Let's check in on the U.S. trade deficit

hey, when was the last time you made a new friend? From American public media, this is market play. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Riddle. It is Tuesday. Today, this one is the fifth of May, good as

it always is. Have you long, everybody? You know that thing, I say sometimes, but if you

want to know what the economy has in store for us, look at the bond market, yeah, well, that, the yield on the 30-year treasury bond that is to say the interest the government's got to pay to borrow money is hired today than it has been in almost a year. Marketplaces Christian Shwab gets his going with the bond market to leaves. It's not so much that a 5% rate on the 30-year treasury equals a 5-alarm fire. It's more

like one of those psychological thresholds. Frank Fornock is a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia.

“I think more significant would be if we spend time north to 5% if it breaks through”

and starts to be 5.5%. Still, even a short stint at 5% comes with real-life consequences,

especially since the 10-year treasury yield is also hovering around highs for the year. Higher yields mean higher borrowing costs. 30-year mortgage rates, for example, are 15-year mortgage rates, or car loan rates. What a 5% yield on the longest term government bond says about the economy, is that investors are worried about the war and oil supply and how they will affect prices. Adam Abbas

is head of fixed income at Harris Oatmark. We've had a series of one-off inflationary events. A pandemic, tariffs, a war, now they're blurring together to make high inflation feel like a fact of life. The bond market is betting the federal reserve agrees and will keep interest rates high or even raise them. When he sees her, global head of strategy at credit sites, says investors also worry about the deficit.

The government spends more than it takes in, which means it needs to plug that gap somehow, and that gap is plugged with that debt in the form of bonds. Caesar says the rate on long-term bonds has been headed upwards since 2020 or so. It spent decades before that heading downward.

“I think a lot of people are trying to figure out, like, is there something structurally different”

in the economy that should argue for elevated 30-year treasury yields on a sustained basis? The signal that the bond market might be sending is that the economy has fundamentally changed. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace. Wall Street today, everything's fine. Isn't it? We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

We've got war. We've got an energy shock. We've got bottled up supply chains. We've got tariffs. And we've got today an update on the U.S. trade deficit. The difference between the value of what we buy from overseas and what we sell.

“It was up a bit in March, 4.4% if you want to know.”

But even with that, the trade gap is down year to date over the same period in 2025. A major goal, as the president reminds us all the time, of his administration. It was Marketplace's Mitchell Harman reports that there was a whole lot more than the president's tariffs driving this thing. A 4.5% monthly increase in the U.S. international trade deficit says Thomas Ryan at

capital economics, and the surface looks quite boring, but it's not quite interesting.

So convince me, this was the first month he saw the impact of high energy prices as a result

of the around-wall. Remember, the U.S. is now the planet's top petroleum producer. Gary Schlossberg at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute points out the value of our fuel exports rose nearly 25% in March. Other exports are also getting a boost. U.S. the supplier of last resort, where an ag producer, ag trade, has been disrupted, ag exports. They were up 8% and then defense equipment was another area of strength.

Still, the trade deficit did widen a bit in March. And that's because while exports rose, imports rose even more, driven by demand for computer equipment to run AI data centers,

economist or in Clatchkin. It shows that consumers continue to spend, businesses continue to

“dull out capital. The trade deficit is likely to hold pretty steady in coming months,”

predicts Mary Loveley at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Tariffs aren't causing wild swings in import flows like they did last year, and U.S. demand for imports remain strong. So the deficit overall is not going away. It's moving. China has fallen from the top exporter to the U.S. to number four, behind number one Taiwan, which supplies us with AI equipment, and also Vietnam and Mexico,

where companies are moving more production to supply the U.S. market. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace. Among the many slices of this economy affected by the President's war with Iran, is what's known as the Earth Observation Industry, and one of the biggest names in it, a company called Planet Labs. Chris Nicarro wrote about it for Bloomberg the other day. Thanks for coming

on the program. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. I learned a new phrase today, reading this piece, Earth Observation Industry. What is that? Sure. So, you know, I don't think everybody knows this maybe, but there's satellites that are orbiting Earth, and they're taking pictures of what's happening on the ground every single day, and governments have been doing this for a long time. This industry kind of came out of the government, but now there's a, you know, a whole commercial

sector that's launching satellites beaming imagery down to $5 billion industry about globally speaking.

And Planet Labs is the big, yes. Planet Labs is definitely one of the biggest players. They have, you know, over 200 satellites in orbit, and critically, they take pictures of the Earth every single day, and then the platform that they've built is kind of more like a streaming service rather than ordering images on demand. So anybody can go, you know, I should note that Bloomberg needs is a customer of Planet Labs, but anybody can go and look at this data and see what they want

to see on the ground. So who are their typical customers before we get into the reason we're talking to you? Sure. Governments, the biggest one, and I'm sure we're going to get into that and the attention there on the commercial side. It's kind of all over the place. There are companies that

are doing things like maritime tracking of ships in the straight and poor moves, for example.

There's big agricultural giants, so think about Bayer. Any kind of kind of intelligence operations where you're trying to assess what's happening on the ground, that's where those customers are. Okay, to that tension and the government. Last month, early last month, Planet Labs announced that the government had come to them and requested that they, I guess, suspend their service, explain that a little bit? Sure. Yeah, just about a month ago on April 5th, Planet Labs announced

that they had gotten this voluntary request from the government. You know, we should note that it is said that it was voluntary. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, air quotes definitely because yeah. So over a large section of the Middle East, so this is not just Iran, but this is all the Gulf countries. This is Israel, Lebanon. You know, so it's a very large section of the world. So they move to what's called this managed access model. So all that imagery in their in their

streaming service like platform, it disappears. You can't look at it anymore. And, you know, they kind of decide on a case by case, base is what to let out. The essence of a reason here

“has to be a national security, right? That's what that's what the Pentagon and the government was asking.”

Yeah, so I think I think that's that's a question kind of worth teasing out a little bit. You know, there are real national security risks. So at the highest resolution that these images that these satellites can image at, you know, you can make out really detailed battle damage assessments. You can look at, you can look at troop movements and things like that. But I also talk to other people who are experts in the same sector who say that because of the latency that's involved

in actually from when an image gets captured in space, that actually getting on the ground. And you having time to look at it. That latency is kind of long enough such that it's not really relevant from a military standpoint. And so I would say critics would say that there's not really legitimate military reasons, but really this is more about bad press. Huh. So what are, uh, would be customers of, of planet labs? And, and Bloomberg as well,

“doing other other sources can they go to like a Chinese satellite image in company?”

You guessed it. So China's China is a huge player of north observation. After the U.S. they're kind of the next biggest player in terms of capability in terms of getting images from space.

to companies that are not based in the U.S. So airbus is a big example. So people are considering

“Chinese imagery as well. And, you know, one interesting thing to note there too is that”

there have been Chinese companies that have been out there that have been publishing imagery and analysis on U.S. troop movements. So, you know, you can't stop everything. No, no, you can't. Uh, just to wrap it up, this, this voluntary, again, an air quotes request, there's no expiration time, right? I mean, it's TBD when they get the permission to come on back online. Yeah, they made a statement saying that, you know, they're working to restore

access as soon as possible. I should note that, you know, they, they reached out to us just a few

days ago, and they are starting to try to lift some restrictions, um, not over Iran, but over

Lebanon, and, um, a couple of other areas in the, in the Middle East, and I should know also that that is still not kind of full open access, um, like where you can see them. They're platform.

“You still have to talk to them to get imagery, but I think they're trying, I think they're trying”

to open up as soon as possible, but for now, their restrictions are still on the same. Chris Lecara, uh, at Bloomberg, fascinating piece on the earth observation industry. Chris Lecara, thanks a lot. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. . The census bureau told us today that the number of new homes sold in this economy rose at 7.4% February to March. That is good for builders. It's good for buyers,

perhaps not so rosy though for the half trillion dollar home remodeling industry. A report out this morning from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard says spending on remodeling is going to grow by just a half percent in the coming year. Daniel Aquaman is on that one. Rachel Bogard is true of Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies says the outlook for the remodeling industry is in a word. Stable, because that's a little bit more optimistic sounding than

stagnant or flat. Drew says the number of home owners seeking remodeled permits has grown more slowly of late and sales of supplies like faucets and windows are down. So people are spending less on the building products. When they spend less on that, we know that they're spending less as well on the services for remodeling. In the face of this slowdown, Drew has some advice for contractors. Lean on your higher income clients. Yes, the K-shaped economy is alive and well in the remodeling

industry. Anibon Basu, CEO of Sage Policy Group says that's in part because wealthier home owners tend to be more seasoned ones. They're aging in place, right? We've got a lot of baby boomers. They need to deal with a steps on their homes and these kinds of things. They need to have safer bathrooms and kitchens and so a lot of remodeling activities from that. Along with the owners, America's Housing stock is aging too, which means those homes will need a little more TLC to stay

livable. All of which leads Basu to believe the outlook for remodeling is stronger than it may appear. So his message to contractors right now? Do not reduce your capacity to deliver services to the market. Even that is difficult, though. President Trump's immigration crackdown has made it harder for

“remodlers to find and retain qualified workers. But it's still important to try,”

says Macreena Wilkins, director of market insights with the Associated General Contractors of America. Securing and having an established workforce will put you in the best possible position to be able to take on contracts that become available. Wilkins says more of those contracts should come if the rising cost of building supplies ever starts to ease. I'm Daniel Acumen for Marketplace. [Music]

Coming up! You look at something for five seconds and then all of a sudden you're getting a million

ads. Hey, it when that happens first, though. Let's do the numbers. Dowdustro's up 5356 points rather 3/4 of 1% finished at 49,298. But as that added 258 points that is 1% 25,326 S&P 500 gain 58 points, 8/10% 72 and 59. Everything's fine. Just like I said, right? Intel up almost 13% today after Bloomberg reports Apple talked to the chipmaker about making processors for its devices. Apple signed up two

and two thirds percent on the day Pinterest. It's forecasting revenues for this quarter are going to come in above what Wall Street had been guessing the image sharing platform pocketed six and nine tenths of one percent. Do a lingo added 21% more daily users and paid subscribers last

Do a lingo shed five and six tenths percent is what happened? Bond prices will just do the 30 year today, the yield on the 30 year 4.9 or 9 or a percent. You're listening to Marketplace.

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“This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Resdahl. The National Unemployment Rate regular listeners to”

this program will know has been a bit above 4% for more than a year now. We're going to update on Friday morning. It'll be the April number. But a low national rate doesn't do you much good. When the local rate is a lot higher, Marketplace has spent the fields. Went to Philadelphia. In the last year, more than 17,000 people have walked into an old art deco office building in the center of Philadelphia, looking for help finding work. Inside is one of four publicly funded

job centers in the city. You can walk in here hours of apparition right here on the door, so we're hoping from 8 to 430 every day. Dawn Thomas Hayward is with Philadelphia Works. The city's non-profit workforce development board which runs this in three other career-link centers.

Going up. At the check-in desk on the second floor, there's often a line, especially in the morning.

“I just got laid off. They are now in line either to see their work force advisor,”

said go use the computer resource sensor, do job solutions. Okay guys, the may help. Get into training. Anyone can walk in Thomas Hayward says. The job centers are open to the public. James Anderson is here today. He first came in five or six years ago when he was in his mid-50s. I wasn't cost to read it, tied it at that circle. And then out, you know, I thought maybe I'd just start looking into some of the resources that's available and see where it could lead me.

He told his advisor then that he was interested in vocational training and they got him into a program to get his commercial driver's license. They funded everything, like really helped me get that opportunity to get into a new future. But without much on the job experience, Anderson says it's been hard to land steady full-time work at a good company. Right now, he's only working one day a week and not as a driver. It's been challenging trying to get a job where you could say,

thank you guys, you know, I mean I'm good now and I got to stress that kind of work. Yes, been challenging for me. It's challenging for a lot of people to find work right now. Elizabeth Giddings sees that every day working one-on-one with people to help them find a job or get into an apprenticeship or training program. When I do an orientation for the individuals to get a work for a advisor, the room is packed so I know that economy is pretty bad. And those one-on-one

appointments people can make with her or another advisor are booked until June. A lot of people are just becoming legal and I see individuals that come in to have been laid off since the last year that early part of the spring and they still have not obtained employment. Philadelphia's

unemployment rate has risen from about four and a half percent in December to 5.3 percent in January.

Patrick Clancy, the CEO of Philadelphia Works, says it's consistently higher than both the state and national average. One of the challenges we face as a city is our adult literacy rate. We are severely challenged with some of our adults unable to pass a six or eighth grade reading a math test. Almost 40 percent of adults in Philadelphia struggled to fill out a job application according to a local literacy nonprofit. The city is also the second poorest in the nation

after Houston. And Clancy says poverty creates a lot of barriers to employment. Without stable housing going to work is really a challenge. The same is true if you can't afford transportation, food or child care. And on top of all of that the labor market in the city just feels stagnant right now, much like it is nationwide, Clancy says. All the uncertainty and higher costs around tariffs have made many employers hesitant to hire for a while. And now the war in

Iran and higher oil prices are just adding to that. The sooner we can have more confidence in the

in that sort of hesitant mode. And there's more uncertainty ahead for Philadelphia's economy with Medicaid cuts looming next year. Health care is one of the city's biggest industries.

But for all the challenges, people are getting jobs about 70 percent of those who come into

these career-link centers find something. Every time Elizabeth Gittings learns that someone she's been working with has been offered a job, she's thrilled. I get up and go to my supervisor, I say, I got another placement and I'd just be excited for them. I let them know that, hey, you got a job. We're going to assist you. We're going to help you a transportation so you get your first paycheck. We're going to help you with the career wardrobe to get you three new outfits.

So you can go on that new job looking really nice. For some people, she says that moment might come in a few months. For others, it can take a year or more. I'm Samantha Fields from Marketplace.

“When's the last time you met somebody just out in the wild, you know, and made a friend?”

If you can't remember, well, join the club. But this being a digital economy, there is an app for that. Amara Hashem Steel is an editorial fellow at the Canadian website, the Walrus. She wrote about some of those friendship apps and she tried some too. Thanks for coming on the program. Great to be here. Thanks. Tell me, would you how you came to be using these apps, these friendship apps?

Yeah, it's a great question. So I started seeing ads for them all the time, and I think the way that, you know, Instagram advertising works, you look at something for five seconds, and then all of a sudden

you're getting a million ads. Yes. And I became really curious about whether they worked.

Are you like the target demographic? Who are these apps trying to get?

“I think in a way, yes, and in a way, no. I think I'm the target demographic, and that I'm Gen Z.”

I'm young. My job is often remote, and so I don't see a lot of my co-workers face-to-face all the time. But I also think that these apps like really specifically target people who are working in really hiring fields for they work really long hours, and so they maybe don't have the time to invest in hobbies, but they have a lot of disposable income to put towards like kind of a paid algorithmic front making service. So, in 45 seconds, you try them. What was it like, sort of, experientially?

Yeah. So, I was a little cynical. I think going into it about what this was going to be like. I think I did not have a lot of faith in the idea that an algorithm could actually match me with people who I could connect with. I think that I enjoyed my experience, and I came out feeling like I could see use cases for this right makes a lot of sense. Like, people talk to me a lot about how it's really great for solo travelers, for example, and that makes a ton of sense.

“I think for me personally, as a method of friend making though, I did kind of maintain my initial”

position. I've like, yeah, this probably isn't for me, but it was interesting to try. At a pocket cost, other than like the dinner that they set you up with, how much is this going to run me if I desperately need a friend? Yeah. So, 222, I can tell you in US dollars, it's 2222. So, that's kind of cute per month. Thank you. Yeah, a little too long. It's actually, but you know, time left I can tell you it's 25 Canadians, so that would be something smaller, USD, but then

you can get a three month or a six month package, and then that lower is the price even more, but that of course, none of that includes the cost of the dinner. Right, right. So, that's just the buy-in as it were. Exactly. Right. You have a great line in this piece, talking about reducing a human problem, finding a friend, right, to an interface and a price point. And boy does that take the romance and then, well, not romance, wrong work, but that takes the sort of

human element out of a lot of what's happening here if you're finding a friend. Absolutely. And it's interesting because I think that these platforms, part of the appeal and part of why people want to pay for them, is because they do have that illusion of authenticity and kind of spontaneity where you're not seeing like with something like hinge or tender, you're actually seeing that mechanical process and you're part of the process, where with time left or 222, you get

to kind of buy into the illusion of, oh, this is just happening naturally, but in fact, like it's a sort of technological process working behind the scenes. Yeah, you alluded to it a minute ago, but you're done with these things, right? You go back if you had to, but for now you're fine

without it. Yeah, I would say ultimately not for me. I do think that that kind of solo travel

use case was the one that was most appealing to me in terms of, if I could ever see myself on these platforms again, but I think borrowing that probably not. Yeah. I'm around Hashem Steel.

This final note on the way out today in which quarterly earnings season looks set to become

“semi-annual earnings season. Today the securities and exchange commission as has long been rumored.”

I must say proposed a new rule that would let publicly traded companies report their financials once every six months, instead of once every three increased regulatory flexibility is the phrase

“that SEC Chair Paul Atkins used. Jordan Manchys and Elmaharras, Janet Wynn, Olga Oxman and Virginia”

Case Smith are the digital team. I'm Kai Rizdall. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM. There's so much happening in the world and if you have particularly shall we say inquisitive kids, it can be hard to answer their questions. Hi, I'm Ryan. And I'm Bridgett,

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