Everybody's Business

Donald Trump’s decision to fire the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, apparently in retribution for a report that showed slower job growth, was without precedent in recent US history. This week on Everybody’s Business we explore why presidents—at least since Richard Nixon—have left the BLS alone, and we hear from former BLS commissioner Erica Groshen on how exactly that data is collected.

According to Groshen, the recent downward revisions in the rate of job growth (which Trump alleged without any evidence was a political hatchet job) were business as usual. She explains that such revisions happen because it takes months for the more than 100,000 businesses the government surveys every month to respond. Some fill in their data electronically; some send it by email or even fax. While the BLS waits, it puts out an estimate; those estimates are often revised later on.

For the past few decades, this approach has been widely seen as a huge success. BLS data, which includes employment and inflation statistics, is relied on by researchers, economists and government policy planners—as well as by businesses. They use the data to help write budgets, plan hiring and set prices. Although Groshen optimistically contends that McEntarfer’s firing won’t immediately dent that perception, it comes amid budget cuts that have already limited the ability of BLS researchers to collect granular data and could lead to questions about reliability.

Also this week, we discuss the controversy around artificial intelligence pricing, which has recently centered around the airline industry, widely seen as the undisputed leader in customer frustration. But the strategy is in fact coming for you on pretty much every type of good and service. We also debate the significance of the American Eagle “good jeans” controversy and ask how much consumers really think about culture wars when they buy dungarees. Finally: A counterintuitive approach to warding off one of America’s most feared predators.

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It was a packed week for the US economy: jobs numbers, an interest rate announcement from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, consumer confidence data and a tariff deadline. Topping the list was gross domestic product, the sum total of goods and services the economy produces—generally considered the measure of growth. After months of tariffs (and Donald Trump’s constantly shifting positions on them), many economists were predicting the US economy would be showing signs of strain. It turns out, that wasn’t necessarily the case when it comes to GDP (though jobs numbers unveiled Friday may give some pause). After falling a bit during the first few months of the year, this quarter, economic growth clocked in at a 3% annualized rate.

But there’s more to this number than meets the eye—or perhaps less. This week on Everybody’s Business, we talk GDP with Ken Rogoff, Harvard economist and author of Our Dollar, Your Problem. His take: the numbers may have been distorted by some of the panicked importing that US businesses were doing earlier in the year in anticipation of Trump’s latest (and now extended again) deadlines. However, he also leans into some chess metaphors (he is, after all, a grandmaster) to address those Trump fans who contend the president is playing four dimensional chess. His verdict? Trump is a “coffee house player.” That’s someone who’s better than you think—but not as good as he himself thinks.

Later in the show, we talk with Evan Ratliff about his feature in Bloomberg Businessweek, detailing how workers in North Korea are taking US tech jobs while posing as remote-working Americans. They’ve allegedly managed to infiltrate some of the biggest and wealthiest companies in the country—and their paychecks go to fund North Korea’s nuclear program. 

Finally,  the underrated story of the week is a canned spirit drink was mislabeled as an energy drink. 

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After 10 years, CBS announced it was cancelling Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. This coincidentally came on the heels of his humorous excoriation of parent company Paramount’s $16 million deal with President Donald Trump over what the Republican claimed was bias in the editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. CBS journalists denied the allegation and legal experts said Trump’s claim was dead on arrival in court.

Colbert meanwhile referred to the payment as a “big fat bribe,” going on to imply that Paramount—led by Chair Shari Redstone—was paying off Trump in the hope he would green-light an $8 billion merger with SkyDance. (On Thursday evening, also the same day this episode was recorded, the FCC approved the deal). Given that Colbert had the best-rated show in its time slot, the move to cancel him was widely seen as a quid pro quo, driving yet another nail into the coffin of free expression. Add to that a GOP-controlled Congress taking back previously approved funding for public media (at Trump’s direction), and some see the end of a free press in America. 

Or, less pessimistically, could it just be the end of outdated business models? This week on Everybody’s Business from Bloomberg Businessweek, Felix Gillette joins Max Chafkin and me to break down the Colbert firing. Gillette contends that, despite its ratings, Colbert’s show has been losing money since the pandemic and that it may have been cancelled in the near future anyway. He also points to the most recent episode of South Park, which tackles the issue of Colbert’s cancellation while taking aim at Trump. The creators of South Park just signed a $1.5 billion deal with Paramount (which owns Comedy Central). So maybe free expression is still alive and well, only it’s not so free anymore? 

Then we take a look at the federal government. Max and Stacey talk with a former employee of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about his experience getting fired by the “Department of Government Efficiency,” what he’s seen happen to the department since and some of the CFPB’s work that isn’t being done (and, in some cases, being undone). Also on this episode:

• Max and Stacey discuss the return of meme stocks: Kohls, GoPro, and Krispy Kreme are feeling the boost. Stacey gets reactions from Krispy Kreme customers.  

• The underrated story of the week: Starbucks’ big plan for turning business around? Serving more coffee. Max takes issue. 

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On the morning of July 16, a White House official told Bloomberg News that President Donald Trump was preparing to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Such a firing would potentially be illegal (as the Supreme Court recently noted) and undermine decades of goodwill that Fed policymakers have built up with investors. Trump quickly took the threat back, while making it clear he might still try to dismiss Powell, ostensibly based on alleged overspending on a renovation of the central bank’s headquarters. On this week’s episode of Everybody’s Business, hosts Stacey Vanek Smith and Max Chafkin are joined by Martha Gimbel, director of the Budget Lab at Yale, to explore what’s at stake. 

Though Gimbel says there’s a case to be made that the Fed has been too slow to lower interest rates, she explains that the idea of either firing or bullying Powell into an extreme rate cut would backfire by destabilizing the economy. She says banks would probably raise mortgage rates in the short run rather than lower them if Powell were ousted, due to the uncertainty caused by such an unprecedented move. The other problem is that interest rates aren’t set by Powell, but by a committee—and the committee might react to Powell’s firing by resisting Trump’s directives.

Also on the episode, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Amanda Mull discusses why travel still hasn’t rebounded from the Covid-19 pandemic. Part of what’s happening has to do with politics: Canadian tourists in particular seem to be staying home in protest of Trump’s provocations. Plus, the pandemic may have permanently changed travel habits, discouraging vacationers from flying and pushing some business travelers to opt for Zoom when they might have previously hopped on a plane. 

An underappreciated factor however is that airline travel has simply gotten less comfortable. This also comes back to the pandemic, which pushed carriers to adopt pricing schemes that allowed leisure travelers to pay for perks while adding new charges for services once provided for free. That’s made the experience for those of us at the back of the plane all the more miserable. On the bright side, the New Yorkers we spoke to—which included New York Mayor Eric Adams, who is having a very bad week—are nevertheless feeling optimistic.

Finally, we explore the growth of  “metaphysical services” by Etsy witches who cast spells for strangers at a reasonable price. Results certainly aren’t guaranteed—and centuries of folklore would suggest that messing with spells is a dangerous game—but that isn’t slowing down this market.

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On Tuesday, seemingly off the cuff, US President Donald Trump suddenly threatened a 50% tariff on copper. The reaction from markets was predictably strong, leaving metal distributors scrambling to get deliveries across the border. In this week’s episode of Everybody’s Business, Bloomberg economics reporter Joe Deaux joins hosts Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith to discuss Trump’s latest musings, how complicated a rewiring of the copper supply chain might be and the stark challenges of bringing manufacturing back to the US. (As in, it takes about 10-20 years to get a mine up and running at commercial scale.) 

Also on this episode, wealth reporter Ben Steverman enters the studio to discuss consumer sentiment as an economic indicator. For many academics (and consumers), the economy is largely made up of numbers to be calculated. But how do you measure how someone feels?

Steverman discusses his recent profile of Joanne Hsu, the director of the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers, an institution that’s been measuring vibes for decades. Over the years, the survey has found that people’s perception of the economy can be a powerful indicator of where things are heading. And as you likely know, recent surveys show that Americans are very pessimistic about their finances. Prices are still considered too high and Trump’s trade war is on everyone’s mind.

Lastly, Smith presents to Chafkin an underrated story of the week: scientists believe they have cracked the mystery of the big honey bee die-off. The likely culprits? Pesticide-resistant mites. This is welcome news to Chafkin, who shares his own story of a recent run-in with a beehive. 

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Happy 4th of July! The U.S. turns 249 this year and there are plenty of economic fireworks to ring in the birthday. After a long and winding road through Capitol Hill, the “Big Beautiful Bill” is poised to be signed by President Trump. The bill is largely an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, and it will have big — and not entirely beautiful — implications for U.S. businesses. 

In this week’s episode of Everybody’s Business from Bloomberg Businessweek, hosts Stacey Vanek Smith and Businessweek Editor Brad Stone (filling in for Max Chafkin) break down the bill, which will add an estimated $3.4 trillion to US deficits over the next decade. It’s a mixed bag for businesses: It will save them billions in taxes, but it is also likely to make borrowing money and expanding a lot tougher. Cuts to entitlements included in the bill could also mean US companies have to step in and provide more services for their workers. 

After 249 years, the economy is due for a check-up. Dr. Allison Schrager, an economist with the Manhattan Institute and Bloomberg Opinion columnist, joins the podcast to discuss the new and very positive unemployment numbers. In June, the US added 147,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1% — a very clean bill of health. Schrager says the US economy is in its middle-aged man era: generally healthy and strong, but perhaps in need of some lifestyle tweaks (get that ballooning deficit under control). 

Finally, it’s time for the underrated story of the week: Media is looking a little less independent this Independence Day. Paramount has settled a lawsuit with President Trump, who accused CBS (which is owned by Paramount) of bias and deceptively editing the 2024 presidential debate. In spite of the fact the suit was almost universally deemed frivolous, Paramount paid out $16 million to make it go away. 

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With Stacey Vanek Smith off at the World Economic Forum in China, Max Chafkin is joined by Brad Stone, the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, and Bloomberg reporter Laura Nahmias. Together, they discuss how significant democratic socialist Zoran Mamdani’s surprising New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary victory could be for Wall Street and the city of New York. 

A parallel to Mamdani’s triumph in an increasingly unaffordable city is taking place this week in Venice, where multibillionaire Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos and former broadcast journalist Lauren Sánchez are to be married. With fierce opposition raging in the Italian city, already made crushingly expensive by over-tourism, does this mean disdain for billionaires is at a boiling point? Chafkin and Stone talk it over. Also, the crew sent out a producer to the streets of New York to ask people the question on everyone’s mind: what wedding gift can you possibly get for the man behind the everything store? 

Chafkin and Stone then turn their gaze to the movie industry. Technology has been haunting Hollywood for a while now. The internet, file sharing, streaming—the big studios have been playing defense against Silicon Valley since the turn of the century. But now they’re facing a potentially bigger threat: artificial intelligence. Entertainment reporter Lucas Shaw walks us through how the industry is fighting with, and adapting to, this seemingly unstoppable new force.

And to end things, Chafkin brings what he considers the most underrated story of the week: the accidental support of a planned coup in South Sudan by a co-funder of Jane Street. 

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As of this writing, Israel’s war with Iran has been underway for close to a week, triggered by a surprise attack ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iranian military and civilian targets. Israel’s waves of strikes have killed hundreds of Iranians while dozens of Israelis have died in Iranian retaliatory volleys. Donald Trump has demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and indicated that America might join Israel’s bombing campaign. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has rejected the Republican president’s demand.

While acknowledging that this is a bit further afield from the show’s usual fare, Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith talk through the Mideast conflict and what it means for the global economy—and for everyone. They’re joined by Bloomberg Opinion columnist John Authers, who’s been covering the war and its implications in his newsletter, Point of Return.

Later in the show, Bloomberg Businessweek contributor Megan Greenwell joins Max and Stacey to talk about the economic destruction private equity has wreaked on the US. Greenwell covers this subject in her critically acclaimed book, Bad Company. PE’s effects on working-class communities are on Max and Stacey’s minds as the industry angles for access to Americans’ 401(k)s.

Finally, Stacey digs into Max’s new feature on Mark Cuban, the Shark Tank billionaire who’s been not not-flirting with a run for president in 2028. They discuss Cuban’s healthcare plans, the challenges of fighting “Trumpiness” with “Trumpiness” and pitch a shark tank-like arrangement for congressional bills.

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Some of the most important forces at work in the US economy can’t be captured by the data, at least not entirely. Take the contribution of undocumented workers—an estimated 5% of the US workforce is undocumented, many toiling in sectors of vital importance to the economy, such as construction, agriculture and food services. With Donald Trump’s immigration crackdowns on the rise, reports are coming in that immigrants (both documented and undocumented) are staying away from their jobs. If the trend continues, the economic consequences could bring this part of the economy to the fore in a big way. 

The less-visible economy is the theme of this week’s episode of Everybody’s Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. Hosts Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith look at the economic impact of immigrants with economist Kathryn Anne Edwards. Edwards says more workers (documented or not) are almost always a net gain for an economy, causing it to grow, expand and become wealthier. 

Then what is going on underneath the inflation numbers? The government’s Consumer Price Index for May came out this week and the numbers look good. Prices are rising at a rate of 2.4%, quite close to the central bank’s “ideal” inflation rate of 2%. Of course, to many of us, it doesn’t feel that way. Some prices, especially unavoidable prices, like food, have risen enormously since before the pandemic and continue to sting. Max and Stacey talk to Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Deena Shanker about how pizza is a perfect economic indicator for this moment, and a window into the profound changes happening in the food industry.  

Finally, the hidden economy inside carry-ons surfaces in a recent seizure by border security in India, which caught a man trying to smuggle dozens of deadly pit vipers. Stacey and Max discuss the underground economy for exotic animals: Whether it’s spiders, parrots or poisonous snakes, the market is worth billions of dollars a year.  

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Hell hath no fury like Elon Musk scorned. Messy breakups grabbed headlines this week, with the strange and storied bromance of Musk and President Donald Trump rather predictably ending in tears (and a series of incendiary social media posts). Musk fired sharp criticisms at the White House-backed tax bill for being fiscally irresponsible. “Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL,” wrote the richest man in the world. 

Indeed, love and loss dominate this week’s episode of Everybody’s Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. Hosts Stacey Vanek Smith and Max Chafkin dive into the so-called big beautiful bill to look at the economic impact Musk is supposedly so worried about, and why America’s love affair with debt could prove the republic’s downfall. The proposed 2017 tax cut extension would add an estimated $2.4 trillion to the country’s almost $37 trillion in debt over the next 10 years.  

Musk isn’t the only titan of industry having a big week. Taylor Swift recently announced she had taken full control of her music library, marking the end of a years-long battle. “I’ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening,” she wrote. Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw joins to hash out the long, tortured breakup between Swift and her record label, and how the fight over her rights helped make Swift the superstar she’s become. 

Finally, it’s time to pour one out for the open tab. Bars are reportedly complaining that young customers aren’t leaving them open like they used to. A number of culprits of this curious behavior are explored, including Gen Z’s alleged struggles with commitment. (If you can’t even commit to handing your credit card to a bartender, how will you ever lock it down with a future partner?). 

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