Month: April 2025

Amazon backtracked yesterday after reporting revealed the company was planning to display how much tariffs were raising prices on individual items and the White House angrily pushed back. Other companies, including Temu and Volkswagen, are being upfront with customers about tariffs’ impact on product prices. We'll hear more. Also on the show: factory activity falls in China, and a view of the economy before Donald Trump took office and 100 days into his second term.

As a part of the Harris Policy Innovation Challenge, UChicago graduate students were tasked with answering the question, “What can Chicago do over the next three years to create a thriving downtown for the next 20 years?” The winning team came up with a proposal to revitalize a stretch of Michigan Avenue – from the Chicago River to Roosevelt Road – into a pedestrian-focused cultural corridor. In other words: get rid of cars. Reset learns more about the potential benefits of a car-free zone with Samantha Anderson, UChicago student and member of Harris Policy Innovation Challenge’s winning team, and Daniel Knowles, Midwest correspondent for The Economist and author of Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse And What To Do About It. For a full archive of Reset interviews, head over to wbez.org/reset.

From the BBC World Service: New data shows China's manufacturing activity took a sharp dip in April — a sign that the ongoing trade war with the U.S. is starting to bite. Then, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to slash import duties on car parts in a short-term move to help U/S/ automakers. Plus, the U.K. is scrapping a centuries-old tax perk that lets wealthy foreigners shield their global assets.

Canada's liberal party and its leader Mark Carney are set to remain in control after the country held federal elections Monday. They were the first since Canada adopted the Online News Act in 2023, which requires online content providers — like social media platforms — to negotiate some sort of "fair" payment to news publishers in exchange for using their content. They can also do what Meta did — block news from their Facebook and Instagram platforms altogether. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Marketplace Senior Washington Correspondent Kimberly Adams, who’s been reporting on the election from Canada, to learn more about that law and what happened to the online news environment after it passed.