Category: News

What is a sovereign wealth fund? President Trump's executive order calling for a plan to start a U.S. sovereign wealth fund is not a new idea. But it remains a topic of much debate among economists and policymakers. So is a national sovereign wealth fund a good or even viable idea?

A version of this episode originally aired Oct. 1, 2024.

Related episode:
Why oil in Guyana could be a curse

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President Trump speaks fondly of William McKinley, the 25th U.S. president who was a strong advocate for tariffs. He's credited with helping to protect the fledgling tinplate industry in the late 19th century. But did the tariff work? We take a closer look at McKinley's tinplate tariff and if it was worth the cost.

Related episodes on tariffs:
Trump threatens the grim trigger (Apple / Spotify)
Canada's key resource against Trump's possible trade war (Apple / Spotify)
Why Trump's potential tariffs are making business owners anxious (Apple / Spotify)
Trump's contradictory trade policies (Apple / Spotify)
How Trump's tariff plan might work (Apple / Spotify)
Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (Apple / Spotify)

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Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

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President Donald Trump had promised new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. However, after negotiations with both Mexico and Canada on Monday tariffs against those countries are paused for at least a month. He said tariffs are not a negotiating tool, but he's used them as one as recently as January in a dispute with Colombia. Today, we dissect the game theory behind Trump's use of tariffs.

Related episodes:
Canada's key resource against Trump's potential trade war (Apple / Spotify)
How tariffs have been used throughout US History (Apple / Spotify)
The game theory that led to nuclear standoffs (Apple / Spotify)

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Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

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With so much water in the eastern U.S., why can't the region pipe some of it to its drought-prone neighbors in the West? This perennial question nags climate journalists and western water managers alike. We break down why building a pipeline is unrealistic right now for the Colorado River.

Related episodes:
How Colorado towns are trying to get some water certainty
The trouble with water discounts

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Why haven't American 8th graders' math scores recovered? Does Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actually have the resources to make all the deportations Trump's promised? And what's the path for interest rates in the Trump economy? All that on Indicators of the Week.

Related Episodes:
The U.S. once banned Chinese immigrants — and it paid an economic price
Why Is The Fed So Boring?

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Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

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Canadians have a key leverage point if President Trump makes good on his threat to impose 25% tariffs: oil. We talk to a business journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on why oil would be the "biggest arrow in the quiver" should Canada and the U.S. descend into a trade war — but only as a last resort.

Listen to CBC's Cost of Living with Paul Haavardstrud here.

Related episodes:
I will PAY you to take my natural gas
Oil prices and the Israel-Hamas war

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Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

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President Trump is making big moves to shrink and reshape the federal workforce. He's offered buyouts, instituted a hiring freeze, and called for prioritizing job seekers who are "passionate about the ideals of our American Republic." While his actions have drawn criticism, some see an opportunity for the new administration to improve the federal hiring process.

Today on the show, Jennifer Pahlka, Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center, tells us why, in her view, government hiring has been broken for a long time while sharing her thoughts on Trump's proposals to fix it.

Related episodes:
What happens when Social Security runs out of money? (Apple / Spotify)
Why Trump's potential tariffs are making business owners anxious (Apple / Spotify)

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Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

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The story of a man who started buying and selling stocks as a hobby ... and got seriously addicted. We also speak with a neuroeconomist about the human brain on day trading.

Related episodes:
The young trolls of Wall Street are growing up
Invest like a Congress member

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With the LA wildfires still burning, we were left with a lot of questions. Today, we answer two of them: whether GoFundMe campaigns could interfere with receiving federal assistance and how much of those "proceeds" from special product sales actually go to wildfire victims.

Related episodes:
After the fires (Apple / Spotify)
Why is insurance so expensive right now? And more listener questions (Apple / Spotify)

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Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

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Indicators of the Week unpacks numbers from the news. This week, we delve into what President Trump's first AI announcement reveals about the economics of the industry, a Chinese company's answer to OpenAI, and the reason why Prince Harry may have settled with Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

Related listening:
Is AI overrated or underrated? (Apple / Spotify)
AI creates, transforms and destroys... jobs

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

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