How's that grocery bill looking?

is watching the war.

“And we will start the latest set of stories from our series, The Age of Work.”

In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizdal, it is Monday today, this one is the 13th of April

good as always to have you along everybody.

The global news of the day, I'm going to guess you are up to speed on negotiations not happening, blockade, happening, markets having it seems grown accustomed to the whip lash and the misdirection were mostly okay with it all, even oil without too much argument the economic bell weather of this war, up only a couple of percent for the global benchmark. So in an attempt to separate the signal from the noise, we are going to spend the first

part of the program today on the nuts and bolts. The ways the economy keeps on grinding while geopolitics does its thing and then as promised we will get to the first of our Vietnam reporting. The big Wall Street story today is of the big banks, which are going to be reporting earnings the next couple of days.

“Goldman Sachs started things off this morning, profits were up in Q1, almost 20% compared”

to the same time a year ago, thanks in part to the revenue it earned advising companies on mergers and acquisitions and other kinds of corporate deals of which one should say there have been many this year, but as marketplaces just in home reports, it is also likely we are going to see some signs this week, the war is affecting bank earnings. There are a few ways that the war can actually boost profits at big banks.

For one, they do a lot of stock trading on behalf of their clients, and over the past a month stock markets have been volatile. Increase volatility is often times very favorable for trading results. That's juror capacity with RBC capital markets. He says banks earn fees when they execute trades for their clients.

And because of increased volatility, clients of these companies trade more frequently. The effect that the war is having on energy prices is also boosting revenue for energy companies. Nate Tobik, CEO of Complete Bank Data says that can also help the banks that lend to the sector.

Some of these companies are going to say, hey, we finally have a need to do some of these

bigger capital projects to expand, and that's going to be increased loan volume for really any banks that have that sort of energy exposure. But Tobik says there are plenty of companies that are being harmed by this war. Either because they're directly exposed to the conflict, or because they're just less confident. Stephen Bigger, a bank analyst with Argus Research, says banks could see revenue slow in the near future.

Because many companies might hold off on mergers and acquisitions, or IPOs. It's just a pause and activity until you get some clarity on the global ramifications of these conflicts. Banks are also concerned about the effect that the war is having on the U.S. economy, as David Schiff with FTI consulting. The price is continuing to stay high and inflation stays in an elevated level, particularly

around fuel and energy costs. That starts to have a ripple effect across the consumers, which then has an impact on small businesses. And Schiff says that means banks will start to worry about their borrowers. And as a result.

On the one hand, you see credit underwriting standards tightened. On the other, you see provisions start to increase for potential losses. All of that, Schiff says, will limit how much the economy can grow. Some of that is just businesses themselves, no one in to grow. And then it gets magnified as financial institutions pull back on credit lending.

So it really raises that specter the longer this goes on. If the war does drag on, Schiff says we'll likely see evidence that banks are pulling back in the next two or three quarters. I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace. Wall Street to start the week, traders not at all upset by the geopolitical turn-off events.

We will have the details. Yeah, when we do the numbers. Oil and energy costs, as we told you last week, drove inflation higher in March 9th, 10th, month over month, 3.3% year over year. Although is not grim in the world of price levels, one category that bucked the trend

and saw a little inflation slow down not to be clear falling prices, but prices going

“up more slowly than expected, that category is an important one, food at home.”

Grocery prices, in other words, grocery inflation came in at a relatively tame 1.9% annually.

Marketplace is the first to drop, as more on that.

In recent years, there's been a lot of turmoil among specific food commodities.

heat-damaged coffee crops, low cattle supply, and disease.

“If you think back to what was happening a year ago, really remember then we had the wake”

of avian flu. Good news, egg farms fared better this winter, which has egg prices down nearly 45% year over year, according to the March Consumer Price Index. Other categories that saw some relief include butter and cheese. Despite those drops though, grocery prices are still up 1.9%.

All of this conversation about inflation still involves prices going up just slower than they might otherwise be your head then. It means there are categories rising enough to more than make up for the lower price of eggs. Take tomatoes.

They cost 22% more than they did a year ago.

Ricky Volpi is an agricultural economist at Cal Poly. There's little question that tomatoes is sort of a case study in the ongoing impact of the current administration's tariffs. There's a 17% tax on tomatoes imported from Mexico, a tariff that was not struck down by the Supreme Court and remains in place.

Plus, Volpi calls the vegetable slash fruit a sort of inflationary perfect storm. Tomatoes are labor intensive, they're very energy intensive, they require transportation, they're heavy, they're spacious, and all three of those labor energy and transportation are current sort of long-term structural pain points in the food supply chain.

“Transportation and energy is going to become increasingly key as diesel prices climb because”

of the war.

David Ortega is a professor of food economics at Michigan State.

The canary and the coal mine here are really the perishable food products. They are the least processed, require the most travel, and are time sensitive. Ortega says any food that lives on the perimeter of the grocery store will see price hikes first. That's going to trickle down down the supply chain here in the coming months.

As of March, the USDA forecasted that in 2026, the cost of food at home will increase more than 3%. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace. Even as drivers are staring down rising prices at the pump $4.12 a day, the cars in trucks we are driving have on the whole got slightly more fuel efficient.

“The energy information administration says gasoline consumption fell about 1% last year”

from 2024, and it was down 4% from the pre-pandemic high in 2019. And that is happening, despite the fact that we're driving more vehicle miles traveled as the government's measure of our driving habits, up more than 1% last year, and as Marketplace's Henry App reports, that's in keeping with a decade long trend of slowly rising fuel efficiency.

One thing that made the oil shocks of the 1970s especially bad was that cars back then weren't very fuel efficient. Daniel Spurling is a professor of merit as at UC Davis. And I was young, a car got 13 miles per gallon, you know, now they're getting 30 miles in some of them are up, 50, 60 miles per gallon.

And that's largely thanks Spurling says to federal regulations that were created in response to those oil crises. The industry has been obligated to continually supply more efficient vehicles. But because we tend to drive our cars for a long time, the average vehicle on the road is nearly 13 years old.

Those more efficient vehicles take a while to change our overall gas consumption. Joshua Lane is a professor at the University of Maryland. We still have a lot of vehicles on the road that have relatively low fuel economy. They were, you know, produced back a long time ago when those standards were weaker. The federal government started bolstering those standards about 15 years ago, so as newer

models keep cycling into traffic, we'll keep seeing overall fuel economy rise. As Rebecca Chaz, it Purdue University. And that price at the pump? It will hurt slightly less because the average fuel economy, even on these older cars, is much higher than it was in the previous years.

The federal fuel economy rules have also pushed companies to make more electric and hybrid vehicles. Carl Brower at iccars.com says over the last 20 years, hybrids especially have become a lot cheaper for car companies to produce. The cost of the batteries has been dropping, the cost of the motors has been dropping.

The space and the weight that both of those things take up has been dropping. That's made hybrids way more common and popular, but last year Congress and the Trump administration

And some car companies have started making more trucks that don't get great mileage. So fuel efficiency Brower says could eventually plateau or even get worse. I'm Henry M from Marketplace. We're near Brookhurst, I was just going to say the heart a little bit. Southern California has the largest population of Vietnamese people outside Vietnam.

And that community is concentrated in a part of Orange County called Little Saigon. I'm embarrassed to say that I've been in LA for 25 years.

I've never been down here, which is bad on me, I guess.

Best Vietnamese food in the world right now.

“I think that's our next stop today, all right, great.”

I finally came down here for our continuing series the Age of Work, which is about the aging of the U.S. labor force and those in other wealthy countries. And the younger increasingly dynamic workforces in some developing economies. Over the next couple of days, we're going to be bringing you stories from Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City. About the growing role the labor force there is playing in shaping the global economy.

But we're starting here and Little Saigon with three stories of generational change. Little Saigon's made up of four cities now. So is that right? We're in guarded growth, Westminster, Santa Ana in Fountain Valley. Tam and Lin win are outside advanced beauty college. It offers courses in cosmetology and manicuring, hairstyling, lots more.

It is obviously a family business, you two are siblings, not you didn't start it, though. No, almondad started this. We came from Vietnam after the war in 1975.

“Let's hit the stage here. You were like, you were a little kid, right?”

One year old and you were sort of... Your mom was pregnant, right? Yeah, my mom was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. I was pregnant. Can you know? So the war ends in 1975. Mom and Dad flee here. Came with nothing. And so I need and created the beauty college. Because Vietnamese were coming over in tens of thousands being processed.

So Dad being a South Vietnamese Navy guy created something so that Vietnamese could have an economic opportunity. Stories like this are what this community is built on. The stories of people who came here after the fall of Sagan in 1975. The United States and Vietnam of course have a complicated history. But diplomatic relations normalized in 1995.

And after 2018, when President Trump's China tariffs and companies look in elsewhere for manufacturing, the two economies have become even more closely connected. They're also connected, though, by people. Like many of those coming through this beauty school. Come on in. All right, wait, is there a class actually happening? All right, I don't want to be in class.

So no, we're not having a class. Yeah, they're such things up. They're very close right now. Come on in. There were rows of salon style chairs. There was a hair-washing station and students with their eyes focused right up front. This is our cosmetology class. Hi, I'm sorry. I'll listen to that. I'm really sorry.

And then we teach the students and we're approved to teach it bilingual and both Vietnamese and in English.

But it's just amazing because we're here in the middle of Sagan so they can learn different ways.

Upstairs, we saw students putting that schooling into practice and waxing the eyebrows. Yes. And we got a whiff of the manicuring class. Oh, you can smell the nail polish. That's right. In the almost 40 years that this school has been operating around 50,000 students have come through.

“There's some statistics like 50% of the nail technicians in this economy are Vietnamese, right?”

It's correct. So 80% of California nail salon professionals are Vietnamese and more than 50% nationwide in America. It's kind of this unknown economy that just started 51 years ago by the Vietnamese. Can we talk for a second about the meaning is diaspora here, right? The economic engine in this place is as it relates to what's happening in Vietnam, right? Which is a rising global economic power. How much do you guys think about that, right? And the roots?

Oh, we think about it every day. As little Sagan and Vietnamese business owners were deeply connected. In fact, our team now actually has hired a virtual assistant from Vietnam. Is that right? Yes. She caused a fraction of the cost of the labor. She's bilingual and English and Vietnamese college educated.

An amazing team member now for advanced vehicles.

Yeah, the company that we actually work with that we hire her through. They work with businesses all around the world that hire workforce from Vietnam. So that's one story about the economic relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam today.

But you want to talk about generational change here in Little Sagan. You've got to see the Asian garden mall. Where's the end? It's got both an American flag and the flag of South Vietnam flying out front.

An important symbol to a lot of the first generation immigrants who came here as refugees 50 years ago.

When this mall opened in 1987, it was the first Vietnamese American shopping mall in the country. Clearly a bunch of old Vietnamese guys. That's a regular table sitting there reading the paper.

“There are still shops selling traditional Vietnamese food and clothing. Oh, otherwise. I think it's how you say that.”

And in one corner, a much newer store called Little Sagan official. How are you? Good good. Good to see you. Chris Tran owns it. He started this company in 2020 selling Little Sagan branded hats and t-shirts. Other streetwear inspired merch as well.

With just wearable goods that represent us from the past of history and now going forward.

Why does this community need to be branded? We, I'll be honest, we had an identity to problem with amongst ourselves. It's growing up born and Vietnam raised here. You were. Yes. So a lot of us used to say that we're the 1.5 generation born and Vietnam, but raised all American China acclimate to both. As a kid, I came here as two years old. Once you're at home,

“you're full Vietnamese. Once you leave the doors, you have to be American.”

Show me some of the merch and then I have some questions on it. So some of the merch are like these, you know, sweatshirt and hoodie. Little Sagan. Sorry. Little second. What does it say? Little Sagan. Where am I going to be? So this right here, actually, I saw it on a shirt maybe 20 years ago. People had to say, where does your story begin? I did not even know how to begin that. Does it begin in Vietnam? Does it begin in America? Or does it begin when I became a little bit more mature?

I want to make people proud of where they came from. One of the really interesting things about a little Sagan and the Vietnamese community here are the economic ties that they have with folks back. Keep going. So you pick it up from there?

Well, the economic ties. Here's the thing. I'd deal with pop culture.

Okay. I don't deal with political culture. And what I'm seeing out of Vietnam is fashion, music, food, even technology is amazing. In the 50 years that I've witnessed things that have blossomed here, like to me, we held the mantle at the first 25. They're taking the baton and running with it now. The young people now got that, you know, they got their cousins and they're, you know, they've watched now that with the internet, they've seen what America, Western countries have

done and what Vietnamese have done. And they're next. That baton passing. It's coming up after the break. But first, let's do the numbers. Downdell shows up 301 today. That is six tenths of 1% closed at 48,218 did the blue chips. And as that grew 280 points. About 1.2% finished at 23,183. There's some p5 hundred improved 69 points. 1% 68 and 86. Justin was talking about bank earnings,

record profits of Goldman Sachs. But shares down one and nine tenths per cent on the day. Bank of America up one and a half percent well as Fargo up to one and a half percent city group also expanded about one and one half and one percent. McDonalds is planning on selling

“what they call a craft sodas and energy drinks. That's going to the Wall Street Journal. What?”

For supposed to be cheap, I guess, and the versions of the big coffee chains McDonalds down four tenths of one percent today. Bonds up yield on the 10 year keynote down 4.2 nine percent, you're listening to Marketplace. Shout to that and test know how to do now. I'm an oil proponent of Shopify.de, let's record. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdahl. We're in Little Saigon in Orange County, California.

Today, telling three stories of generational change in one neighborhood in this economy home to the biggest Vietnamese population outside Vietnam. Hello, how's it going? How are you? How's it going? I'm a country. I'm a country. It's the beach. Tommy, pleasure pleasure. Tommy, when they're all of 25 years old, tell me where we are. What's going on? Yes, so we're at let me say gone out here in Garland Grove, California, a low-side gone, and we've been here in low-side gone for over 30 years.

So this is my parents' first child. The parents' first child, that's right.

“But you're running it now, right? Is that the deal? Yeah, so I'm part of this second generation.”

That's hopefully helping my parents retire and taking over. I've been the business for about three years, working alongside my cousin. This lunch spot has a daily counter to order sandwiches up front, a fridge with Vietnamese desserts off the one side, and a lot of cooks you could see working in the kitchen. For those who don't know, what, what are what is abanme? Yes, so abanme is a product. I'm pronouncing it wrong. It's abanme. Yes, abanme. Yeah, so abanme is a product of French

colonization and Vietnamese resistance. We basically turned all of the ingredients at the French broth to Vietnam, and we made it better. It's a twist on a French baguette. You'll do a paté, butter, care, and diacon, any type of meat you really want to put on it, and it tastes really, really good. I'm actually going to buy one, so I can eat it on the way home. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Can we go back in the kitchen, just look around? Yes, absolutely. Please walk in.

“It was busy back there. Half of dozen people slicing meat and vegetables and herbs and making”

bun meat to go. So this is our assembly line. These are some of our lady's, some of the strongest woman I've ever met. This is Anna, right? She comes here at three, three, every single date,

to help us start first. We're making the bread. Is that what you're doing? So she's actually preparing

some of the seasoning for our meats. This is our baguette, right? You make your own? Yeah, we make it fresh every single day. Why are you running this business? I mean, you're a young guy. You want to tell, like, USU or something, right? Yes, that's correct. But you decided to come home. Yes. How come? That's a great question. I didn't really know my parents growing up. They spent a lot of time away as most parents do who run a regular business. Yeah, working at the business.

And when I saw them, they were always stressed tired, covered in flour, and they really wanted me to kind of become that model minority that felt like a lot of Asian Americans parents want their kids to be, right? Go to school, focus. Did you get that? You felt that, right? Of course, of course. And I did, I was on that path for a long time. But as I saw my parents age, I knew that now was the time to help them, to get to know them better, to learn to trade. It was sort of a

now and never moment. First thing you went back to Vietnam to work for a couple of years. Yes,

I was there for a year. What was that like? It was American kid, a Vietnamese descent, going back to Vietnam. Yes. Oh, it was everything. I mean, it was funny because during my

“interview with the embassy, they asked me that. They were like, why do you want to go back to Vietnam?”

You're very living little side gone. You're Vietnamese. And I was like, you have a point. But from all my life, I've only known Vietnam through someone else's lens, right? From the lens of Hollywood media, right? Through my parents' story, from their trauma. And I've never gone to see it through my own eyes. The Vietnam that is right now. I think that's the big struggle about our perceptions of Vietnam is that for the past 50 years, it's been characterized by

larger forces that have seen the country for what it is. The Vietnam right now is not your parents Vietnam. Absolutely. And so that's their memory that they gave you. And now you're went to see it for yourself. Yes. Yeah. Vietnam today is among the fastest growing economies in the world. The labor force there is right in that demographic sweet spot. There are about two working-age people for everyone dependent. A recent study from Harvard Kennedy School

projects Vietnam could lead the world in GDP growth per capita in the next decade. Talk to me for a second about the connection between what happens a little side gone. Yes. And what happens in Ho Chi Minh City today, right? Because there are businesses here that do business over there, right? You've been back there. Yes. Do you feel that connection? Absolutely. I mean, Vietnam and the Vietnamese community is so intertwined in many ways. Sometimes complicated.

But in reality, it's a place of collaboration. Because it is a drive for us to come back to Vietnam, especially the younger generation. All right. As I said, I need one for lunch. Help me order. The best one you've ever had. Yes. No, no, no, no. Okay. All right. So let's go. Tell you what grilled pork bun mimics for a pretty good lunch on the way home. Coming up on the program tomorrow, we'll take you to the Vietnam of today. This final note on the way out today,

just one of those context and facts really matter items that come in handy in times like these. Bloomberg has been tracking the number of ships passing through the street of horror moves every single day. Today, four normal times more than 100. Also and not for nothing. The last fully loaded tankers that pass through the straight on February 28th that is before the war started,

opens tomorrow, there is a crude oil delivery gap. There are a lot of places right in the face.

Saw this from a market research firm called commodity context by the way.

“Remember, by the way, Caitlin Ash, John Gordon, Noah Carr, Steve Mullis and Stephanie Seek,”

are the marketplace editing staff Kelly Sovera is the news director. I'm Kyle Rizdahl,

we will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM.

What happens when your kids childhood becomes your business? I am Rizdahl and this week on

this is uncomfortable, we step inside the world of family influencers, where childhood turns into

“content and content turns into income. What does it do to the kids at the center of it all?”

And what does it reveal about modern motherhood? I think part of the reason that mom and influencers and family vloggers are so popular in the United States specifically is because American motherhood is so lonely. Be sure to listen to this is uncomfortable wherever you get your podcast.