"Resilience" is the word of the week

do you think that your word and the word Wall Street banks are using are the same? From American

“public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdoll. It is Wednesday,”

today, 15 April. Good as it always is to have you along, everybody. We're going back to Vietnam,

our series, the age of work in just a couple of minutes, but we begin today deep in the heart of American capitalism. The big banks are reporting quarterly profits this week and the geopolitics of this economy aside, it seems now that we've heard from Goldman Sachs and City Group, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo and this morning Bank of America, it seems that things are going just fine. All five of them reported healthy growth and painted a picture of an economy that continues to

chug along despite everything Marketplace and Megan McCarty Carino gets us going.

Banks can still make money when the rest of the economy goes haywire collecting fees as money

“moves around during a market freakout or helping distressed companies sell assets. But what's”

notable about this week's earnings is what they say about consumers. And Tom S.A. at 7's report research says banks are in a good position to know. There are essentially financial supermarkets, and they really have a 360 review of most American consumers financial lives now, whether it's through checking loans, credit cards, and bank leaders kept using the same word to describe them in earnings calls. JP Morgan Wells Fargo Bank of America despite consumer sentiment

falling to an all-time low and rising gas prices, consumers continue to spend, at least,

well-off consumers. If you're on the lower income cohort, you're getting squeezed harder and harder and harder, and that is a problem. But it's not a big enough problem yet to sort of put the whole

“economy in jeopardy. But it could become a problem as higher energy prices trickle through the”

economies, as Chris Stanley, a banking strategist at Moody's analytics. The thing that we should keep an eye on here is inflation and inflation expectations. Lately, folks are expecting inflation to grow, and that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It could be people worried that prices are going to continue to go up, and they might be pulling some of that spending forward. A spending surge can lead businesses to increase prices even more,

but the biggest factor for consumers, according to Gerald Cohen and economists at UNC Chapel Hill. Jobs, jobs, and jobs. If the labor market is strong, consumer spending will be too, and lately, it's been volatile fine but worrying. You might say, resilient. For now, I'm Megan McCarthy Carino from Marketplace. Wall Street today all-time highs. I'm really not sure what else to say. We will have the details when we do the numbers.

This next story starts in southern California. This is a crummy little warehouse, but don't underseal it. We just got here, man. And it ends in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I like the bird collection to the right. Birds, a couple of dogs. ADP Chief Economist Neil Richardson and I are doing stories about Vietnam this week, and the growing role that workers there are playing in the economy here. It's for our

series The Age of Work, which is about the changing demographics of labor forces around the world and how they're changing how the global economy works. That warehouse that we started with. So if you look on the shelves, you're just there. It belongs to a guy named Bill Webster and his son, Bill Webster. Hey, Bill. Good to see you guys father and son. Look at that. Holy cow. Same. He's in a pod. Holy geez. They're the co-founders of a company called the garage

celebrations, which sells big stretchy pieces of fabric. Spandex and polyester designed to go on a garage door to make it more festive. So you can have Merry Christmas. Happy Halloween. Put American flags up costs 150 bucks or so for a one car garage door cover 200 and up for a two car. It's like a big pair of Louis Le Men yoga pants. In case it needs to be said,

car garage is maybe the most American thing on the planet. Right. Exactly. So if you're wondering

what these two guys named Bill selling garage door decorations in California have to do with Vietnam, well, here you go. Would you guys be where you are with, you know, it's a small business

“but growing right? Million dollars from revenue. I think I wrote some more summer and I'm not”

feeling too simple. Would you be where you are without Vietnamese manufacturer? No, I don't think we wouldn't have even been able to start. As we've been saying this week, Vietnam is in a demographic golden age. After the Vietnam War there was a baby boom, which means there's a huge cohort of people there, right in their prime working years. And that has attracted American investment

and health entrepreneurs like the Websters turned their ideas into companies. To truly understand

that relationship though, you got to look at both sides of the Pacific Ocean. So this is Bill's product. This is Bill's product. This is Bill Webster. Okay. Sunny Lau owns the factory in Ho Chi Minh City that makes Bill Webster's garage door covers. Oh, look at that Merry Christmas. There it is, Merry Christmas. Wow. Christmas in what are we in March? Usually the Potashon Saiko will be this time six hundred hits, six months ahead of the holidays.

All right. His company is called Saigon Printer. It specializes in something called sublimation, which is a way of getting colors on the fabric by heating the ink to almost 400 degrees Fahrenheit. It's so hot. It's so hot. Bill's originally from Singapore, but his career in textiles has taken him all over the world. In my early days and I said 35 years ago, I was in the interns in Singapore with Hong Kong and then I joined American company,

Ralph Roberts. Yeah. Yeah. We were around for almost 30 years, so they gave me a chance to travel around the world, different productions, facilities, Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar,

“UNIMI. Why did you choose Vietnam to set up this factory? I think I always kind of like go to a”

place because I was needed at that place. 2018, this Vietnam was really receiving a lot of business orders. Why in 2018 was Vietnam getting so many business owners? One reason is the the trade

tensions from China to the U.S., and Mr. Trump first terms we were able to put in the

turf. And so the brand already aware that they need to spread out the risk. So definitely in Vietnam is the best choice compared to the rest of the Southeast Asia country. The majority of the the people here, the workforce are in their 30s up and down. Politically it's very stable. And it's very near the channel geographically because the raw materials is still coming from China. Right, right. For what it's worth, the Webster's Bill actually tried having their garage door

covers made in China, but they couldn't get the big producers there to work with them on the

“small orders that they wanted to start with. And manufacturing in the United States costs double”

what they can get from Asia even with tariffs. So like a lot of companies just starting out, the Webster's turned to Vietnam. Can you show us around? Oh anyway, let's take a look. Yes, yeah come. Sunny showed us a bunch of the parts of the printing process. Two big printers right away, right up front. They were around the size of a small car. Sunny said they cost $50,000 U.S. a piece. Computer driven, right? So people need to have the skills to do. Yeah, so let's say we're here.

All right, oh, here we go. So this is the graphic teams. A couple of people on computers doing design work. So this young man, how old is he? Can we talk to him for a minute? Yeah, please. Through our translator Andy, we learned he'd only been working there for about a month. So he's a freshly graduated and this is his workshop. You studied design in college and he's getting more training here. For the specific textile design that we're doing here, he's learning

when he's working. Learning as he goes. Yes. And the name and term. Lamous term, right? That he's a chef. He learned how to cook. But now he comes to say on printer. He needs to cook the dish that we're cooking. That's very good. That's very good. I like that. I'm going to use that. That is the way. That is the way. Sunny, is it hard to find workers like this? Traditionally, traditionally. Most of the printers, they were hired technicians from overseas as a Chinese

technician who comes here because they have been doing for many years. In the initial year, when I started, I do have Chinese technician. And once the foundation is there, I have the Vietnam who are the senior who have already got the skill set. And in continue, we do localize.

How important is this new class of Vietnam's worker to the U.S. consumer?

“Very important. Because in this industry, my principal is that we are in a meticulous industry,”

meticulous. And the major contributor in this business is the human being. Even if you have AI, you have robotic stuff coming out. If the human being is not there,

the way you look for it, that product will never come on. In a conference room nearby,

where there were finished products on display, quality printed, nice hot key jersey, and certifications on the wall for sustainability and worker safety that lets them work with big American retailers. We met one of Sunny's right-hand people, his sous chef, to keep running with that analogy. Would you tell me your name, please? Yeah, my name is I'm a lit of trading of psychoanalysts. I'm Hendo, the Galaccao Vaperson and the development also.

And the development of how long have you worked here? Yeah, I've been in psychoanalysts for three years. Three years. What did you do before this? Yeah, I'm just graduated from my university

and I come directly. I'm stuck from the zero. So you're very young? Yeah, I'm 28.

28. Miss Trang is another one of those primate workers we've been talking about. She studied both English and Chinese at university. Oh, in this part, I communicate with my customer, because my customer is from U.S., Australia and some from Europe also. And for the Chinese

“I use things for my material sub-sing. Sorry, material sourcing. So your Chinese suppliers?”

Chinese supplier and some partner I work in Vietnam with Chinese also. Have you ever been to the United States? Yes, I've been in U.S., one just one in the magic show. And the magic show, that's a big convention. It's a trade show. Yeah, I feel that it's so so special for me for the chain to break the English. You're really pretty good. Did you go shopping for any of the products that you made? Did you go to stores and buy your products? Yes, of course.

You can see here. She grabbed two pink and blue kids bathing suits up off the table. So it's a stock market? It's a market. Sorry, you went to Target. Yeah, we bought this. Yeah, and we go there and we see a lot of products printed by U.S. and we still, we are so proud of it. The fabric for those swimsuits, which is printed here at this factory in Vietnam, it's sewn together by workers in South Korea,

before being shipped to the United States, we're trying to buy them at a target. Was it surprising to you how much of the products and the stores were made in the year in Vietnam? Yeah, I was surprised. I did not think that Vietnam would become strong like that. Why do you think they wanted to make products in Vietnam? What is it that you guys have? This is not my thinking. This is my, my, my listening from my customer. They come pick up and they say that

for the, for Mac from Vietnam, either good quality. They, when they send go to sleep and they can sleep well. Yeah, yeah, I have the phone, sorry, I have the phone. Of course you have a phone,

“completely understand. Because service is a very important part of this business. So sure,”

you can't get more American than a two-car garage, especially when decorated for the fourth or July. But we couldn't have those or all the kids bathing suits a target or so many of the products Americans buy every single day with that people doing the work halfway around the world. Come up tomorrow on the program, the Vietnamese high tech economy. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow and Dels drills up down rather 72 points, two cents a one percent, 48,463. Then

as deck added 376 points, that is one in six tenths per cent, close to 24,16. The S&P 500 up 55, eight tenths a one percent, seven thousand and twenty two that I mentioned all time highs. All right, we're talking about Vietnam and a major restoration for U.S. Manufacturing Intel

is made a huge investment there, billion and a half dollars over the past 20 years. Today,

Intel up one and eight tenths per cent, Boeing, which relies on Vietnamese plants to build certain airplane parts, increased a tenth percent Apple, which, of course, makes some Apple watches air pods and iPads there, climbed two and nine tenths of one percent on the day. But prices fell the yield on the tenure treasury note rose 4.28 percent on the 10 year,

We got set up, I think, in less than a day with very little effort, we could just focus on

“the supply chain to the product development. Shopify gives us the ability to customize without”

the complexity. We can change something without introducing fragility or having to pay a developer. Where thirsty total and we leveled up our business with Shopify. Start your free trial at Shopify.com/AU. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdal. It's tax day today, as you hopefully know and he balanced due, is due by midnight unless you got a refund coming. And speaking of refunds,

there's news of money of a different kind coming back. The federal government is set to start processing tariff refunds next week for companies that pay the presidency illegal import duties

that the Supreme Court struck down in February. All told the government owes some 160 billion

dollars in change, but hoops will have to be jumped through to get those payments. The biggies,

“your Walmart's and your phoenixes, they've got the resources, the lawyers, the accounts,”

smaller companies, not necessarily as Marketplace and Novosafo reports. Here's the good news. The refund process that customs and border protection has set up looks relatively simple. Businesses just need to upload an Excel document to a new online tool with a list of tariffs they want repay. Dan Anthony heads, we pay the tariffs, a small business coalition. It's a lot easier than what could have been required in terms of higher employers or

filing individual cases. Still, there are hurdles. Take the experience of Beth Beniki, founder of busy baby. I have a line of silicone baby products, all design and keep toys within reaching out the floor at home and on the go. Beniki makes her products in China. Her orders are too small for U.S. manufacturers. She's been trying to get set up online to get $50,000 in tariffs back from customs enforcement. I've been calling and submitting tickets

to which they tell me here's the instructions on how to create the account. I tell them I am creating the account. I'm getting an error message. She's determined to see this process through, but says she can understand how other small businesses don't have the time or expertise. Casey Wright of Howton Horns, a musical instrument retailer, hadn't even heard that the refund process was about to begin. Awesome. No, I last heard that they were working on it.

Howton Horns is owed about $100,000, but there's a complication. Most of those tariffs were paid through intermediaries. So UPS FedEx, they're going to go have to get the refunds and then find some process to pass that on to us. And we have heard nothing from them so far. FedEx has promised refunds eventually. UPS has urged companies to prepare paperwork. Pete Mento, at the advisory firm Baker Tilley says all companies should file for refunds, even if it's just

to get the hang of doing so. So our current tariff burden of 10% on practically everything we're importing from anywhere, probably in 8 to 10 months from now, we're going to go through all of this all over again. Because Mento expects those tariffs to be overturned as well. I'm Nova Soffield, former marketplace. Crude oil today, higher obviously than it was a month and a half ago, but unchanged on the day low to mid 90s, a barrel for both benchmarks. That is good news, relatively speaking for oil

consuming economies, which is all of them. This oil shock, as you know, is being felt especially hard in Asia. And when you hear that China imports 70% of its crude give or take, you'd imagine it's pretty exposed. But as marketplace Elizabeth drove all reports, while it is far from a

“moon, China's actually better position than you might think. You'll remember the story of the”

ant in the grasshopper, the grasshopper plays all summer while the ant works hard to store food for winter, well, yes, which insect China is. China has been really deliberate about preparing for these types of shocks. Conway Irwin with S&P Global Energy says, "Well, things were getting tens last year with the U.S. and oil exporters, like Iran and Venezuela, China focused on growing its already massive oil reserves." Adding to that reserve was a really smart hedge against the potential

for future price volatility. And that's especially true because at the time China was getting discounted barrels from Iran and Russia because of sanctions. So the rain has come and China fortunately for China has the biggest umbrella. Colin Hendrix is with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. China entered the conflict, you know, with these crude inventories

estimate between 1.1 and 1.4 billion barrels, which is enough to cover about 120 days of imports.

China also has been intentional about finding oil outside the Middle East.

who says it's not just the oil supply that's diversified. It's the whole energy system.

“Much of the world still operates on Petro State principles in terms of being very oil centric.”

The Chinese are working to become an electro state. And while China's big bet on electrification isn't a silver bullet, Columbia's Erica Downs says it is helping the country weather this crisis. The conflict itself is, you know, almost certainly going to make China double down on its push

to electrify its entire economy. This basically proves China's strategy correct, which includes

pivoting to renewables, says Gong He with City University of New York. It shows the benefits to accelerate our energy transition to, to worse, more, or redeuba, and cooling energy. That could be a lesson. Other countries learn a hard way. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace.

“We got the latest beige book today. That's the feds anecdotal snapshot of economic”

conditions across its 12 districts, the things published eight times a year. The words that Middle East appeared 59 times with the war cited as a major source of uncertainty complicating kind of everything in New York and indoor golf place put a pause on its capital improvements and its hiring in Richmond, a motorcycle dealer cut production to six days a week to cut costs. In that spirit of the beige book, we did a survey of one of our small business regulars.

Johanna Dominguez owns put a plant on it in Buffalo, New York. Business is touching go right now.

We still have been pretty cold up here. I mean today it's a little bit warmer for the first time,

but like the weekends have been really good during the week. It's a little bit slower, but it's it's hittermas. We are looking forward to whenever spring will actually come here. We are hoping it's maybe this week that it will actually start being spring. We did get our first large shipment in this week, so that's kind of our start of spring, whenever we get our large shipment from Florida. It's a little scary in some respect, so this last order I did with our broker, so we either get plants from the

broker or we basically act as a broker and get plants from a lot of different nurseries. And right now it's considered the nursery busy season, so there is a surcharge for the busy season. And then our regular trucker also added a surcharge for the tariffs and the fuel issues as well. So there's like a double surcharge. And so that's part of the reason why I went with the broker instead because we wouldn't have had such a high shipping cost. So that is definitely something that we're

concerned about. I know I've talked to other businesses and a lot of friends who are artists because we carry all local artists in the store. And even they have said that they notice that a lot of people are kind of holding their breaths and their wallets and that it's been a little bit slow for them. We're starting to see a little bit of that. Our weekends are still pretty good and solid. And we do have the large accounts that are coming through. But I would say I definitely have noticed

a little decrease in in sales because everyone is just so tense and nervous about what's going to happen.

“Yeah, I get that. Johanna, the man goes there, Buffalo, New York, put a plant on it. Is her store?”

[Music]

This final note on the way out today in which, first of all, you remember a couple of weeks ago,

I kept pointing out that the markets are an idiot. Definitely still that. And second of all, I can die now because I have definitely seen everything. Have you heard of all birds? A once white hot, but now quite struggling shoe retailer? The company announced this morning, and I am truly not making this up. That it's going to pivot to artificial intelligence. It's going

shares on the day up 580% you guys are meeting your production team, includes Brian Allison,

“John Focke, Montana Johnson, Drew Jostad, Gary O'Keefe, and Charlton Thorpe, Alex Simpson is the”

manager of Media Production. And I'm Kai Rizdall, we will see you tomorrow, everybody.

This is APM.

“Jungle, jungle, jungle, jungle, gather round children young and old,”

for million bazillions holly jolly techs days season 10 for mere spectacular,

starring Bridget and Ryan. That's right, we're back with brand new podcast episodes just in time for tech season. And what good timing we have, right? Because Ryan needed a major lesson on getting his taxes done. I really did. I learned all about 1099's W2's audits, though I probably could have skipped the deal with the strange ominous man in the hooded cloak, who said, "If you choose this shot we path, beware, you'll have to indulge in a creative interpretation of

US tax law." Yeah, I didn't like that last part. Anyway, tune in this week to learn all about

“what you should and shouldn't do for a smooth tech season. Listen to Million bazillion on your”

favorite podcast app.