1:08.6 | So let's get into it. Amara Amokwe is at Bloomberg. |
| 1:12.1 | Jordan Holman is at the New York Times. Hey, you two. Hi. Hey there. Amara, I'll start with you. |
| 1:18.9 | So we woke up this morning to, of course, more tariff announcements, more tariff chaos. |
| 1:24.1 | Trump got on social media. He threatened to impose a 50% tariff on imports from the European Union. |
| 1:29.7 | And he also warned about slapping a 25% import tax on Apple's iPhones if they're not produced here in the U.S. |
| 1:36.7 | You cover the Fed. There have been a lot of conversations about how the Fed is weighing these kinds of headlines. |
| 1:42.3 | If you're at Jay Powell and you woke up to this news this morning, what are you thinking? |
| 1:48.4 | If I'm Jay Powell, I'm thinking that the stance that I and other Fed policymakers have taken is probably the right one. |
| 1:56.8 | And that stance is that the Fed should be on hold because there is just an immense amount of uncertainty around President Trump's economic policies, tariffs being the chief among them, but others around taxes and regulation and immigration and all these things. |
| 2:12.1 | And what we've heard from Fed officials consistently in recent weeks is that they just feel like they are going |
| 2:18.5 | to be in wait and see mode, that this is just not a good time to be adjusting interest rates |
| 2:24.0 | when there is no clarity around where these tariffs will settle, when they are ever changing |
| 2:29.4 | developments on the level of the tariffs. And so Fed policymakers have really signaled that in the near term, |
... |
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