Trump's Trade War

Discussion post for March 7, 2025

On today’s show, we welcome Peter Goodman, The New York Times global economist correspondent, for a discussion on President Trump’s imposition of large tariffs, the escalating trade war they are triggering, and the rippling effects across supply chains for so much of what we buy.

Outside of politics, Sarah and Beth share what gifts they still have and use from their own wedding registries and ponder what really holds up over the decades and is worth the investment.

Topics Discussed

• Tariffs, Trade War, and the Global Supply Chain with Peter Goodman

• Outside of Politics: Wedding Registries

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Episode Resources

• Was Global Trade a Mistake? (The New York Times)

• How Trump’s One-for-One Tariff Plan Threatens the Global Economy (The New York Times)

• How the World Ran Out of Everything by Peter Goodman

Don’t miss yesterday’s spicy bonus episode where Sarah and Beth discuss the president’s address to Congress and Democrats’ varied responses.

Trump Produces His Joint Address

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics, and on today's show we're talking to Peter Goodman, the global economy correspondent for The New York Times and author of How the World Ran Out of Everything Inside the Global Supply Chain, because our timing is exquisite. Thank you very much. With all the Trump tariffs and trade war, we already had this interview scheduled. It was very, very enlightening and illuminating and helpful in the midst of all this global economic instability, and we hope you will find it valuable. Outside of Politics, it's spring and people are getting married. So we're going to talk about wedding registries and what we still use from our wedding registries decades later.

Beth [00:00:48] If you would like to know our thoughts about the president's address to Congress, including the response of Democrats to that address, you can check out our bonus episode, which is on Substack. We will have the link for you in the show notes. You can try a trial membership at Substack. We think that if you try it you'll like it and will want to join this excellent, thriving community of people. So we hope that you'll head over there and tell us what you thought of the speech.

Sarah [00:01:17] Next up, Peter Goodman. Peter Goodman, welcome to Pantsuit Politics. Why don't you tell people your expertise so they can understand how incredibly smart we are to have scheduled this interview this week?

Peter Goodman [00:01:40] Well, thanks for having me. I've been writing about the global economy in various forms for 25 years, and I'm the author of a recent book about the supply chain, which has a lot to say about trade wars and where we make stuff and how we get stuff to people's doors.

Sarah [00:01:59] Trade wars. That seems like a phrase we're using more and more in the last few days.

Peter Goodman [00:02:04] Yeah, we've been using it for years, but now it's really at the forefront in terms of these giant tariffs that the Trump administration has just applied to everything coming across the border from Canada and Mexico to go along with across the board tariffs on Chinese imports.

Sarah [00:02:23] Well, this is something that I think we can really lean on your expertise because I don't think I understood just the logistical nightmare of even-- before we even get to the impact, just the logistical nightmare of deciding how these tariffs will work or what they're actually going to be. Because you had a great article explaining the World Trade Organization does a lot of this for us. So if we're going to back out of that organization and these treaties and do it ourselves, I got to say it doesn't seem like a lot of government efficiency here, which is supposed to be another value of the Trump administration.

Peter Goodman [00:02:58] Yeah. You're referring to so-called reciprocal tariffs. So way back before the WTO was created in the mid '90s and before that, its predecessor organization called GATT-- we don't have to bore everybody with what that stands for. But basically individual countries decided what tariffs to put on imports coming in from every other country. And so if you were in a country that had a big shoe industry, then you would have high tariffs on imported shoes to protect your domestic manufacturers. And it could be different for individual types of shoes from scores of different countries. And so there was a lot of arbitrage by manufacturers. What if I bring in a piece of leather from this country where tariffs are low. What if I move it to this other country where tariffs are low on the imports and I can say that it's made in that country. But it was all very complicated, a lot of different details.

[00:04:02] And the whole point of the so-called rules based trading system, the creation of GATT and then the World Trade Organization, was every country could count on getting the same basic deal from every other country. So if you lowered your tariffs on imported shoes to one country, that same minimum would have to apply to every other country. Now we're talking 160 countries that are members of the World Trade Organization. You could then do special deals through regional trade deals like NAFTA. There could be some customization. But the general idea was everybody's part of the same group that polices bad trading practices, and you have a neat and clean way of figuring out what the tariffs are if you're running a business.

Sarah [00:04:55] I think that's just such an important level set, because the way Donald Trump talks about tariffs is like every country's out there on their own just deciding who they want to punish and they were punishing us. And to say, wait, no, that the whole system was built on a level of, to a certain extent, uniformity and fairness that he's just assuming doesn't exist from the output of his argument.

Peter Goodman [00:05:19] There's a lot to say about fairness, right? There are lots of countries that have gamed the system, including our own country. And certainly if you want to focus on China, as Trump likes to do, China has breached trade rules, has been brought in front of the WTO for all sorts of cases. There are subsidies. It's not a level playing field. I'm not here to tell you that everything was fair under this system. And American manufacturers are correct when they say, look, we have to live with union negotiations that shape wages. We have strict environmental standards, workplace safety standards. We're competing against Chinese companies that don't have to deal with any of those things. Unions are basically banned. If you cut a deal with the local regulator, you can get out from under enforcement of environmental and workplace sectors.

[00:06:08] So it's not that it was fair, but the assumption was, okay, if you are willing to send us your goods at a low price while barring our own exporters from getting a good deal in your country-- there are lots of areas that we're not specializing. We don't make that many shoes in the United States anymore. So the idea that we should have the same tariff on incoming shoes from Vietnam, from China, which do make a lot of shoes, jacking up prices for consumers in pursuit of this mythical version of fairness, there's just no equality here. Basically, what we're saying is let's jack up the price of goods that people actually need in this country in pursuit of this principle.

Beth [00:06:59] I find this hard enough to understand around finished goods. Where I really get lost is on components and the way that most of the time we're not talking about finished goods. That's the end of the line. So can you talk a little bit about what Trump's vision is? Let's just use cars as the first example, for products that are bouncing all over the world before they get to a consumer.

Peter Goodman [00:07:25] Well, first of all, you're asking a really important question, and it is an important area to focus on. So we do think about finished goods when we talk about tariffs. But something like 30 to 40% of the stuff that we find inside shipping containers, these are like the workhorses of global trade. These are the things that get piled up at ports and loaded onto rail cars and trucks and they carry all sorts of stuff and 30 to 40% of the value of what's in there is so-called intermediate goods. These are parts, components, raw materials that go into producing things here in the United States. So if you slap a 25% tariff on everything coming over the border from Mexico, a lot of that, to your point, auto parts that are used by factories in the United States that are making goods. And you've made those factories less competitive. These are factories that are employing American labor. I got to say, I'm scratching my head to come up with an overarching, coherent explanation for all these policies. I think, yes, in general, the idea is let's produce all of this chaos and uncertainty and make businesses worry.

[00:08:42] Okay, so there's going to be tariffs coming in from Mexico. Mexico we've been told (and I had to sketch this out of my book) is an alternative to production in China. If you think it's a bad idea to rely overwhelmingly on one country that, not incidentally, we're having a trade war with, that we've decided to treat as a Cold War enemy, that happens to be separated from us by the Pacific Ocean, which means we got to depend upon shipping carriers that are themselves an unregulated cartel to move stuff across the Pacific Ocean, a journey that takes weeks, sometimes months when there's upheaval, okay. Let's move some stuff to Mexico because we can use truck and rail connections to get the stuff we need from Mexico into the U.S.. Well, now we've just put tariffs on goods for Mexico. So the Trump administration response is you're worried about tariffs? Make your factory good in the United States. Make everything in the US and you don't have to worry about tariffs.

[00:09:38] The problem is that there's a global supply chain there. I just came back from a really interesting reporting trip in Louisville, Kentucky, Where I visited a whole bunch of factories, including an 86 year old multi-generational, family owned business that makes pumps. So this company has based themselves in Louisville. They have passed up the opportunity to go to Mexico, to China, to find cheaper wages, to get out from under environmental regulations. And they're sitting there proud to be an American company making goods for Americans. And now they're looking at 25% tariffs on a component coming in from a factory that they actually own in Canada. And I posed your question to the CEO. I said, "What do you think's going on here? What's the strategy?" He said, "I don't know. But if we're the bad guys in this, then everybody's the bad guys." And we have made that company less competitive. We have injected uncertainty into the basic cost structure. And the net effect of that is we've actually made the wholly Chinese owned competitor that already has all kinds of cost advantages more competitive through this uncertainty.

Sarah [00:11:00] I don't even know where to start with this. I think that analysis of the near shoring. So we had the Chinese tariffs and we said exactly what you articulated. Okay. Well, we want to be more competitive with China. So we're going to put the tariffs on China in the first term. People go okay fine. So they moved to Central America. They moved to Mexico. They moved to India maybe. And now it's we're punishing that, too. So no one can figure out the goal of any of this, which feels like it's just a refusal to acknowledge the complexity of the global economy. Maybe it's globalism. Is globalism the enemy?

Peter Goodman [00:11:37] I think that's right. But I think we've gotten so marinated in this ridiculous comic book thinking about the global economy that I can't resist, especially because you guys are in Kentucky. Sharing another anecdote from my [inaudible] trip, I'm at Angel's Envy distillery.

Sarah [00:11:56] That's one of my favorite bourbon. True story.

Peter Goodman [00:11:58] Good stuff. Delicious bourbon. Great operation. And I'm taking the tour there. And tour guide kind of a young hipster guy showing us around, and he says, "Okay, here we are. The 51% or more has to be corn for it to be bourbon. We get the corn from a neighboring county. We get barley from someplace in Ohio." And he says, "We get a little bit of rye from Canada." And he's showing us all the stuff. Guy behind me says, "Why are we buying rye from Canada?" And then he says, "Well, they grow a lot of rye there. It's good quality. It's close at hand. It's good." He says, "Well, how can you call it American if you're buy the rye in Canada?" And the tour guy says, "Well, sir, here we are in America. I'm American. We're employing Americans. We're producing this bourbon here in America. It's sold in America as well as around the world." And I couldn't resist after the tour I walked up to the guy and I said, "How often do you get that question?" He said, "Two or 3 times a day." We're at the point where a Kentucky company that's set up in downtown Louisville, that's part of the revival of a downtown that's quite attractive and fun that I guess used to be having harder times, we're going to demonize them because they're buying a grain from Canada our neighbor.

Sarah [00:13:31] Where they also sell bourbon.

Peter Goodman [00:13:33] Where they also sell bourbon. What are we doing? Are we really pursuing the fantasy that we're going to make and consume everything here? And by the way, what happens to the exporters in this. So a lot of the retaliation is likely to hit farmers in places like the Midwest who export their crops around the world. To which I think the Trump administration would say, well, have no fear. There's going to be reciprocal tariffs. So if the Canadians of the Europeans and the Chinese, they respond with tariffs on grain that's harvested in the Midwest, we're going to hit their own stuff. It's just basic arithmetic. There's almost 8 billion people on planet Earth. If you're an exporter, if you're growing wheat in Minnesota and sending it around the world, and the response is, no worries, we're going to protect you from imports so you'll have our market-- which is 300 million people, it's a big number with a big market, but it doesn't compare to almost 8 billion. You're going to have that locked up. That's not compensation. You are damaging the incomes of Americans.

Beth [00:14:55] I know we have a lot of land here in the United States, but again, I'm just really trying to get to the actual big picture vision. If we want to grow all of our own food here and make all of our own energy here, and then have every single component of every product made here, I just don't know where that land comes. Agriculture is very land intensive to the Canadian rye. Like, we've lost a lot of farmland in Kentucky as we've brought in new jobs and new companies. I don't know where the capital and the workforce and the physical space come from to do what Trump seems to be talking about doing.

Peter Goodman [00:15:34] Look, we can do more in the United States. It's a perfectly reasonable conclusion from decades of trade deals that have made it easier to move production offshore, chasing cheaper labor, having seen that there's a lack of resilience, the logical end of that is, woops, we're depending upon China for some huge percentage of parts for ventilators in the middle of a pandemic. We're dependent upon China for basic materials, for medicines, for N95 masks. It's a reasonable conclusion to look at the deindustrialization of American communities, combined with the really wrenching product shortages during the pandemic. That wasn't the first time, but it was the most obvious step and say, okay, let's shift the balance. Let's have a backup plan. Let's move some production back to the US where that's appropriate. Let's move some to Mexico.

[00:16:35] Let's move some to Central America. Let's maybe move some to India. That's all reasonable. The question is how much flexibility is there for businesses and how much certainty is there. And now there's no certainty and there's less and less flexibility. And if the mandate really is you must make everything in the United States, could we do that? Sure. We have a lot of technology. We have a lot of land. We have a lot of people. We have a lot of capacity. But we'd be poorer. We'd be less competitive. We would be disconnecting ourselves from innovation. And by the way, the idea that we're somehow the losers in global trade in this system that we built ourselves with our allies at the end of the Second World War, it's just preposterous.

Sarah [00:17:21] That has made us one of the most powerful economy in the world that could launch a trade war because we have so much power, thanks to the system we built.

Peter Goodman [00:17:29] People are correct to say that large numbers of especially factory workers, but really vulnerable people throughout the country have been abandoned by the system. They are correct that when factory production went to Mexico, after NAFTA, to China, after China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, the consequences were really quite brutal for communities. But that's home cooking. These are our own political decisions. We are uniquely living in a country that does not have any kind of national health care. We have job training programs for people whose jobs are affected by trade, but they're woefully underfunded. We always seem to have money for tax cuts for billionaires, but we don't have enough to train an auto worker who loses their job because of cheaper imports of something from Mexico or China. We have decided to make the effective tax rate for multi billionaires like Jeff Bezos lower than that that applies for the people who scrub the toilets in the homes that he owns the way the rest of us own socks. That's a decision that we have made for ourselves at the political level. And we've now demonized trade to the point where, again, the idea that we're buying rye from Canada is some sort of conspiracy to screw American workers.

Sarah [00:19:01] Well, I think when you're like, we'll be poor-- we'll be Germany, a country he critiques all the time. He gets down on Europe. But they did a lot of this. They put policies in place to protect their industries. Germany very much protected their auto industry at the cost of innovation. The problem is you're building a system based on what you know now. Well, what if everything changes? If we want to go back to industrialization on the cusp of artificial general intelligence. I'm sorry, what?

Peter Goodman [00:19:34] Well, it's true that a lot of the stuff that has moved offshore, so to speak, to other countries, has moved because we don't want to live close to the pollution that's associated with making paper, making textiles. That's part of the deal. But mostly it left because it was good for the investor class, and those are the people who got most of the gains. But the problem is that the gains of trade are spread very widely. So anybody who's ever bought a pair of sneakers in the last 40 years has benefited from trade. The losers are real easy to find. They're really concentrated. You go to a town like Granite City, Illinois, a steel town, where the mills have been shut or diminished over generations. And you can see the impact on the downtown. You can see what happens when everybody's house loses value at once. So there's no program there to help people with health care, with the transition to another career, to move to a place where there are maybe more jobs. We haven't done any of those sorts of things, and so those people are quite prominent. But the response to that is not just some sort of fantastical notion of pure self-sufficiency. It's do a better job of sharing the gains of trade so that there's kind of insurance in the system for people.

Sarah [00:21:02] I keep thinking about (Beth you probably remember this) when they were closing down coal mines in Kentucky, they were going to train all the coal miners to be coders, which is now a job that is increasingly looking like it's going to be completely replaced by artificial intelligence. And I'm like the irony. Because that's like when you're chasing that and you're trying to control something that it shifts so dramatically and changes so quickly, I wonder as you look globally these are not problems that just the United States has, as far as ill distributed gains from trade, the impact of deindustrialization. Like I was saying, even this approach, using tariffs to protect homegrown industries. Do you see any bright spot? If we don't think the vision coming from Trump is good and I don't, which is this anti-globalization, unless he wants to rebuild Gaza, then I guess that's okay, then where do you see a vision that is convincing?

Peter Goodman [00:22:04] Well, I think the idea again of putting some focus on bringing production back to the US, where that's practical, is more than sensible. It's overdue. But it's ironic to be on this side of the fence on this one. Like what happened to all of our great faith and free markets? What happened to all our faith in the private sector? That's something that we actually can entrust the market to do if we get the incentives right. So we've seen subsidies for industries like semiconductors, for electric vehicles. But this protectionism is playing out at the same time that we're actually diminishing programs that are supposed to be subsidizing our transition to clean energy. This is an area where there could be lots of jobs, lots of innovation, lots of investments, and we're actually dismantling that at the same time that we're putting up protectionist walls. I'll give you one other example, by the way, of how what we've got is really irrational. So a lot of production after the first Trump trade war in the first term where we were told again and again the problem is China; we need to decouple from China; we need to lean less heavily on China for our manufactured goods; well, a lot of production shifted to Vietnam and a lot of that is Chinese companies moving their own capital and in some cases people to Vietnam.

[00:23:36] Well, okay, so now we've got tariffs on Mexico and Canada and we don't have additional tariffs on Vietnam or the rest of Southeast Asia. So we've presumably incentivized more of that, which is good for Chinese companies, Chinese producers. Let me give you a quick stat. When we buy a product for Mexico, the Commerce Department data tells us that something like 30% of the value of everything we buy from Mexico is actually made in the United States. We buy a car, we buy a refrigerator, a stove that's made in Mexico, 30% of the value of that item made by Americans in American factories. The counterpart number for China is 3%. And Chinese state policy is aimed at driving that as close to zero as possible. So in deciding to put tariffs on our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and not put tariffs on Southeast Asia, we've exacerbated our dependance on China. That's just not a coherent way to go about it. I don't know what the policy is. And let me, by the way, just note that while it's true that other countries are dealing with economic inequality and strains from trade, they're pretty uniquely powerful in America.

[00:24:59] And I often reflect on a trip I took several years ago before the pandemic to Sweden, where I visited this mine in Sweden where they were piloting self-driving trucks. And I talked to the miners there and expected as an American that they'd be against this potential threat to jobs. And they all said, no, we're fine with it because this will make our company more competitive and productive. And if it's more productive, then our wages will go up. And if our jobs are not needed, well, they'll train us for some other job. And this was not some sort of utopian fantasy. This is based on their lived experience. In Sweden unions are very strong. The labor association negotiates with the employer’s association. Everyone understands if the company's more productive and more profitable wages get a commensurate share of the gains. Job training is very effective. It's very well financed. And by the way, they have national health care. They have parental leave policies where you get 500 days to be divided between the mom and the dad however they like when a child is born. So these people were reflecting their experience. They were like we're going to be okay; this is technology and we'll be fine.

[00:26:12] An American worker is absolutely, legitimately fearful of technology like that because their lived experience is, man, if I lose what I got, I can't count on health care, can't send my kid to college. I don't know how I'll pay my rent or my mortgage. We got to deal with those issues. And often again when we're talking about trade, we're really talking about that. And this Trump driven protectionism, this trade policy, is happening at the same time that we're trying to dismantle the IRS, which will help the billionaire class. Those of us who get paid through paychecks, the deductions or automatic. This will make it easier for Jeff Bezos and Steve Schwarzman to pay zero on their taxes. And how are we paying for this? By cutting Medicaid, by cutting food stamps, by cutting government programs. So we're actually weakening our social safety net at the same time that we're boosting protectionism. If the protectionism was going hand in glove with the kind of industrial policy designed to generate fresh investment into industries that could create quality jobs, along with programs that share the gains more evenly, well, that would be something we could assess. But it's this total patchwork that seems to be like most things. Trump generating more about the optics, right?

[00:27:43] It's a reality television show presidency. Just take steel and aluminum, if you will. There are eight times as many people in the United States who go to work at factories that buy steel as there are people who go to work at plants that make steel. So if you jack up the price of steel through a tariff, you have weakened the competitiveness of companies that employ eight times as many people. But Trump has succeeded demonstrably at one thing, and that's reality TV. And he gets that the value of going out to Granite City to go stand there with steel workers who are going back to a shift that was previously shuttered, that is a photo that could be on the front page of a newspaper on tonight's news. Everybody's talking about it, it's out there on social media. Whereas, the detail about actually there's eight times as many workers who depend upon purchasing steel, that's like a footnote in a Commerce Department report. Everybody yawns if they notice it at all. I think that's the only way to understand these policies. It's about optics. It's not about an actual strategy.

Beth [00:28:52] Well, I think the optics that he effectively communicates to lots of people is the idea that these tariffs are going to make our country very rich. So I would love to know from you is there any reality behind that. What is the revenue effect? All these tariffs go into place; what amount of money are we looking at? And does that in a real way reduce the deficit or in a real way provide a pathway to decreasing our debt?

Peter Goodman [00:29:20] No one believes that. So can you increase the revenue that the Treasury gets from tariffs? Sure. If you apply a tariff somebody's got to pay it. And that line item went up. But what happens to the real economy. Well, who's actually paying the tariff? The companies that are bringing in the stuff are paying the tariff, and they are probably going to pass on the cost of that tariff to their consumers. That means that all of us regular people are going to pay more for all sorts of things: cars, car parts, plastics, shoes, exercise equipment, everything. We're talking again about China, Mexico, Canada. Talk about food, we're dependent upon Mexico for something like 60% of fruit and vegetables, 90% of our avocado. Everyone loves to talk about avocados, but think of it as a proxy for a much broader range. Tomatoes, grains, all, all kinds of fruit, we're paying for that.

[00:30:23] And if we have to spend more on groceries, well, we're less likely to spend-- unless our wages are going up dramatically, that means we've limited our spending power. And if we have less to spend because we're forced to spend more on things we don't have any choice in, I mean, we have to buy fruits and vegetables for our families, right? That's just reality. If we're spending more on that, then there's less to spend on things where we have a greater say over. We're less likely to go out to dinner. So the local restaurateur is now spending more for food and getting fewer customers. We're less likely to go visit our local movie theater, take our spouse out to go hear some music. So the musician has fewer gigs. This is how economics works. You eliminate from one place, there are ripple effects. All the literature shows that we will damage economic growth, which means diminishing wages, less hiring, fewer opportunities. While I'm sure we'll hear look at all the money we're collecting from the tariffs.

Beth [00:31:26] Well, I have one last question for you, because I am convinced that prices are going to go up. What I wonder is the last time we talked about supply chain here, it was during the pandemic and people were feeling interested in the supply chain because of the disruption of getting goods to them. And I wonder if there are non-price disruptions that you think consumers will experience in the short term that have political repercussions associated with these tariffs?

Peter Goodman [00:31:58] You mean in terms of shortages?

Beth [00:31:59] Shortages, wait times, delays. The kinds of things we felt during Covid. Because my sense, Peter, is that the supply chain was just starting to feel normal again, was just starting to recover from the pandemic before we threw this asteroid at it.

Peter Goodman [00:32:19] Yeah, you're right about that.

Beth [00:32:20] Okay. So I just wonder if we're going to go back in some ways.

Peter Goodman [00:32:25] Yes, there will be some product shortages and that will exacerbate other problems. I'll give you an example. As recently as last year, I did a story in Phoenix on the lack of affordable housing. Could have done that story in 27 other metro areas. I picked Phoenix because they've lost something like 90% of their rentals, priced it at living wage territory for the medium family. Likewise, homes that are 300,000 bucks, unless they've lost like 90% in a decade because price increases are up so much. So I was talking to people about why this wasn't-- one of the things I heard again and again was the supply chain is making it hard to build additional housing units. The supply is concerned. Why is that? We can't get these meters to read water or electricity. Why is that? Well, because they're still overwhelmingly made in China. And while there's been some movement to get some of that stuff closer to home, and Mexico would be the obvious place, we're stuck waiting sometimes months for these. That's just one example of something we can't get.

[00:33:32] Well, so what's going to happen now? We just increased tariffs on Chinese production by 20% and 25% for Mexico. So whoever's buying these meters is dependent upon a supplier who's having a hard time figuring out where can I safely order my raw materials. What are the applicable tariffs? Maybe I'll just wait a little bit until there's clarity. We've imposed this waiting game on every level of the supply chain. And history tells us that when businesses are uncertain and they're waiting, there's less production. And if there's an increase in demand, they can't meet it. That's how we get product shortages. And I think that will make people unhappy. And it's been interesting to see that the Trump administration has largely stopped talking about inflation. That's how they got back into the Oval Office because of legitimate unhappiness about not just eggs, but lots of other things. And I think given how much uncertainty there is out there now, we could see months of these kinds of disruptions.

Sarah [00:34:39] Well, thank you for coming here and helping us begin to sort out what this new anti-global trade war will mean for us close to home in Kentucky and around the world. Thank you so much.

Peter Goodman [00:34:54] I'm grateful for your questions. I really appreciate it.

Sarah [00:35:06] Beth, my cousin Colby is getting married later this month and I went to her bridal shower.

Beth [00:35:11] Congratulations, Colby.

Sarah [00:35:12] I know we're very excited. First of all, the stuff has gotten better. I Kind of want to get like maybe not remarried. People don't give you good stuff though for wedding anniversary parties, but there's too much for me to buy all on my own. But it's good. She's got this really, really pretty blender smoothie maker that I want. And then she has this thing that makes ice cream that I also want. It's just my stuff's old.

Beth [00:35:42] My grandmother Joy has a lot of things that she was very wise about. And her big idea for the world was that every seven years you have a new shower, because every seven years you're going to need some new stuff.

Sarah [00:35:54] I didn't need new stuff at seven years, but I definitely needed in like ten. Seven years is when we get all new body though, right? All our cells turnover, so some of that might as well align those two events.

Beth [00:36:05] They are mood changers, too. She said you just get tired of things.

Sarah [00:36:09] Yeah. I think I'd probably gotten rid of my Fiesta ware I registered for yellow Fiesta ware. Well, don't do that. I'm pretty sure I'd gotten rid of that. I was bored with it. And also it didn't hold up that well, to be honest. I'm a real stickler about that thing that happens in the middle of the plates where they start to gray. You know what I'm talking about? I don't like that.

Beth [00:36:30] All my plates are gray right now. I'm in the market for new plates because no.

Sarah [00:36:34] I don't do that. The second they show up... Can I make a pitch to you? I went through this long journey to think I would get all new plates. I looked at Pottery Barn. I looked at Crate and Barrel. I looked at Williams-Sonoma. I was going to lay down some cash. I was ready, and then my husband was like what are you doing? No. You're not going to go get this whole new set. I can't remember, I think I'd already purchased some from HomeGoods because they clearly have some like partner factory or whatever that they get a lot from. And sometimes they're just plain white basic, which is what I was going to get from one of these retailers because I like a white plain. It's good. The food looks good on it. There's a reason restaurants all use white plates, okay? And so the rim will change barely. There's some cross-hatching some seasons, but they'll always have a plain one. And you can really mix and match them. So that's what I did. I was like, okay, I'll commit to the HomeGoods situation, I'll buy a bunch. I got pasta bowls, which I'd never had before, which I love, and they are holding up so well. It's bone China, it's good stuff, but they're not doing that greying and they're holding. I'm very pleased. And if somebody breaks one, I just pop over to HomeGoods and get another one.

Beth [00:37:58] That's an excellent recommendation. What's the weight of them?

Sarah [00:38:01] Not super heavy.

Beth [00:38:03] Okay. Because I don't want heavy. You know my thing with cabinets.

Sarah [00:38:04] I don't like heavy.

Beth [00:38:05] I'm always afraid my cabinets are going to fall off the walls. I also like a plain white plate. What I've been looking at is getting the catering set from Pottery Barn. So not the normal sets, but the less expensive catering dishes.

Sarah [00:38:18] Even when I was going to the nice brands, the reviews were mixed. They were never universally praise. And so that's why I was like forget it. So just go get your couple from HomeGoods and see what you think.

Beth [00:38:28] I think I might do it.

Sarah [00:38:29] Now, I still have my China. Did you register for Fine China?

Beth [00:38:32] I did. I registered for a very basic Waterford China, white with a silver rim.

Sarah [00:38:38] Mine is also Lenox white with a silver rim.

Beth [00:38:41] And I absolutely love it. I use it all the time. I didn't think I'd get very much of it. I got so much of it. I have like 20 place settings which I use.

Sarah [00:38:51] That's a lot. I only have eight.

Beth [00:38:52] It's wonderful. It's nice to have a big party and we're able to have place settings for everyone. I got some advice when I got married that the China was not going to be worth having, and I roundly rejected. I'm so thrilled that I have it and I will keep it forever. And it is holding up beautifully.

Sarah [00:39:11] Listen, I know China's falling out of favor, and I reject this trend.

Beth [00:39:17] I agree.

Sarah [00:39:17] The New York Times had this lovely piece on China. This family had come over and the great, great, grandmother, bought this China. It was crazy. This crazy statistic that adjusted for inflation. People at the time when this great, great, grandmother, like early 1900s, started getting their own China sets or whatever. The average spends adjusted for inflation a year on dishes and China and like kitchenware was $19,000. It was so much money that they would spend and invest. And then you pass it down and they were just talking about the great, great granddaughter has it. She loves it. Everybody would like break one piece and then mend it very carefully like once a generation. But she has two sons who aren't interested in it, which makes me sad. And I just think it's really lovely. I think it's important to have something to emphasize the importance of an event, just to say like this is an important dinner. Even if it's just like your birthday or somebody's made all As, getting out the China and being like, see, this is special. And, listen, great news, China is more available and affordable than at any moment in history because nobody wants it. They were saying antique people don't buy it anymore. Often they will just throw it out at goodwill beautiful sets. So if you're like I've never had a China set, it's too expensive. No, you can basically go get one for free. Just get on Facebook Marketplace. Somebody is probably trying to give it away. I love it. And I also have my great grandmother set that she bought when she went to Europe for the first time and brought back on a boat. I love it so much.

Beth [00:40:54] I am becoming more and more attached to dishes because I still use my grandmother's all the time, and it means a lot to me to just have her salad bowl. It just means a lot to me. And I see all of the things that we registered for that have fallen out of my life and how these are the things that last. And so I would have dishes fill every room of our house if I could get away with it because I love them. And I do love that long lasting generational connection to food and celebration and warmth, and the ways that we try to make events stand out and be special for each other.

Sarah [00:41:34] Now, I registered for Crystal but I was in my 20s and I didn't know any better, and I would put it in the dishwasher so it's all chipped. It's really bad. It makes me so sad. I've gotten some of my grandmother's since then, so I have plenty of glasses. And I registered for nice silverware. I didn't get sterling silver. I just got regular everyday silver. But I got to say it did not hold up. It would get rust spots and get beaten up. So I replaced that whole set probably two or three years ago. So I don't have my original silverware.

Beth [00:42:03] I did not register for Crystal because I just don't love it. I have my grandmother's real silver set that I never use because silver is just so much work.

Sarah [00:42:13] You got to polish.

Beth [00:42:14] It's so much work- the silver. But I have a funny story about my silverware that we use every day. So I bought a set of silverware from Target when I was in college, maybe in law school. And it's just regular silverware, but it has kind of a thick handle on it with little tiny polka dots. It's all just silver, but there's little subtle polka dots. And when I first met Chad, we were hanging out in a large group of people and I had that group over to have dinner and watch a movie one night. This was before we were dating. And I will never forget Chad sat down at my table and he picks up the fork and he goes, "This is really substantial silverware. I like it." And it was so funny and I thought it was so charming and hilarious. And you could kind of see in his face he was like, I just commented on the substantiality of the silverware. And so we still use that today. It has held up great. Doesn't have spots on it. Looks as good as the day that I bought it. And we can't find anything that he feels is a substantial as my Target college purchase.

Sarah [00:43:19] Mine's Oneida. It should have held up better than it did. I'm just going to say that Oneida, if you're listening. But I'm trying to think, I don't have the glasses we originally have. I have settled on some glasses recommended to me over Instagram that are very European, not too big. I like them a lot with glass glasses. But I think the only other things we have from the registry, I definitely still have my KitchenAid mixer. And we have our pots, which Nicholas picked out because they were-- this is crazy. Who's the chef? The bam, that guy from New Orleans? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Beth [00:43:52] Emerald.

Sarah [00:43:53] Emerald. They were emerald pots, but they were copper bottomed and he went through and of course overanalyzed which pots. But we still have them. Although, we still use our Caraway pots that we got probably a year or two ago from a sponsorship. I really like them. What I really like is the storage solution where I love it so much. So we have a couple of those pots still, the KitchenAid mixer, and then we have two stainless steel mixing bowls that I think I got from Target from the registry. They nest, they're big and we use them all the time. We have used them now for 22 years. I think they're pretty much indestructible. We love them so much. But I think that's it. Obviously, none of the appliances are left. No coffeemaker, no microwave, nothing except for the KitchenAid.

Beth [00:44:34] You know what's still left for me? The toaster that we got for our wedding. It's still working.

Sarah [00:44:39] I fried my toaster. Well, you know what I think it was? We wanted a four slice toaster, and I think we only got a two slice toaster.

Beth [00:44:47] Yeah, I got a two slice toaster and it's still kicking. So that's the appliance that I could think of that's still going, but pretty much everything for us except the kitchen stuff. I have lots of casserole dishes. I have the China. Oh yeah.

Sarah [00:44:57] That's true. I have like my Pyrex dishes, all that [crosstalk].

Beth [00:45:00] Yeah, exactly. Things like that. And then Chad is still using those towels. He won't give up on the towels.

Sarah [00:45:05] Chad, let it go.

Beth [00:45:05] I replaced mine. I think what's happened is like a little bit of a Stockholm syndrome situation with the towels. Chad now believes that's what towels feel like. So when I try to expose him to new ones, he's like, "That's kind of soft. Don't you think that's too soft?" And I'm like, "No, I think that's what a towel feels like."

Sarah [00:45:21] No, it's not an exfoliator. It's a towel.

Beth [00:45:23] But 18 years he's still kicking with his towels.

Sarah [00:45:26] Now, I still have our bedspread. The bedspread we bought from Lands' End. I'm telling you guys; I still like it. I still like the design. It was just a full because God saved us, we slept on a full. It looks brand new. I don't know what they meant. It's like how you would encounter things like Old Navy sometimes and it just feels like they tried out something new and they're like this is probably too high quality, but you got the first round. You got the first draft that's like never going to die. And I mean it's still a cute bedspread. So I still have it. It's like a duvet cover and it still looks brand new.

Beth [00:46:00] I did have a really fun night with a friend a couple weeks ago where we got out our wedding albums and just looked at them and ate cupcakes because she had cupcakes at her wedding instead of cake, which was super fun. And it really got me in the mindset of like, man, that is a moment in time when you do want to think about what lasts, what endures. Are you going to like these colors later? Are you going to like these silhouettes later?

Sarah [00:46:22] Do you really need a panini press? You don't. Let me just tell you.

Beth [00:46:25] Exactly. And so I would just say to all of the people, the dishes are where it's at for your wedding registry if you want to hold on to things.

Sarah [00:46:34] People aren't registering for anything because they're getting married later in life. They already have everything. So they're either asking for money or money. For honeymoons and stuff. It's kind of crazy. It's changed so dramatically. Although, my cousin who is older and has her own house and stuff, she's still registered for-- again, you're not going to go buy yourself like highly designed, beautiful, almost $200 smoothie maker. But you're getting married, why not? That's what I kept trying to convince Nicholas. He was like, but we don't need this. I'm like, "Right, and we're not buying it. So who cares?" We need an expansive list here, friend. We fought so much making our registry. I still remember it.

Beth [00:47:20] We did not fight at all about it. I think we were both just in a very pragmatic place at that time because we had a lot of things on our own. We were 24 and 26, so we had our college stuff, the things that people had just given to us when we graduated from high school. So we kind of knew what we used and what we didn't use, and we were just really pragmatic about it, except for the China. And I'm so glad. That was the wisest thing that we did.

Sarah [00:47:48] I'm not even sure it's not pragmatic. For the record, just because you use it on special occasions doesn't mean that's not a pragmatic use. You know what I'm saying?

Beth [00:47:56] Yes, I do. And I agree.

Sarah [00:47:58] Thank you. All right. I can't wait to hear what you also have. Most importantly, if you still have something that we can all still purchase, this is the key delineating factor we need to know from everybody.

Beth [00:48:08] What is built to last.

Sarah [00:48:10] Yeah. Yeah, that's what we need to know for sure. Well, thank you for joining us. And thank you to Peter Goodman for coming in and sharing all his expertise about the global economy. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday with a great conversation we had with Atlantic reporter Tyler Austin Harper. We can't wait for you to hear that. And until then, have the best weekend available to you.