A year later, is Trump’s investment in Intel… a win-win?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Kyle Rizdahl** (0:32)
On the program today, the week that was, and honestly, it was a week. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdall. It is Friday today. This one is the 24th of July. Good as it always is. To have you along, everybody. This has not been, as I think I said a couple of days ago, a week with a whole lot of data in it. But data is not the whole economic ball game, you know? So we'll have plenty to do for the next seven minutes or so. Courtney Brown is at Axio. Stacey Vanek-Smith is at Bloomberg. Hey, you two.
Hi, guys. Stacey, I'm going to start with you, and I'm going to start with the tariffs that went into effect at midnight, to replace the tariffs that went away at midnight, blah, blah, blah. We all know the details. Here's the thing. Seems to me now that the tariffs, while impactful on an individual basis and with small businesses and, you know, big businesses too, they've kind of become like economic wallpaper. Discuss.

**Courtney Brown** (1:40)
I think that's a good point. It does seem like the tariffs are dead. Long live the tariffs situation, for sure. I think the difference is, though, for consumers right now. I think consumers are in a very different place. We got numbers from the Tax Foundation that in 2025, tariffs cost households about $1,000.
I think with high gas prices, inflation continuing to climb, wages not keeping up with inflation, I think consumers are just in an increasingly difficult situation trying to pay for things. And I think that $1,000, which is expected to be more this year, is really starting to change for consumers and businesses. I think maybe we're gonna get close to hitting a wall here pretty soon.

**Kyle Rizdahl** (2:22)
Well, so Courtney, on that subject, not necessarily of the wall, but what it's doing, we are all kind of still now subject to the president's whims, right? I mean, these tariffs that went into effect at 1201 this morning, they can be changed now at the president's discretion, now that the investigations have been done. So there's not a lot of certainty coming our way.

**Stacey Vanek-Smith** (2:41)
Yeah, let me tell you something about wallpaper, Kai. If it's ugly and if it's loud, it can be pretty distracting, right?
And I think that's maybe how some of my sources would characterize tariffs, right? They, as you say, have become a backdrop, but it's very clear. If we learned anything this week, it is that the president is committed to carrying out his tariff agenda. He has had a couple outs. He could have backtracked. No, he decided to double down. I also want to give a shout out to my sources, several of which told me that President Trump wouldn't dare to double down on tariffs with the backdrop of the Middle East conflict. No, there's no way he would do that. It's too much uncertainty. He's got the oil shock and that's driving up prices. No, he wouldn't double down on tariffs. He is going to double down on tariffs. And so if you had any doubt, this week shows you that they are very serious about their trade agenda.

**Kyle Rizdahl** (3:39)
Stacey, the next bullet item on my list of things to talk to you about says, just back to what Courtney said, the bullet point literally is oil, question mark, war, question mark.

**Courtney Brown** (3:52)
That's pretty much a good sum up of 2026 so far.

**Stacey Vanek-Smith** (3:55)
You know.

**Courtney Brown** (3:56)
Yeah. Listen, oil is just another tough situation. We got some pretty promising inflation numbers earlier this month, and now it seems like straight of Hormuz is closed again, oil is back up around 90 bucks a barrel. As you've talked about so many times on the show, oil prices seep into everything. So, that is just not good news for consumers or for businesses.
It just seems like we're in a real holding pattern here. Every time it seems like there's progress and things are about to come to conclusion, we're right back where we started.