President Donald Trump is an unlikely member of the "buy nothing" movement — or, at least, buy less.

The president consistently suggests that one effect of his tariffs would be to encourage people to buy fewer things. In the face of price increases and potential shortages, Trump says people can and should make do with less. It's an odd stance coming from any American president, let alone one whose brand is excess. It's also a concept Americans hate. Buying things is our national pastime.

The most striking example of this line of thinking is the president's recent obsession with dolls. "Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally," Trump said at a Cabinet meeting in late April. He reiterated the point in a subsequent interview with "Meet the Press" in May. "I don't think that a beautiful baby girl needs — that's 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable," he said. It's not just dolls that Trump thinks people should cut back on — he's also said kids should have five pencils instead of 250.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brought up the dolls thing as well. In an interview with "The Ingraham Angle" on Fox News, he said he would tell a little girl worried about a Barbie-lite household that "you will have a better life than your parents, that you and your family, thanks to President Trump." She'll have "economic freedom," he added, in exchange for some playtime sacrifice.

The White House has a point in that toys have gotten significantly cheaper in recent decades, leaving many families inundated with them. Many parents would agree that they wouldn't mind accumulating less plastic junk at every birthday, holiday, and trip to Target. At the same time, the doll thing is a little discordant — of all of the items to hold up as the prime example of consumerist excess, a baby doll doesn't immediately spring to mind.

On a broader level, Trump's push for Americans to buy less is a fundamental misread of our culture and economy. Our economy hinges on consumer spending, and cutting back could have serious consequences. On the political side of things, austerity isn't a winning message with the public. In the modern-day American imagination, economic freedom means the freedom to spend our money however we please, mainly on the relatively cheap stuff we can still afford.

"Patriotism and consumerism are about buying, not austerity, generally speaking," says Gary Cross, a US cultural historian at Penn State and the author of several books on consumerism.

As a nation, we've developed a consumer-first identity. What it means to be an American and to have a good American life is intertwined with what and how we spend.

"Consumerism is bound up with that whole definition of living a life of freedom and choice and self-expression," says Jennifer Smith Maguire, a sociologist at Sheffield Business School who studies consumer culture.

Life milestones and rites of passage are measured by our purchases. Coming of age in your teen years means trips to the mall (yes, Gen Z is bringing the mall back). Adulthood is marked by paying for weddings, buying homes, and furnishing a life. Aging means letting go of all the stuff we've accumulated over the course of our lives, which may feel like letting go of pieces of ourselves.

We buy things because we believe our consumption says something about us — we're cool, we care about the environment, we're not yet "old." We're inundated with different kinds of yogurt in the grocery aisle. Whether we're shopping at the store or online, the options for jeans are endless. The extreme freedom of choice can be overwhelming, but it's also what we've become accustomed to.

"Products have a natural connection to help us tell the stories about who we are," says Americus Reed, a marketing professor at Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. "If I choose A and not B and C, that must reflect something about me as a function of what I know about A, B, and C."

Americans have come to equate consumerism with democracy. We recognize that we can't all be rich, but we can all aspire to something that rich people can buy. Full participation in American society isn't just voting and working, it's buying.

"Everybody can participate in the market, if only to a little tiny fraction," Maguire says. "That little tiny fraction leaves open the possibility that through enough hard work and good luck and the kind of Horatio Alger story, I can get to be more of a participant in the democracy of goods."

Given how the US economy operates, participation from everyone is a good thing. Consumer spending underpins the economy, with personal expenditures accounting for about two-thirds of GDP. Even a small dip could have significant consequences.

"This usually happens on the business side, and it is coordinated — businesses pulling back on investment tends to cause recessions. Because consumer spending is so much larger, you wouldn't need a huge reduction in consumer spending to have a pretty big macro impact," says Michael Madowitz, the principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank. "Even if it's just people deciding to wait a few months to buy something, that can have pretty big impacts pretty quickly."

Beyond the economic boost, going out and spending is generally seen as part of Americans' patriotic duty. Consumerism is how we fueled the postwar economy and distinguished ourselves from the USSR in the Cold War. After the September 11 attacks, political leaders told Americans not to let what happened "in any way throw off their normal level of activity." During the pandemic, the federal government sent out checks so people could keep spending.

While "spending through the worries" has worked to rally Americans, sacrifice is not usually a popular political message. Former President Jimmy Carter was knocked for years over a 1977 chat where he donned a cardigan sweater and encouraged Americans to turn down the heat over potential natural gas shortages. Carter's predecessor, President Gerald Ford, was met with similar trouble when he encouraged Americans to "whip inflation now" by cutting back spending.

This isn't to say that American consumers haven't sacrificed in moments of war and crisis in the past, but people are usually only willing to do so "based on the idea that we're in an emergency," Penn State's Cross says, "and I'm not sure that people have really bought that." Trump is arguing for emergency austerity as a way to stop other countries from what he considers to be taking advantage of the US, but despite the president's rhetoric on tariffs and trade imbalances, Americans aren't buying that we're in severe crisis mode now. Polls show consumers are quite negative on the short-term impact of tariffs, and they're not broadly sold on long-term benefits, either. Heading into Trump's presidency, Americans were excited about the economy. Now, they're alarmed about it, in large part because of his policies. Americans are worried that tariffs are going to hit them where it hurts — their wallets — and the message to just lay off the "buy now" button is not putting them at ease.

People generally do not like being told what to do, including when it comes to their spending. Psychologically, they chafe at the idea that their freedom is being encroached on or they're being pressured. "When you restrict freedom, you'll get counterproductive behavior," Reed says.

On top of a natural aversion to being told no, political polarization makes the reaction even more extreme — many Democrats are going to react negatively to anything a Republican says, and vice versa. Progressives who already don't like Trump aren't going to appreciate him telling them to cool it on spending. There's also something ironic in Donald Trump, the man, telling people to lay off the spending. His entire persona is opulence and overabundance. He, his family, and his allies are making enormous amounts of money with him in the White House. "These guys are getting rich and they're telling you, 'Please buy less dolls for Christmas while all this is settling out,'" Reed says.

Cards on the table: It probably would be good for us to have less stuff. It's not clear if three dolls per child is the right amount, but 30 dolls does seem like a lot. (Though, do kids even play with dolls anymore?) But the president isn't asking for people to be more thoughtful about their materialistic impulses, to rein in pending for the sake of the environment or to discourage exploitative labor practices. He's not advocating for people to put down their gadgets to enjoy experiences and the people around them. Instead, he's asking people to make what seem like arbitrary and unnecessary sacrifices for uncertain promises about a vague vision for a different kind of US economy. And he's doing so at a moment when many people are already feeling stretched on covering basic necessities.

"It's a big difference between me saying, 'I don't need the extra tie for Father's Day this year,' versus people who are like, 'I've been telling you for months that I can't afford eggs. Why are you making everything else more expensive?'" Madowitz says.

Trump's mission to make more stuff in the United States may be one that many Americans agree with, but accomplishing it is much more complex than the current undertaking accounts for. As much as consumers say they would pay more for American-made goods, when the rubber hits the road, they usually go for the cheaper option, even if it's produced abroad. Many workers don't want the masculine-coded manufacturing jobs the White House seems so focused on, let alone ones sewing shoes in factories or, as Trump seemingly envisions, making dolls. There's a gendered air to the dolls focus as well — the White House is arguing that people who complain about their policies are worrying about trivial things are for trivial little girls. Consumerism is often coded as feminine, and the world Trump envisions has a masculine, austere bent to it, one where real men only buy the real things they need. A Rolls-Royce gets a tariff exemption. A Barbie does not.

Many Americans don't get to do a lot of choosing these days. Big-ticket items, such as housing, schooling, and healthcare, are prohibitively expensive. Inflation is pushing more and more things out of reach. A couple of excess pairs of shoes in the closet or tools in the garage are some of the most accessible versions of economic freedom Americans have left — and, yes, a bunch of toys, if they so insist.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Bud Light was the king of beers for a long time in the United States. Sure, its sibling brand, Budweiser, had the formal title, but based on sales, the lighter lager was on top for decades. A couple of years ago, in the face of a cultural firestorm and changing consumer tastes, Bug Light lost its crown. Mexican-made Modelo took its place as the top-selling beer in America in retail, becoming the new rey of beers, if you will. Now, politics may be scrambling the beer space again, and not in Modelo's favor.

To back up a bit, 2023 was tough for Bud Light. That spring, it sent Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, a handful of beer cans as part of a marketing campaign, and all hell broke loose. The incident sparked an enormous backlash among conservatives, including widespread calls for boycotts. While most of the time, these types of consumer upheavals are ineffectual and short-lived, that wasn't the case for Bud Light. It saw a meaningful decline in sales.

The same year, Modelo surpassed Bud Light as the best-selling beer in the US. While the Bud Light dustup may have accelerated the flip, Modelo's advance had been coming for a while. Bud Light had been experiencing declines for years. Meanwhile, Modelo was growing consistently, riding the wave of growing consumer interest in imported beers and America's growing Hispanic population, which likes Modelo, in particular.

Whereas 2023 was a rough ride for Bud Light, 2025 might be similar for Modelo. The brand is still going strong, but political developments like tariffs and immigration crackdowns may be a blip that could, once again, accelerate ongoing consumer trends in the beer industry. That doesn't mean Bud Light will vault back to the top — one of its sister brands, Michelob Ultra, is giving everyone a run for their money. As Kate Bernot, the lead analyst at Sightlines, which researches the alcohol industry, puts it, "Michelob Ultra has just been quietly doing its thing and killing it."

Dave Infante, who writes a Substack about drinking called Fingers, tells me that given what happened a couple of years ago, the beer industry is likely building in "contingency plans for these major shifts" and steeling itself for more upheaval.

"The industry just saw a major tectonic shift in 2023 and understands that if such a thing happens again with Modelo, opportunities are going to ripple out from it," he says.

Executives at Constellation Brands, the company behind beers such as Modelo and Corona, have been open about the fact that the policies emanating from the White House are creating some serious what-ifs.

First, there are tariffs. While Mexican-made beer isn't being hit with an import tax, the cans it comes in are, thanks to a 25% tariff on aluminum.

"They basically brew all their beer in Mexico and they sell it in the US," Garrett Nelson, an equity research analyst at CFRA Research, says. "Thirty-nine percent of their beer is shipped in aluminum cans, and that's still subject to the 25% tariff."

TD Cowen estimated that the aluminum tariffs could cost Constellation $1 billion annually. In its most recent earnings call, Constellation disappointed investors with its guidance outlook. Most analysts I spoke to for this story, however, say the tariffs as they currently stand won't be a killer for Constellation or its customers. The aluminum tariffs will hit its competitors who import the material as well, Bernot says, and the company can likely absorb the cost hit without customers seeing a massive spike in Modelo's price.

And if Constellation does need to raise prices, their consumers will probably be OK paying some of that increased cost.

"They're confident enough in the grip of their brands that they can increase prices a little more easily without consumer pushback than, say, a Bud Light or some other domestic brand," Nelson says. Part of Bud Light's problem has been that it's pretty easy for consumers to swap out for a Coors Light or a Miller Lite. Modelo's loyal drinkers are a little stickier.

Kaleigh Theriault, an associate director of beverage alcohol thought leadership at NIQ, points out that amid post-pandemic inflation in 2022, domestic beer brands raised prices more than imports, giving imported brands like Modelo a little more room now.

"Domestic beer has taken up price so much over the past two years that consumers and shoppers have sort of turned away, or they've recognized how much domestic beer prices have increased, and that might be influencing their purchase of imports or that might be kind of the reason that they're slowing down their purchasing of domestic beer or just beer overall," Theriault says.

While the outlook isn't too scary now, President Donald Trump's trade war and tariff tactics have been volatile. He's threatened to put tariffs on all goods from Mexico in the past, and while the liquid in the beer cans isn't subject to tariffs now, there's no guarantee that won't change.

Modelo's headaches may be more acute when it comes to the president's immigration crackdown and the anxieties it's causing. Immigration raids and the Trump administration's hostile approach to foreigners living in the United States may be putting some Hispanic consumers on edge. They're worried about shopping, in case they're asked to show ID, staying home more, and may be pulling back on spending in the event someone from their household is detained. And like many consumers across demographics, they're under pressure economically.

"They're afraid to go shopping, whether they're here illegally or they're here illegally, that Hispanic shopper is afraid to go out," Bump Williams, an alcohol industry consultant, says. He recently conducted a survey of about 200 Hispanic families, and two-thirds of them said they had changed shopping behavior or were concerned about going shopping. Williams also says retailers in heavily Hispanic markets have reported declines in foot traffic. Jefferies analysts recently wrote in a note to clients that there appears to be a correlation between encounters at the Mexican border and consumption trends.

Hispanic consumers represent about half of Constellation's overall beer business. In the company's most recent earnings call, the company's CEO, Bill Newlands, said that two-thirds of Hispanic consumers were "concerned about higher prices on things like food, gas, and other essentials," and over half were "concerned relative to immigration issues." They're also worried about job losses in industries with a high number of Latino employees.

"What does that do? That has tended to mean that the consumer has pulled back on spending on a number of categories," Newlands said. Beer is quite a ways down the list compared to other areas of spending, such as on restaurants, he added, "but it's certainly on the list, because things like social gatherings, an area where the Hispanic consumer often consumes beer, are declining today as part of these overarching concerns that they have."

Constellation Brands and AB InBev did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Current troubles for Constellation and its brands, such as Modelo and Corona, aren't likely to be a full-blown disaster. But they may represent an opportunity for competitors, including Anheuser-Busch InBev, to make some inroads.

Bud Light has done a lot to try to claw back consumers from its 2023 snafu, including becoming the official beer sponsor of the UFC in 2024 and generally trying to keep its marketing as uncontroversial as possible. Still, it's been on the downswing for a while — its volumes peaked in 2008.

"Bud Light's not going to be the comeback winner on this one," Williams says. While the brand has managed to stop much of the bleeding from 2023 and 2024, it's still declining. "It's got a very slim chance to reclaim the title of the No. 1 brand in the country."

Recent data from the National Beer Wholesalers Association and Fintech, a payments company in the alcohol space, found that in the first quarter of the year Bud Light saw the biggest loss of market share in on-premise purchases (think restaurants and bars) as well as off-premise retail purchases (think grocery stores or gas stations) of the top 10 alcohol brands it tracks. While Bud Light remains quite popular, it's not on the growth track. The opposite is true for another AB InBev brand, Michelob Ultra. Per the NBWA and Fintech, Michelob had the biggest share gain during the first quarter of the year.

"Michelob Ultra now, for all intents and purposes, is Anheuser Busch's flagship beer, its star beer," Bernot says. "It's a really strong brand."

Michelob's gains may not necessarily be Modelo's losses — the latter remains the No. 1 imported beer, has a loyal customer base, and, as mentioned, may have some room to push up prices if it needs to. Modelo's customers aren't switching brands; some of them may just temporarily be buying less of it. In contrast to Bud Light, Michelob has a better-for-you air to it. It's marketed as low-carb and low-calorie and leans into a health angle, as an option that can be part of a fit lifestyle. To many consumers, Bud Light feels more regular and generic, even if it's also a light beer.

The three brands may be locked in a tight race for America's beer crown, but that's because Modelo, Bud Light, and Michelob all appeal to a wide array of consumers. If Hispanic consumers are pulling back on Modelo purchases, that probably means they're buying less Bud Light and Michelob, too. If their customers do start to switch up habits, it's not clear they'll be swapping one for the other. If you give up on Bud Light, you're probably going to go for a Coors Light or Miller Lite first. If Modelo gets too pricey, you may look for another premium or import brand.

To a large extent, these brands' fates are in their own hands. Bud Light is trying to get back drinkers it lost and attract new ones. Modelo has a pretty unique appeal that is very much at the center of its US parent company's overall strategy.

"That brand is able to command that premium price point because of long-standing American consumer attraction to the exoticism and the vision of paradise that marketers have really been able to shape around the Corona and to some extent the Modelo brands," Infante says. "And Modelo also has a really compelling marketing campaign that it ran for many years about the 'fighting spirit' that really resonated."

As for Mich Ultra, its image as the healthier option boosts its appeal — it's for after-work drinks, but also after-run drinks or an afternoon on the golf course. In fall 2024, Michelob Ultra Zero was introduced, a nonalcoholic option meant to capitalize on the growing NA trend. It's a marketing opportunity for the flagship brand to generate excitement, solidify the wellness-conscious halo around it, and take up more store space with both alcoholic and nonalcoholic options.

The analysts I spoke to were mixed on whether this meant Michelob could depose Modelo. Thierault thinks it's unlikely Michelob will become first anytime soon. Williams, on the other hand, says Michelob Ultra "has a really good shot at surpassing Modelo Especial as the No. 1 beer brand in the United States this year."

Ultimately, it may be long-term structural trends that are more important, just as they were when Modelo surpassed Bud Light in 2023. In that scenario, Modelo continues to grow, despite hurdles, just like Michelob. Bud Light remains quite popular, especially in draft and at bars, but its overall fortunes don't appear to be on track to reverse.

The beer industry's leaderboard could shift again, depending on politics, perception, and pricing power. But if and when that happens is still TBD. In the meantime, beer as a sector is not having a blockbuster year anyway.

"Beer overall is just having a tough go of it in general," Bernot says. "It's important to put any certain brand declines or struggles in the larger picture of beer is just not doing great."

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

U-Haul trucks are a fixture of modern American life. They're invisible and ubiquitous at the same time — you don't think about them until you need one, or one's blocking the bike lane, or it's move-in day at the local college. Suddenly, the big white-and-orange vans are impossible to overlook. So is the price tag slapped on the side: "$19.95." In bright green, it's meant to stand out. Except that $19.95 is not what you will actually pay.

Truth in Advertising, a watchdog group focused on sketchy advertising and deceptive marketing, filed formal complaints on Monday with the Federal Trade Commission and nearly two dozen state attorneys general, urging them to put a stop to what they described as U-Haul's "bait-and-switch pricing scheme." While the $19.95 emblazoned on the trucks comes with some fine print — it's for in-town moves, and doesn't include mileage and fees — consumers don't always realize ahead of time just how big those little add-ons may wind up being. Plus, the fine print isn't exactly easy to read on a moving vehicle.

"There's not a consumer on the entire planet who will pay this $19.95 for a U-Haul truck," Laura Smith, TINA.org's legal director, says. "So the price is false."

The complaint sent to the FTC says the company "advertises a misleadingly low moving truck rental fee and then adds on a multitude of other fees and charges throughout the reservation and rental process."

It's another example of how difficult pricing has become to navigate across the economy. Not only are costs constantly changing, but companies employ tactics such as bait-and-switch pricing and hidden fees to reel people in with one number, only to tack on countless extra charges. By the time a customer gets to the final number they owe, it's nowhere near what they expected. It's not just U-Haul; the switcheroo happens with airlines, hotels, concerts, cable companies, and more. It's so common that many people simply throw up their hands and just accept whatever their impossible-to-decipher receipt says they owe.

"What it really makes it hard to do is to compare the prices of things, and that's really the biggest harm it does to the market," Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard law professor who studies false advertising law, tells me. "It leads the whole market to become unreliable and unstable, because you can't really effectively fight back."

In reporting this story, I decided to dig up the receipt for my last DIY move where I used a U-Haul, which, thankfully, was back in 2016. Lo and behold, the $19.95 rental rate is listed. So is a bunch of other stuff: $10.32 for the 8 miles I apparently drove, $11 for what looks like insurance, and $1 for an "environmental fee," which U-Haul's website says is "used to support and foster the development and maintenance of sustainable U-Haul business operations," plus taxes. My total wound up being $45.05, more than double the advertised rate for what was, all in all, a short move. At the end, it even lists the total (before taxes) under "Actual Charges."

When someone rents a moving truck, U-Haul automatically folds in fees that consumers can't get out of, such as the environmental fee, which immediately pushes the cost above the $19.95 rate. These fees could, in theory, be wrapped into the original price, but instead they're tacked on at the end. There are also mandatory-ish charges, such as insurance, mileage, and tolls, that people may not entirely understand or know whether they need. Many consumers have had the experience of standing at a car or truck rental counter trying to figure out whether they actually need the insurance the agent is trying to sell them on, or if the guy is just trying to up his commission. As consumers go through the U-Haul booking process, they're nudged toward all sorts of extra services and charges, including moving blankets, dollies, and movers. Some of these items are preselected, so consumers have to actively unselect them or scroll to a small-font option to skip.

"They're not mandatory, but you have to sift through those screens before you actually check out," Smith says.

Smith says that consumers have reported a "slew of" other fees they'd been charged by U-Haul — for cleaning, extra mileage, late returns, lost keys, and more — many of which customers disputed as unfair. The problem isn't the price U-Haul is charging, she says, "the problem is how they advertise the price." You may walk in expecting a cheap deal to pick up that couch down the street, and walk out with a multiline receipt that leaves your wallet lighter than you expected.

This isn't the first time U-Haul's pricing practices have drawn scrutiny. In 2010, it settled charges brought by the FTC accusing it of inviting its closest competitor, Avis Budget Group, to collude to fix prices on one-way truck rentals.

"Here we are in 2025, and obviously it's a different kind of deceptive pricing issue, but nonetheless, continuing to engage in deceptive marketing or in deceptive pricing," Smith tells me.

The fees appear to be a money-maker for U-Haul. In its third fiscal quarter, ending in December, the company reported a $38.8 million increase in revenue for self-moving equipment rental, a 4.6% jump from the year before. Per-transaction revenue increased for both its in-town and one-way markets.

U-Haul didn't respond to requests for comment for this story. It did not admit wrongdoing in its 2010 settlement with the FTC.

Moving is wildly stressful. It's always harder and takes longer than you think and, often, more expensive than you expect. Moving companies' estimates can be eye-popping. Truck rentals such as U-Hauls are positioned as an alternative, cheaper option — assuming you have some very nice friends who are willing to help — but their costs can get unwieldy fast. In such high-stress situations, it's extra difficult for customers to compare prices and police fees.

"They invest time, energy, and effort in trying to rent a moving truck, and by the time they discover the true price of the rental, they've already sunk their time and energy into getting the truck," Smith says. When you show up at the rental lot the day of your move and realize that $19.95 is actually $60, are you really going to change course? It's unlikely.

This is the kind of stuff companies that engage in bait-and-switch and drip pricing, where they show one initial price and gradually add other fees and charges on, depend on: consumers getting so confused, tired, or distracted that they don't have the wherewithal to push back.

"People sort of end their searches very early," Tushnet says. "Even if it's more than they expect to pay, and even if there are better alternatives out there, they've just exhausted their time to look, and so they end up paying the extra."

Less-than-straightforward advertising strategies around pricing are a staple of many industries, including rental cars, plane tickets, and live entertainment. Some industries argue that these types of setups are beneficial for consumers. Airlines, for example, say all the optional add-on fees make it possible for passengers to choose their own adventures in terms of amenities and comfort. Banks say overdraft and late fees are fair when consumers screw up and discourage them from overspending in the first place. In other industries, it's more common for companies to pass the buck and say it's not really their fault. Rental car services aren't the only ones tacking on extra fees and taxes to their services — airports, states, and municipalities do it, too. When one asks who's responsible for concert ticket fees, all parties involved point fingers. Whatever the justification, the benefit for companies is clear: It's a way to get customers in the door.

"Companies do it because they try to make things seem as affordable as possible, they try to lure you in with this super-low price even if they know darn well that the total is going to be much higher than with all the mandatory fees," says Teresa Murray, the consumer watchdog director for the US Public Interest Research Group, an advocacy group. "Companies don't try hard enough to be transparent."

As consumers, we've almost become accustomed to the idea that we won't really know what things are going to cost until we're about to swipe our credit cards or sign on the dotted line. We try our best to comparison shop, but it's hard when the actual costs aren't listed up front. You can mentally bake in some fees or a little markup, but how much that's going to be is tough to gauge. Ultimately, consumer advocates say these practices often lead to diminished competition and consumers paying higher prices.

There have been some efforts to reverse the trend on a government level. On May 12, a new FTC rule on deceptive or unfair fees is set to take effect. It bars bait-and-switch and other misleading pricing tactics on live events and short-term lodging such as hotels, and requires businesses in those sectors to disclose total pricing up front.

"If that kind of thing applied to a bunch of other industries, like we were hoping, then we wouldn't have the problems like what we're talking about," Murray says. She added that some businesses are taking it upon themselves to be more forthcoming about their prices. More all-in pricing would help consumers compare deals and mean more honest competition for people's dollars. But don't hold your breath on an economy-wide price transparency transformation out of the goodness of corporate America's heart. Murray offered some tips on how consumers can protect themselves: Read the fine print, ask questions, don't be afraid to walk away, and do your transactions on a credit card so you can dispute the charges later if you need. It's smart, practical advice. It's also a reminder that, as consumers, we always have to be on defense.

As for U-Haul, it's not clear whether the FTC or state regulators will take action. Truth in Advertising has heard from a couple of states that said they'd look into it, which isn't unusual since potential regulatory investigations are generally kept confidential. In the meantime, the next time you're renting a moving truck, know that $19.95 sounds too good to be true because it is. You'll very likely be met with more charges and fees, plus the pizza and beer you have to buy for your friends as you collectively realize you're too old to schlep that couch up a flight of stairs.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Money may not buy happiness, but it does buy stuff. And buying stuff is at the heart of our consumer-driven economic engine. Lately, it's wealthier people, in particular, who have been keeping that engine running. The better off don't love high prices, and they're feeling uncertain, but they're spending through it all — and everyone's increasingly dependent on them being able to keep going.

In the immediate postpandemic era, consumers across the income spectrum were spending like gangbusters. For many people, being stuck at home for months meant a lot of pent-up demand and cash to spend. But over the past two years, the consumer story has split in two.

Lower- and middle-income people have had to pull back and be more judicious with their spending amid inflation, increased interest rates, and the rising costs of budget mainstays such as rent, food, and gas. Higher-income people have been able to brush off those concerns, thanks to rising stock prices and a solid housing market.

"Higher-income families have been doing more than their fair share of spending," says Gregory Daco, the chief economist at EY-Parthenon.

Companies have picked up on this split: Walmart has said that high-income shoppers are boosting its sales. In its most recent earnings call, McDonald's executives said they are seeing a "divided" economy, with steep declines in traffic from low- and middle-income consumers while high-income visits remain solid.

"The wealthy, the well-to-do, are driving the economic train, yes, at this point," Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's, tells me. "It's always the case, but to a greater degree now."

Just how drastic the split is among income groups is up for debate. An analysis from Moody's earlier this year, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, estimated that the top 10% of households, meaning those making $250,000 a year or more, accounted for half of all spending, compared with about one-third 30 years ago. In Daco's view, the Moody's analysis may somewhat overstate the bifurcation, but there's no denying that there's a bifurcation. He tells me that he sticks to the 60-40 rule, which says that the top 40% of income earners, so those making about $100,000 or more, "do about 60% of spending, and the bottom 60% do 40% of the spending." Daco tells me this is starting to shift. "We've seen that rise, that share for the top 40% rise to about 65%," he added.

Federal Reserve economists examined retail spending on goods last fall, using data from Numerator, a consumer data company. They found that middle- and high-income consumers were the ones keeping growth going while low-income spending had been stabler. This year, spending among low- and middle-income consumers has fallen off, while high-income consumers are maintaining their pace.

"It doesn't look like higher-income households have pulled back at all. It's pretty flat," says Leo Feler, the chief economist at Numerator. "When we look at the aggregate and we say, 'OK, well then aggregate consumers have still been going out and spending,' that aggregate really is driven by the higher-income households."

This is showing up in credit card spending data, too. As CNBC recently reported, Synchrony, which makes branded cards for everyday companies such as Walgreens and JCPenney, said it saw a 4% decline in spending during the first quarter of the year, while American Express and JPMorgan Chase, which target higher-end consumers, saw spending increases. Joe Wadford, an economist at the Bank of America Institute, said in an email that his firm's data showed higher-income households continued to spend at least through the middle of April, despite the stock market chaos. "In fact, our data shows that the top third and top 5% of households by income have seen no deterioration compared to overall spending growth," he said.

The conversation in many well-off circles — meaning upper-ish middle class and above — seems to be, "Gosh, everything is so expensive nowadays. Anyway, did I tell you about my last trip to Paris?"

Despite the rising tide of uncertainty, wealthier people have been up for spending through it for many reasons. They saved a lot during the pandemic because of stay-at-home orders. They've also seen their stock portfolios and housing values rise significantly. Despite this year's market woes, the S&P 500 is still up by 100% over the past five years. Home values have soared, and many homeowners were able to lock in lower mortgage rates a few years ago, which has helped them save on their monthly payments.

"Even though this isn't realized income in the sense that people aren't necessarily selling their stocks or cashing in on their home equity, they perceive themselves as being wealthier," Feler says.

Consumer spending has jumped in recent months, in part due to people trying to get ahead of tariffs and related price increases. Feler says it's likely wealthier consumers doing the spending — they're the ones with the extra cash on hand to be able to try to get ahead of tariffs.

"It's higher-income households that can suddenly drop $1,500 on a new TV and buy a new TV before prices go up. They can go out and put down $6,000, $7,000 on a brand-new car," he says. "Lower-income households don't have the ability to do this because they don't just have $1,500 sitting around."

In an online survey from the Harris Poll on behalf of Rakuten, a cash-back shopping platform, conducted in March, 12% of people making over $100,000 a year said they couldn't afford to pay their bills, while 33% making under $50,000 said the same.

There are risks to having the economy depend on a relatively small number of people to sustain and grow. Namely, if things start to go south for wealthy people — or they start to worry their fortunes are changing — things may go south for everyone. Higher-income people may have more resilience in the face of prospective labor market weakness and inflation than lower-income people, but they're not completely isolated.

Zandi of Moody's says he's not too worried about wealthier people's spending falling off a cliff, though it may fall off somewhat. "Stock prices are down, housing values have gone flat, so their wealths may not increase nearly to the same degree, and that may take some juice out of their spending over time," he says.

There's an adage among economists and investment analysts that the stock market is not the economy, meant to serve as a reminder that little lines going up and down aren't reliable indicators of what's happening in the real economy, in areas such as jobs, wages, and spending. But given the effect richer people have on the economy and the effect the stock market has on their spending, the market is a little bit the economy. So the economy is susceptible to the stock market's swings. If a person making $200,000 sees stocks dive, they may think twice about going to that restaurant down the street for dinner and opt for a meal at home. That hits the restaurant, the waiter, and the rest of the staff, and can eventually ripple across the economy.

"You want to have as many growth engines as possible, and relying on a limited set of economic drivers exposes you to downside risks," EY-Parthenon's Daco says.

Practically no one is feeling hot about the economy right now. Surveys from the University of Michigan found that consumer sentiment had taken a dive across all income groups this year.

"Because of the headwinds we're going through, you're already experiencing a slowdown in spending for a majority of households," Daco says. "And you're risking essentially a further slowdown from a smaller share that drive a bigger share of spending that could be subject to stress from financial market volatility, from lower pressure on stocks, from just the environment of uncertainty that we're seeing."

We're all in this together, rich and poor. It might behoove everyone to root for each other — and perhaps the stock market especially.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

It is not a good time to be a fancy lawyer in America right now. Or an academic, a journalist, a corporate consultant, a government bureaucrat, or a scientist. President Donald Trump has declared war on America's office elite. It's the White House vs. the eggheads.

The president has set out to make the American workforce "manly" again. The stated goal of his tariffs is to revive manufacturing and bring back jobs in factories, mining, and construction. It's not clear whether this mission will pan out — reshoring manufacturing plants is a tall order, and Americans aren't exactly scrambling to return to assembly lines — but it's Trump's dream.

On the flip side, the president has gone knives out to undermine white-collar work. He has targeted leading universities and students whose political views he dislikes. He has slashed federal spending for consultants and scientists. He has fired tens of thousands of government workers, many of whom are responsible for processing information vital to public health and economic growth. He's taken some of America's leading journalism organizations to court and initiated an unprecedented crackdown on big-name law firms and federal prosecutors.

The one thing all these jobs have in common is that they involve what sociologists call "knowledge work" — tasks that require workers to use cognitive skills and expertise to solve complex problems and make creative decisions. It's intellectual labor, as opposed to physical labor. Trump won't be able to wipe out brain-driven professions, but his agenda is designed to make the people in them uncomfortable — and leverage social and cultural animosity against them to score political points.

"What it's channeling is class anger against white-collar professionals," said Joan C. Williams, a law professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and the author of "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back." "These professions interact quite a bit with working-class people, and there's a lot of class anger against them, whether they're government bureaucrats or whether they're lawyers."

For the highest echelons of professional life, there's nowhere to hide in Trump's second term. The president has targeted multiple big-name law firms via executive orders, seeking to revoke their security clearances and limit their business opportunities unless they do his bidding. In one order, he described Perkins Coie's work as "dishonest and dangerous," citing its representation of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race. In another order, targeting WilmerHale, he said his administration was committed to addressing "significant risks" posed by Big Law firms that "engage in conduct detrimental to critical American interests."

It's a similar story in academia. Columbia University has acquiesced to many of the president's demands so it can avert his threat to cut $400 million in funding, including banning face masks on campus and appointing a senior vice provost to oversee its department of Middle Eastern studies. Harvard, on the other hand, has dug in its heels despite Trump's funding threats, though it has extended some olive branches.

Elon Musk, meanwhile, has had a role in the firing of thousands of federal workers, and the jobs of countless others remain in limbo. DOGE's spending reductions have taken a bite out of the consulting class, while its cuts to federal grants have undermined the work of researchers and scientists nationwide. The Associated Press and other journalists have been barred from White House briefings and press conferences (though the AP has been reinstated by a court ruling). The message is clear: If you're in a profession that requires you to think for a living, you better think again.

Trump has long channeled anti-elite sentiment for his political benefit — it's a cornerstone of the MAGA message that helped propel him to the White House. He knows that for many Americans, highfalutin lawyers and university professors aren't exactly popular figures. And he knows that attacking knowledge workers won't cost him or his party much support, since they're less likely to vote for Republicans than Americans without a college education.

"The dominant political cleavage right now in this country is if you have a college education, you're much less likely to vote for Donald Trump or vote Republican," says Daniel Drezner, a political scientist at Tufts University. "If I was drawing up a master plan of how I would weaken the groups that are opposed to me, it wouldn't look that different from what he's doing."

Trust in the professions Trump is targeting is in steep decline. A Gallup poll of Americans found respondents had net negative views of lawyers, reporters, bankers, and business executives. In terms of public opinion, TV reporters ranked below car salespeople. And when it comes to institutional trust, another Gallup poll found newspapers, big business, and television news were among those with the least.

In the public imagination, the jobs Trump is going after aren't ones typically thought of as authentically American in the way, say, an autoworker or a coal miner is. Unless they're directly affected by Trump's actions, many Americans aren't losing sleep at night wondering what will happen to some nondescript professor in a suit they saw on CNN. A recent episode of "The Daily Show" tapped into the sentiment. "Look, I don't usually root for Harvard, because they're Harvard. They've got everything," the host Ronny Chieng joked. "It's like rooting for Jeff Bezos to win the lottery."

Trump's base, in particular, feels slighted by institutions. Katherine Cramer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and the author of "The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker," sums up the prevailing attitude: "It's this sense that, 'Hey, wait a minute, things aren't working out for me the way they should, and it seems like the way everything is set up is not set up for people like me.'" By taking aim at those seen as "elites," Trump is able to create a clear target for voters angry about what they view as a rigged system.

Trump is hardly the first political figure to decipher this code. As the historian Julian Zelizer pointed out in a recent column for Foreign Policy, you can trace the anti-intellectual political appeal back to Richard Nixon calling his vice presidential opponent an "egghead" in the 1950s and George W. Bush's regular-guy schtick in the 2000s. "They were very adept at stepping in and deflecting the anger, the class anger, so that it wasn't expressed against economic elites," says Williams, the law professor. "It was expressed against cultural elites — namely, these college grads in government jobs, lawyers, doctors, science."

Trump's emphasis on masculinity, in fact, doesn't just manifest in his rhetoric about bringing back manufacturing jobs — both he and Musk have channeled it into the way they're firing federal workers. Part of the way the president rose to fame was by telling people, "You're fired," on national TV. Musk's business playbook has similarly involved swooping in on companies and axing thousands of employees. Now they're bringing that same "off-with-their-heads" style to Americans who work with their heads.

To be honest, knowledge workers share some of the blame for their own unpopularity. Intellectual elites can be smug and condescending. Some of them look down on Trump and his voters, or at least make them feel like they do. College-educated people are also a minority — about 38% of Americans have a college degree — who have outsize power in our society. "We tend to be the ones in professions," Cramer says. "We're the ones making decisions, and there's lots of people feeling like whoever is making the decisions does not understand my challenges."

The professions Trump is targeting are important ones. Nobody likes lawyers — until they need one. (Sorry, lawyers.) Universities are a critical and cost-effective engine of economic growth and technological innovation. Federal workers deliver essential aid and services to millions of Americans every day. Journalists help hold the powerful to account. The more we undermine these professions and deter people from entering them altogether, the more everyone will suffer. A thriving economy needs workers of all kinds, even the fancy ones in nice offices who may not know how to change a tire.

But for now, America's knowledge workers find themselves in a pickle. The president has figured out they're an effective foil. And thanks to the white-collar recession, things aren't great for them economically, either. In Trump's calculus, professional elites have become boogeymen on par with immigrants in the country illegally and wind farms.

What's unclear is whether the attack on intellectual elites is an actual vote getter, or whether it's just reinforcing preexisting divides. Jason Husser, the director of the Elon University Poll, says it's not clear whether moves like Trump's executive order penalizing law firms will cause swing voters to abandon Republicans in 2026 or 2028. It depends, he tells me, on how the battle against knowledge workers is framed. "When it's conveyed as a story where Trump is the protagonist and the intelligentsia is the antagonist," Husser says, "then he's better able to capture his party and move a few independents."

But if Americans come to realize how much their lives depend on the work of white-collar professionals, Trump's attacks on college-educated elites could wind up costing him in the long run. Cutting funding for an Ivy League university may sound good to voters — until they realize it also means cuts to cancer research. Getting rid of federal workers may seem inconsequential — until they realize that they can't visit a national park or count on the safety of their food and drugs. "That kind of thing has a pretty quick backlash potential," Husser says. Meaning the war on eggheads may seem like a good thing, until it starts to affect the price of eggs.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

I think a lot about what will happen when my TV breaks. I'm not sure how old it is — I'm not its first home — but I figure it's got at least eight years on it. The remote hasn't worked since the pandemic. Whenever the TV does go kaput, I know I should try to fix it. I also know I won't. I would have no idea where to start, and there's no repair guy around the corner these days. Plus, new TVs are so cheap that it's hard to justify the time, effort, and money that would be required to rehabilitate my current one. Like a lot of Americans, I've lost that fix-it knack.

It used to be the case that people had limited amounts of stuff, and when whatever stuff they did have broke, they fixed it. Then the postwar economic boom and the "Mad Men" era of advertising, and voilà, stuff-palooza. Unlimited amounts of things now surround us, allowing us to take an on-to-the-next-one approach to consumption. When our phones, washing machines, or jeans show even a remote sign of wear, the path of least resistance is to replace them. Now, with President Donald Trump's tariffs threatening to increase prices and continuing concerns about inflation, that calculation may not be so straightforward. Repair is becoming increasingly appealing. The problem is, it's a habit we've moved away from — and one that may be tough to get back to because of technological, financial, and cultural shifts.

"This throwaway replacement mentality has definitely increased dramatically," said Nathan Proctor, who heads a right-to-repair campaign for the US Public Interest Research Group, an advocacy group. "We're just churning through stuff at a ridiculous pace."

If Americans want to avoid tariff-driven price jumps, they may want to put down their credit cards and pick up some duct tape or a screwdriver.

The long and short of why we don't fix things anymore is that it's easy not to. New is often cheaper, faster, and more exciting than repairing the old. That's by design, in large part, from corporate America.

Many companies have business models that rely on the frequent replacement of their products, said Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at the University of Michigan. He pointed to Apple, which has a history of making its devices tough for consumers to repair (though that's starting to change on the margins). "The number of phones that they have to sell every year to keep shareholders happy is jaw-dropping," he said.

It's better for Apple if you buy a brand-new $900 iPhone than spend $90 on a new battery or give $25 to some small local shop to replace your cracked screen. The company spends a lot of energy on getting you to do that, via design, marketing, and other strategies. "They refuse to sell replacement parts to consumers, or they use software locks that frustrate repairs. Even if you're using authorized original manufacturer components, they leverage intellectual property law," he said. They also employ "relentless messaging about the value of newness" to make consumers feel like they must have the hot new thing.

Given how good businesses have gotten at producing inexpensive stuff, from televisions to toys, it's often cheaper for them to make a new thing than to invest in a network of professional repair technicians. Engineering is focused on cheap production, and repairability isn't a consideration. Building something in the least expensive way possible is not conducive to building it to last.

"Repair requires a human being with arms and hands and fingers and skill and expertise, and building a new one often requires a factory full of robots, right?" Perzanowski said. "And so the scale just does not work for making repair an economical proposition in a lot of instances."

Some businesses have been accused of deliberately making their products hard to fix by third parties — they make manuals and parts difficult, if not impossible, to find. They might require expensive software plug-ins or program products to lock up if the wrong party tries to tinker with them. In January, the Federal Trade Commission sued John Deere over the draconian repair setup for its farm equipment, such as tractors and combines.

"Manufacturers have thrown up barriers that made it difficult," said Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, an online platform that provides repair guides, tools, and parts for thousands of products. They also publish repairability scores, so consumers know how likely they'll be able to fix what they're buying ahead of time. "I am always trying to say, how do we make it as easy as possible, easier, to maintain the things that we've got rather than to replace it?"

Shelie Miller, a sustainable systems professor at the University of Michigan, pointed out that supply chains have also become so complicated that even collecting the parts to fix something is a herculean task. "If you were to take apart an air fryer right now, it is virtually impossible to quickly get at all of the components if something went wrong," she said. "And so you'd have to spend hours potentially disassembling the interface of a very small household appliance just to get the circuitry not built or designed for anyone to take it apart later."

While it's tempting to place the blame for why we don't fix things anymore entirely on corporations, there's a pervasive cultural factor involved as well: American consumers love to cycle through stuff.

We live in a throwaway society that largely prefers to ignore the consequences of our constant consumerism — to the environment, to our communities, to workers. Microtrends make us feel like new is always better, so we don't even consider patching last year's jeans. Many Americans judge each other over which phones they have, and whether that device is the latest version. Buying a fresh thing gives us a little dopamine hit that doesn't happen when we revive something we already have. Even though that dopamine hit is short-lived, it's alluring.

"We have been warped by amazing marketing organizations that tell us that every single year the latest and greatest thing has come out," said Lauren Benton, the general manager of Back Market, an e-commerce platform that sells refurbished devices from phones to beard trimmers. Part of her company's mission is to get people to think about whether the latest version of whatever device is noticeably different from previous versions and open their minds to something that's been fixed up. "A lot of people have these stigmas around it," she said. "And we are here to tell them about the financial savings, the environmental savings of choosing refurbished."

Even if people are willing to eschew the new, we've lost much of the cultural know-how around repair. Many of the local shops that repaired appliances, televisions, and radios have closed down, and those types of jobs have gone away. The types of skills needed in those jobs have changed, too, as technology has evolved. Plus, companies have made it harder for them to exist, instead funneling customers to their preferred stores or in-house options.

"The people who wanted to fix did it as independents," Proctor said. "And then the manufacturers realized that the more independents there were, the worse it was for their authorized programs, the more it was competing with their new sales. And so they erected a whole set of legal and business practices that attempted to make it impossible for those repair shops to operate."

The guy down the street who can fix your computer probably no longer exists in your local community, though he does exist online. People can mail in their devices, or they can find communities and videos with information to help them fix things themselves. It's good that the internet has endless resources, but it still puts the onus on individual consumers, and the repair still isn't as convenient as the replacement.

Nirav Patel, the founder of Framework, which makes repairable electronics such as laptops, told me many of his earliest customers were tech enthusiasts and DIYers. The company has also started to garner interest from people concerned about the environment. In Patel's experience, teaching people to alter and fix Framework devices hasn't necessarily been a skills question but a confidence one. "It's more of the mental barrier of seeing something like a computer as an object that can be opened, that has parts inside that you can swap out," he said.

Gay Gordon-Byrne, the executive director of The Repair Association, which backs the right-to-repair movement, said we need to "demystify" repair. Just as schools used to teach students to type or put them in home economics and shop classes, electronics repair classes should be added to the curriculum. "This is the modern version of needle and thread, the modern version of putting air in your tires," she said.

Understanding how our stuff works, or at least having a fair number of people who understand it, isn't just beneficial on an individual consumer level; it also helps collectively safeguard us from getting ripped off or being in a situation where there's a severe knowledge imbalance with manufacturers. We are better positioned to critique and regulate technology when we understand how it works and its machinations. One way to learn how stuff works is to be able to disassemble it and reverse engineer it. It's a valuable skill that America, collectively, should not want to lose.

It may also become particularly useful in the short term as Trump's tariffs take hold. Many items are expected to get more expensive, if their prices haven't gone up already, and some goods may be harder to get overall. People have already been leaning toward keeping their things for longer, especially in the wake of the post-pandemic bout of inflation, and this may push them even further. The buy new versus fix old calculation is evolving as prices continue to creep up, compelling more of us to become tinkerers, even if reluctantly.

The solution for how to revive the practice of repair is complicated. We're not going to all wake up tomorrow and decide to break open the dishwasher to figure out what that noise is.

On a policy level, the right-to-repair movement is making headway in compelling companies to allow consumers to fix their own products or contract with independent professionals to do so instead of going to the manufacturer. The idea is to create competition and make fixing things less expensive and less onerous. Right-to-repair legislation has been passed in seven states, and bills have been filed in all 50 states.

"People are saying, 'Wait a second, what do you mean I can't fix my stuff?' And then they read about right to repair and they say, 'Hell, yeah,'" Gordon-Byrne said.

On a more grassroots level, fix-it clinics and repair cafés, where people gather to figure out how to fix their stuff or meet someone who can, have begun to pop up. There is, of course, always the internet and the bottomless sea of how-to videos on YouTube. Some organizations are focusing on education, too. In New York, for example, Materials for the Arts, a reuse center that gathers and distributes creative materials to local schools and organizations, launched a repair program in 2023 that teaches students how to fix items in its warehouse. They learn to reupholster furniture, sew costumes, and fix bikes, which can open pathways to a possible trade or career.

"There's a way for us to engage with students that are maybe on the fence about what their future is going to be and what they're interested in, and give them a hands-on lesson on just being resourceful and using their hands and learning about something," Tara Sansone, the executive director of Materials for the Arts, said.

Our consumerist culture is perhaps the most difficult piece of this resistance to repair to unpack. It is easy and tempting to just toss our things and get something else. People are busy, and new things are generally cheap. It's annoying that many of our goods aren't as durable as they used to be. It's even more annoying to spend twice the amount on a repair than a new item would cost or lose endless hours down a YouTube rabbit hole.

When I posed this cultural conundrum to experts, I got two buckets of responses — they either told me that fixing things wasn't that hard, or they said it's the type of problem that's hard to solve. One person explained that I actually can figure out how to fix my TV if I give it a bit of effort, a point on which I beg to differ. Another said they occasionally pretend to be the fix-it type but acknowledged that's not the norm, which I will take as absolution for my future sin of tossing my TV. I figure I can alleviate some guilt by recycling it, though Anna Sacks, a New York-based waste expert who goes by The Trash Walker online, told me that's not really ideal, either. "It's better to repair a microwave than recycle a microwave," she said. (Luckily for my guilt index, I do not own a microwave.)

Miller, from the University of Michigan, said initiatives such as right-to-repair legislation help, but the cultural shift is the much thornier issue.

"I don't know what needs to happen in order to reshift our mindset to actually valuing stuff and saying, 'Oh, wow, this actually is a valuable material and we shouldn't just be throwing it away,'" she said. "A lot of it, I think, does come down to the economics of if our goods are incredibly cheap, it's much easier to have this consumption and throwaway lifestyle."

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Elise Monsanto plans to get around to some of the "grown-up" milestones that generally mark early adulthood; she's just not in a rush. She didn't get her driver's license until she was 20. She and her friends still haven't had their first boyfriends. Now, at 22, she doesn't drink, though she's sure at some point she will. "I think it's more of a hesitancy thing, a little bit scared to start," she told me. "I guess the same thing with driving."

Like a lot of people in Gen Z, she doesn't feel like there's a need to hustle into adulting. "There's no urgency," she said. "Even people I see graduating, I'm like, 'Oh, there's no urgency to look for a job or look for a place.' They're kind of OK with being like, 'Oh, I'll just figure it out when it comes along.'"

There's been a lot of chatter, culturally, about things Gen Z isn't doing. As the narrative goes, they're not drinking or driving or working or really taking risks. But the reality is more complicated. Gen Z isn't foregoing typical adult activities — most will eventually launch their careers or wind up getting married — but they're taking their time. They're following a pattern of people living life more slowly. Their parents nurtured and supervised them more, meaning they're sluggish to adapt to adulthood's lack of supervision. They're also staring down an economy where a lot of elements are sort of stuck in place. Many aren't in a hurry, but even if they were, it's hard to get moving.

Gen Z is becoming the Take-It-Slow Generation.

In casual conversations with people in the alcohol industry, one thing I sometimes hear is that they don't necessarily buy into all the headlines that Gen Z isn't really drinking. They're obviously self-interested, but they're not sure Gen Z is some special sober generation that will buck the trend of everyone who came before. Yes, Gen Z is drinking less right out of the gate than other generations — underage drinking rates have declined steadily in recent decades. When they do hit the kosher age threshold, young people aren't jumping in headfirst. But there are some signs that Gen Zers will eventually revert to the American norm as they develop a relationship with alcohol. Some older members of the generation, who are hitting their mid-20s, are starting to look pretty similar to millennials or Gen Xers when it comes to the amount of booze they consume.

"These are students that did not have a regular college experience because of COVID, and also social media is a bigger part of their lives so far," Nadine Sarwat, an analyst who covers beverages and cannabis at Bernstein, told me in an interview earlier this year. "The data indicates that once those people turn 24, 25 and enter full working adulthood, they're sort of consuming like previous people would at that age."

Drinking is a function of both economic and social forces, and Gen Z is playing catch-up on both fronts. Essentially, 25 is the new 21.

It's not just cultural signifiers where Gen Z is behind the curve. An analysis from Pew Research Center found that in 2021, 21-year-olds in the US also financially lagged far behind people of the same age in 1980. They're much less likely to have a full-time job or fully support themselves financially. But here, too, the younger generation is making up ground: By the time they're 25, today's young people look similar to 21-year-olds in the 1980s and are caught up with 25-year-olds of that era. In the US Census Bureau's 2021 American Community Survey, about two-thirds of 25-year-olds said they had full-time work, like 21-year-olds in 1980 and only slightly behind 25-year-olds at that time. Six in 10 said they were on their own financially, which is actually ahead of 21-year-olds in 1980 and in line with 25-year-olds of the time.

"On the economic milestones, you can sort of say that 25 is the new 21," said Richard Fry, a senior researcher focusing on economics and education at Pew Research Center. "They really do ramp up."

Fry said education may be partially responsible for this shift — people are waiting to get their first full-time gigs until they're finished with their education, and they're focusing on their studies instead of picking up part-time jobs along the way. Almost half of 21-year-olds were enrolled in college as of 2021, Fry said, while back in 1980, it was only three in 10. "Clearly, schooling and college are a more important endeavor for young adults today than they were 40, 45 years ago," Fry told me. There are some variations by gender — young women are caught up with their 1980s counterparts, while young men, particularly those without a college education, lag behind.

On either side of the college experience, Gen Zers are also hanging back from the workforce. On the younger end, teens aren't taking that first job that will propel them into adulthood. The proportion of teens working or looking for work has been declining for decades. In 1980, about 55% of people ages 16 to 19 were participating in the labor force. Today, that number is closer to 38%. On the postgrad side, the share of people in their early 20s in the workforce has declined over the past decade, Nicholas Tremper, an economist at Gusto, a human resources platform, said in an email. Because older workers are sticking around, they're becoming a bigger share of the workforce — and making it harder for younger workers to elbow their way in.

"The primary way workers advance in their careers is through job mobility, which opens up positions for others who are entering the workforce," he said. "Without open positions, Gen Z workers have not moved into the workforce."

On nonfinancial, more emotional adult milestones, such as getting married and having kids, Gen Z is following a long-term trend of people putting off such events until later in life. The number of people getting married and having kids by 24 has collapsed. The median age of a person's first marriage has gone from 25 and 22 for men and women, respectively, in 1980 to 27 and 25 in 2000 and 30 and 29 in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the Census Bureau. People are beginning to have children later in life, too, and even putting off the littler things, such as driving.

Aveyshla Jimenez, a 25-year-old publicist in Miami, told me she used to idealize what her current age would look like — a house, marriage. Instead, she's still getting settled in her career. "It's not necessarily that I don't want to be traditional. It doesn't seem realistic," she said. "It seems like I just entered the workforce." She started working as a teenager and can't imagine what it feels like for others who are behind her in terms of job experience. "I don't expect everyone to have worked as a server until 6 a.m., so if I'm not where I want to be, I can't imagine other people my age," she said.

One of the reasons that Gen Z feels less pressure to jump into these life experiences is fairly straightforward, said Jean Twenge, a psychologist and the author of "Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents — and What They Mean for America's Future." Young people nowadays simply have more time to live than their predecessors.

"Psychologists call this a slow life strategy, and it happens when people live longer," Twenge told me.

As life expectancies have crept higher, and people have started to get used to those longer lifespans, they are moving through life at a decelerated pace. Teens are putting off dating and driving, young adults are settling into families and careers later, and middle-aged people look and feel younger than their grandparents did at their age. "It starts in the '90s, but it's kind of slow, and then it gets going through the 2000s and then really accelerates in the 2010s once you transition to Gen Z," she said.

Gen Z doesn't have these new attitudes only because they feel they have all the time in the world to grow up. They're also being raised differently, with more attention and, some would say, coddling. As parents have fewer children and later in life, they nurture them more carefully, which, in turn, delays independence. Gen Z has been under more adult supervision than previous generations — their playdates were carefully watched; their parents have monitored their whereabouts on their phones — which may be safer but means they're not figuring things out on their own.

"Parents are more hesitant. They are less comfortable allowing their children to be uncomfortable," Haley Stephens, a pediatric psychologist at UVA Children's Hospital, said. Confidence and skills such as problem-solving and conflict resolution are born from discomfort, which parents and schools increasingly shield children and teens from. This has some good effects — young people are cultured and sensitive and aware of what's going on in the world. It's a positive that they're not drinking and are avoiding what are generally considered negative outcomes, such as teen pregnancy. But it also means they're having a hard time fully leaving the nest and are more anxious.

Technology, of course, plays a role. Young people spending so much time on the phone makes face-to-face interaction rarer, meaning they're slower to develop that muscle. They avoid driving not just because it's scary but also because the party is on Snapchat or TikTok anyway. They're good at setting boundaries at work to protect their mental and physical health, but they may boundary so hard that their boss starts to wonder whether they can handle the day-to-day of the job.

Jessica Lautz, the deputy chief economist and vice president of research at the National Association of Realtors, said this hesitancy to take the full leap is showing up in the housing market. While people 18 to 25 are just a small slice of homebuyers, when they do take the plunge, they do so closer to their families. "If we looked at Gen Xers, we would see they do not want to be close to home, for instance," she said. "But for young millennials and Gen Zers, this does seem to be much more important for them."

Lenny Zaleski, a 22-year-old senior at the University of Dayton, plans to move back in with his family in Chicago after he graduates from college in the spring and starts his full-time job. It sounds "crazy to say out loud," he told me, and isn't what he thought would happen, but it makes sense, given skyrocketing rents. "If homes are out of the affordability range and a studio apartment in the city your job is in is $2,000 a month, at a certain point, you can't just bootstrap that," he said. He acknowledged that living with his family is a pretty decent lifestyle. His grandparents are in the area, as is his dog, and it will let him save up for when he's ready to strike out on his own. And when he does buy, he plans to do so nearby.

Writing about young people always has a sort of old-man-yells-at-cloud bent to it. Every generation gets pinned with a stereotype, and everyone takes their turn at diagnosing the "problem with the kids these days." I'm a millennial, and all we got to hear about is how our avocado toast habit locked us out of the housing market — not, you know, a global recession and a real estate meltdown. But just as millennials are somewhat begrudgingly aging into their parents and grandparents, Gen Z is also coming around to the grown-up thing. It's just taking them a smidge longer to get there.

There is no "right" way to age, but much of America is stuck thinking that baby boomers should be the mold. As mentioned, younger people across generations are just moving through life a little more slowly. They're also aging into a very different world from that of someone in, say, the '80s. Technology is much more prevalent. The economy is more unequal. The world feels pretty unsteady.

Take, for example, the workplace. Managers and companies have launched all sorts of complaints that Gen Z seems ill-prepared and immature at their jobs. This may be true of many young workers, but it's not necessarily their fault. Many businesses have done away with robust on-the-job training, meaning entry-level workers are left to fend for themselves.

"The boomers entered the workplace with robust training and development programs and clear career ladders, things that organizations have dismantled over the years to save money," said Kenneth Matos, the director of market insights at HiBob, an HR-tech company. "In such an environment, I would expect people to 'grow up slower' because opportunities are fewer."

Grant Dutro, a 22-year-old senior from Wheaton College, told me he thinks there's a level of "safetyism" in his generation. "There are people that it is taking a little bit longer to launch," he said. Some of his peers' parents have tracked them on Life360, especially when they were younger. He started driving at 16, but he's got friends who didn't get their licenses until much later — he even taught one to parallel park. The type of stuff the psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes in his book "The Anxious Generation," Dutro said, may be "holding people back" in his age cohort. Like any generation, Gen Z is not a monolith, he said, but "my generation really grew up with a smartphone in hand, and I do think that has had a big impact, because why go out and see people when you can stay in?"

There's a temptation to put a value judgment on what Gen Z is and isn't doing. No underage drinking: good. No working: bad. But the reality is more complicated. When you put things into those two opposing buckets, you miss the bigger picture and what's contributing to it. Parenting, schooling, and working are different now, as is society as a whole. To expect Gen Z to do everything at the same pace as previous generations wouldn't make sense. Sure, maybe 25 is the new 21, but just because Gen Z is taking longer to hit some benchmarks doesn't mean that they'll be duds as adults.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Are you craving a frozen pizza lately? You're not alone. Maybe it's because the weather's warmer, maybe you're jonesing for a lazy-day treat, or maybe it's because the stock market's down and tariffs are throwing everything into chaos.

The uncertainty in the economy has people on the hunt for recession indicators — not just potential labor market weakness or spending pullbacks, but also more specific signals that suggest dark times are nigh. Consumers on edge, for example, buy more lipstick as a still-affordable luxury, or they start to scoop up smaller bottles of liquor. Another peculiar sign they're feeling pinched by the economy: They buy more frozen pizza, specifically, the fancy kind.

"This happens every sort of downturn in the economy — there's increased demand for premium frozen pizzas, high-priced frozen pizzas," said Craig Zawada, the chief visionary officer at Pros Holdings, a price optimization company. It's a bit counterintuitive, he added, since you'd think consumers are more cost-conscious, but it's actually a trade that makes sense because "they're replacing eating out to having a good frozen pizza at home."

So next time you find yourself lingering in the frozen section, know that your hankering for DiGiorno might be due to a case of economic anxiety.

When people are feeling pinched — economically, existentially — they turn to the grocery store frozen section. In 2009, in the midst of the Great Recession, frozen food sales grew by 3.1%. When the pandemic hit, frozen pizza sales spiked by nearly $1 billion from the year before, from $5.8 billion in revenue in 2019 to $6.6 billion in revenue in 2020, per the market research firm IBISWorld.

"Frozen pizza has always been a good category," Alexander Chafetz, an investment banker who does dealmaking in the consumer space, said. "But it came into focus, I would say, during the pandemic, when people weren't working, money was tight, and you had to feed a family at night. Frozen pizza is a very economical way to feed your family."

Michael Ryan, the owner of Tree Tavern Pizza, a frozen pizza company that operates out of New Jersey, told me that during the pandemic, his sales "went through the roof." He said that pizza as a category does well during downturns, but frozen has the extra "convenience" factor. "It is in the freezer, ready to heat. No tipping the delivery person or cold, soggy pizza," he said.

Although growth has since slowed from the breakneck COVID-driven pace, people are still buying up more frozen pizzas, thanks in large part to inflation. The US frozen pizza industry generated $6.5 billion in annual revenue in 2024, per IBISWorld, and remains well above its pre-pandemic level. Tighter budgets still make that $10 frozen pie seem pretty appealing.

While there's a growing amount of competition in the frozen food aisle at the grocery store, frozen pizza is still a star player, said Phil Lempert, a food industry analyst and the editor of supermarketguru.com. The boxes take up a lot of space, and they're relatively attractive to display. They're also convenient for stores to offer promotions and discounts on "because of the amount of different pizza brands that are out there, I would say that every week when I look at store circulars, there's at least one pizza on sale," Lempert said. "These companies are always vying to give promotions to the retailer."

Pizza is a comfort food that people tend to crave in trying times such as these. "Right now, with everything that's going on in the country and in the world, people are very nervous, so we're going to gravitate toward more comfort foods, whether it's mac and cheese, whether it's hot dogs, whether it's pizza," Lempert said.

Mid-conversation, I realized I might be doing some accidental coping via comfort food lately, as I've made pizza (homemade, which was terrible) and mac and cheese (luckily, from the box) in the past few weeks, neither of which are in my normal rotation.

It also probably helps frozen pizza's case that the quality has improved dramatically in recent years, and there are a lot more varieties on offer. You've got healthier options, with cauliflower crusts, for example, or you can indulge (slightly) with premium ingredients like hot honey, prosciutto, or basil. Restaurant brands have launched their own frozen offerings so people can get something that tastes like the out-to-eat experience at home. Ryan pointed out that home freezers have also gotten bigger, which makes it easier to stock up.

Now, as that good old economic anxiety is stirring up once again, people are leaning toward eating at home and stocking up from the grocery store frozen aisle.

David Portalatin, a senior vice president and food industry advisor at Circana, a market research firm, said that over the past year or so, consumers have been opting to buy a greater share of their meals at retail establishments — meaning grocery stores, clubs, online — than from food-service operations, such as restaurants.

"That's just a reflection of several things," he said. "One is a little bit of response to inflation and the fact that food inflation away from home is still accelerating faster than at home. But it's also this sort of longer-term trend of a more home-centric consumer."

When the pandemic took hold, many people had to stay home. Once the pandemic subsided, they were excited to get back out there and go to the restaurants they had eschewed for months. But that stay-at-home muscle is still stronger than it was pre-pandemic. More people are working from home, where it's easy to whip something up in their own kitchens — Ryan said that while it may seem silly, "the fact that many folks never got out of their pajamas helped spur sales." Consumers have also grown more accustomed to having fun nights in — turns out all that practice in 2020 means they've gotten better at at-home entertainment.

"People seem to be more comfortable at home. They want to do their own drinking at home," Chafetz said. "People are happy being at home, nesting. I think people nest when they're nervous, and so I think there's a lot of that going on also."

"Empirical evidence suggests consumers often 'trade down' to frozen or delivered pizza during recessions. Consumers become more price sensitive as they opt for cheaper, family-size offerings, like pizza," Alex Fasciano, an analyst at CFRA Research, said in an email. He noted that pizza restaurants' marketing is anchored around value, too, such as Domino's recently launched appeal to more budget-conscious consumers: the "Emergency Pizza" promotion (a free pizza) and "Best Deal Ever" promotion (a $9.99 deal).

But again, it's not necessarily just any old traded-down item people are buying as they start to worry about where the economy is headed, frozen pizza or otherwise; it's the nicer stuff. It's reflective of this overarching attitude among American consumers that we still want to treat ourselves, even as we cut back in other areas. Many people buckle down on their budgets somewhat, but they also spring for treats, whether it be a fancy latte, a weekend getaway, or a frozen pizza they tell themselves is healthy, which, maybe, don't look too too hard at the ingredients.

"In general, over the last year, we've seen the headwind at restaurants and the tailwind at making meals at home because they're more affordable. Yet there are all kinds of examples where we will choose the more premium offerings," Portalatin said. "When we go to retail, we may not be choosing the lowest price point offering, recognizing that we're already saving money by cooking at home."

Consumers have been battening down the hatches for a while now. Heightened concerns around tariffs have led to an acute sense of dread among many Americans about prices, economic stability, and even the safety of their own jobs. It's the type of mix that might make that stay-at-home Red Baron extra enticing.

William Curtis, a senior research analyst at IBISWorld, said they're not forecasting an economic-freak-out-induced spike in frozen pizza sales like the ones in 2009 or 2020, in part because it's not clear what will happen in the overall economy. But in the event that things really start to go south, "the logic of buying the frozen pizza when you have less money would still hold," he said.

Curtis added that frozen pizza is facing more competition for consumer dollars than it did 15 years ago, with more frozen options available, not to mention the proliferation of delivery services that make it possible to get all kinds of foods dropped off right to your door. Obviously, cooking at home is still cheaper, especially when you account for all the fees and the tip, but many consumers are still doing some slight splurging. "There are a lot of consumers that are willing to pay these fees just for the convenience of delivery," he said.

Ryan, from Tree Tavern, said he's not really concerned about competition from delivery or restaurants, because he sees frozen as its own thing. His customers are loyal, and he's focused on quality and authenticity that he hopes will appeal to people in good times and bad. He only sells plain cheese pizza, which helps keep the price stable and gives customers the opportunity to dress the pizza up however they like. "I kid with people who ask me why I don't offer more toppings," he said. "I jokingly say, 'Buy your own damn pepperoni!'"

If the economy takes a turn for the worse, customers may stick with just the cheese.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

The theory behind President Donald Trump's massive wave of tariffs is that they're a way to usher in a renaissance in American manufacturing. The idea is to make America the 1950s again, labor-wise.

The Industrial Revolution brought American workers from rural farms to urban factories. And over the past several decades, those factory workers have found new homes, work-wise, in services — in hospitality and tech and healthcare and basically anything that's not making an actual, tangible thing. American manufacturing, though still second only to China globally, has declined. Trump has pledged to reverse that trend, but it's a tall order.

Plenty of people agree with Trump that the US should bring back its industrial sector — an August poll found that 80% of Americans think the country would be better off if more Americans worked in manufacturing than do these days. The rub is that people are not so jazzed about working in manufacturing themselves. That same poll found that just 25% of Americans think they'd be better off working in a factory.

There is also a distinctly "manly" edge to Trump's pronouncements. When the president talks about bringing back jobs, he means specific kinds of jobs — ones in manufacturing, mining, construction — positions that have historically been held by men and coded as masculine. His supporters understand that, too. Over on Fox News, hosts have described Trump's tariffs as the "ultimate testosterone boost," with one declaring that working from behind a screen "makes you a woman."

Macho considerations aside, reshoring supply chains and manufacturing operations would take years to execute. Given the day-to-day chaos coming out of the White House on tariff policy, many businesses are disinclined to make any moves. US manufacturing's troubles have had to do with more than just globalization and cheaper options. Technological innovations have changed what manufacturing work looks like and how many people are needed to do it.

And then there's the aforementioned labor force problem: The guy sitting in an air-conditioned office with a comfy email job is not falling over himself to get back on the assembly line. The same goes for the janitor at the local school — the quality of many manufacturing jobs has morphed to the point that there's no guarantee the factory would pay significantly more or offer better benefits, but it might still require mandatory overtime.

"You're up against these huge technological changes in addition to trade and in addition to the fact that people are getting more educated, the country's growing richer, and there are these other jobs in the service sector, which people have gravitated toward," Kyle Handley, an economist at the University of California, San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy, said. "There are a lot of jobs that I think if we sit and think about it for a minute, maybe we are happy that nobody in the US has to do that anymore."

Back in 2017, Dave Chapelle joked, "I want to wear Nikes, I don't want to make them sh—s." For better or worse, that's how many people feel. The Great American Manufacturing Revival is a group project no one wants to participate in. American workers' response to Trump's desire to inject supposed masculinity back into the labor market is a shrug.

The United States is already facing a manufacturing worker shortage. An April 2024 report from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute found that about half of the 3.8 million new manufacturing jobs expected to open up by 2033 are likely to go unfilled. That's for a variety of reasons — an aging labor force, a downtrend in immigration, a lack of workers trained for the roles, and changing career trends. Millennials and Gen Zers know their parents' and grandparents' factory jobs aren't available to them, and even if they were, they don't necessarily want them. A recent post on X juxtaposed a pair of job ads in Tennessee, one at a car wash, the other at a nearby Nissan plant. The car wash job paid more. It's also probably more fun.

"It's hard to reconcile this alleged great appetite with the fact that we're struggling to fill all the manufacturing jobs we already have," said Colin Grabow, who researches trade policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

The rhetorical response is that these manufacturing jobs the White House is trying to bring back would be "good" jobs — the kind with stable trajectories, good pay to last throughout your working life, and solid pensions to take care of you in your golden years. But in practice, modern manufacturing jobs don't really meet those criteria anymore. Average earnings for manufacturing employees in the US are now less than they are for workers overall. Union membership in the US has been declining for decades, which has diminished the movement that boosted their workers' wages and fought for the rights that once made manufacturing jobs so compelling.

"Bringing back a manufacturing job is far from a panacea for job quality in the US," said Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. "The reason we thought those were good jobs and they were often back in the day is they were unionized, and if we bring back a bunch of nonunionized manufacturing jobs in the US, it won't happen."

There's a level of nostalgia to the conversation around an American industrial revival. Its proponents talk about it in an idyllic fashion — they tend to harken back to the 1950s when men were the breadwinners, their wives didn't have to work, and the US economy was emerging from the Great Depression and two World Wars. They paper over some of the realities of the time, such as the danger, monotony, and physical toll of many of those jobs. They also ignore that America is in a very different place than it was then.

"I think people have in their head that manufacturing is working for UAW, getting paid pretty well, a unionized job with a nice pension," Grabow said. "And that's just not the world we live in anymore."

Because of the aforementioned decline in unionization, workers in manufacturing — and many industries — don't have the same protections and collective bargaining leverage they once did. Technological advances make cost-cutting, including via labor reductions, easier than ever for businesses. Traditionally "masculine" jobs aren't what the American economy most needs, or what manufacturing really looks like anymore.

Many of the jobs that manufacturers have sent to other countries are ones that American workers do not want to do, much less the kind of brawny jobs requiring lots of heavy lifting and machinery that the masculinity crowd imagines. They don't want to toil away in garment factories or iPhone assembly plants for hours on end. (We'll leave for another day whether anyone should do this work, especially at dirt-cheap wages.) Chinese social media users have begun to circulate memes and videos depicting Americans doing this type of tough and tedious manual labor to make this point.

"It's hard to imagine American workers wanting to sit at a sewing machine and repetitively sew for $7.50, $8 an hour, and even that's going to drive up Nike's production costs such that a pair of Nikes will go through the roof," Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, said.

This unwillingness to take on menial tasks at the lower end of the value chain is part of the country's economic development. America is a wealthier country, people have a higher standard of living and money to spend, including on things and experiences they want instead of need.

"We get to have all this amazing electronics and communications equipment and fancy cars and electric cars and all this battery-powered stuff," Hadley said. "It may not be made in the United States, but we are able to afford it at reasonably low prices on our service-sector salaries. I think most people don't want to give that up so that we can bring back a few hundred thousand manufacturing jobs."

Setting aside Americans' willingness — or lack thereof — to take them on, it's not clear how many of those types of grueling, thankless, repetitive jobs would even come back. Many of the toughest manufacturing jobs can be and already have been automated. In turn, Trump's tariff battle could result in the addition of no, or very few, new jobs in the sector he specifically counts as the barometer for success.

"Technological change has reduced the number of workers needed in manufacturing, so there are not 1950s-style manufacturing jobs," Stevenson said.

Some members of the president's team have admitted as much. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been quite clear that the use of robotics and automation is part of the plan. The White House contends that the robot jobs will create other jobs for humans, such as taking care of and maintaining the robots.

"The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America, it's going to be automated," Lutnick said in an appearance on "Face the Nation" in early April. "And great Americans, the tradecraft of America, is going to fix them, is going to work on them. They're going to be mechanics. There's going to be HVAC specialists. There's going to be electricians."

Not all of these jobs would immediately be able to be automated — if people are putting screws into iPhones in China instead of robots now, it's for a reason. And of the nonautomated, robot-nurse jobs, it's not clear how many jobs that would amount to, whether workers will be trained for them, or whether anyone will even want them.

"It would necessitate a real reshuffling in terms of the labor market, rebuilding the workforce and bridging some of the gap in terms of skills in the labor market, and also addressing some of the workforce shortages because the manufacturing sector in the US is already facing a labor shortage," Lydia Boussour, a senior economist at EY, said.

All the robot talk pretty quickly leads to the big question that's keeping a lot of workers across various sectors up at night: Just how close are we to AI taking that job, too? Automation has hit manufacturing jobs harder and more vividly than any other sector, and political and business leaders talk pretty openly about their aspirations along those lines. It seems as if any heavy industrial job that Trump manages to bring back may just be on borrowed time anyway.

"Are we bringing back jobs that have a great future?" Grabow said.

Trump and his allies aren't wrong to suggest that America could stand to take a look at its manufacturing capabilities and approach to trade. William Boone Bonvillian, a lecturer at MIT and a senior advisor to its initiative on new manufacturing, said that America has both national security and economic reasons to try to bring some types of manufacturing back to our shores. We want to be able to make the things we really need, such as weapons, here. And when we develop things here but don't produce them Stateside, we don't innovate on the production end as much as we could or should. "That manufacturing is a very creative stage," he said, and one the US is missing out on.

Bonvillian said there are other upsides for the country's broader job market: Manufacturing jobs tend to create more indirect jobs than service jobs and are cleaner and less physically demanding than they once were. If technology makes manufacturing more efficient and, therefore, businesses more profitable, he said, that should be a good deal for everyone.

"If you can increase the productivity for a company, that creates a real gain, you can do more with less, right?" he said. "So that's a real gain, and therefore, you can raise wages."

Policymakers on both sides of the aisle, including Trump's Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, have taken an interest in industrial policy, trade protectionism, and shoring up American manufacturing. It's just not clear what this tariff regime is doing in terms of orienting the economy or moving people into jobs that are wanted or needed.

"If what you were trying to do was strengthen certain industries in the United States that could be a source of strong middle-class jobs, you would have had a much more targeted, well-thought-out set of tariffs," Stevenson said.

And some of the jobs in the US that need to be made attractive and filled aren't the masculine-coded, manufacturing-focused ones of the mid-20th century. In the more immediate future, as baby boomers age and the labor force shrinks, there's a pressing need for nurses, nurse practitioners, and home health aides. We don't urgently need more people working in factories making the cheap baubles we're importing from China; we need them working to take care of other human beings.

"A real wage strategy would be one to encourage more men to take up some of the female-coded jobs and make them better jobs, unionize them or have standards and regulations," Bevins said.

Americans aren't wrong to feel some level of nostalgia for a different economic era, to view with rose-colored glasses a past with a stronger domestic manufacturing base. And the idea of it does sound kind of nice: You get a job at General Motors out of high school, put in your 30 years, and retire with your pension, just like your dad and grandfather did. But those types of setups are increasingly out of reach, and they're going to be tough to claw back. And even if those jobs do become available, just how happy was your grandpa at work in the first place? If he'd had the choice, he might have opted out, too, just as most Americans say they would now.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

If you feel like you have no idea what anything's supposed to cost anymore, you're not alone. The pandemic and subsequent bout of inflation sent prices all over the place, and now we're facing down whatever is going on with tariffs at any given moment. Unfortunately, our collective state of sticker "Huh?" is likely to get worse. Thanks to a whipsawing economic landscape and the magic of technology, prices can change faster than ever — the price you see in the morning may not be the same that same afternoon. Maybe that new price tag is the result of changing supply and demand dynamics. Maybe it's tariffs. Maybe it's corporate funny business. The unfunny part is that it's impossible for many consumers to know.

You might remember the brief dustup around Wendy's and dynamic pricing last year. Its CEO said on an earnings call that the company was going to test out price variations and AI-enabled menu changes, and the internet did a little bit of a freakout. The episode was a sign of the times: Rapid-fire price changes are everywhere. Thanks to digital price tags, QR codes, and the shift to online shopping, it's easier than ever for companies to move prices at the drop of a hat. The pandemic helped firms get more agile at reacting to shocks to the system. Instability represents a prime opportunity to make adjustments, including to a business' benefit.

"Given this really uncertain, volatile environment, if you're a company who's been thinking of doing dynamic pricing, it could be a good opportunity," said Z. John Zhang, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business who studies pricing strategies and targeting. "This could be a good occasion, a good excuse, an alibi for them to move in that direction."

It used to be the case that dynamic pricing — meaning the price of something moving up or down based on market conditions — was largely reserved for flights, hotels, and Ubers. Consumers didn't love the idea their airfare in July was going to run them double what it would in February, but they got it — thus are the rules of supply and demand. But variable pricing is creeping across the economy, including places where it feels a little less understandable. Now, we're in a super-dynamic environment, given the uncertainty emanating from the White House and the global economy. In turn, it's a moment for a super-dynamic approach to prices.

Volatility is always a part of business, but now we're facing a "trifecta of volatility," said Craig Zawada, chief visionary officer at Pros Holdings, a price optimization company. First, costs are changing quickly — in the past_, a company might negotiate once or twice a year with a supplier, but now they're having to review their agreements all the time. Second, competitive fluctuations are happening. Businesses in the same industry tend to have similar inputs, but not always. If the guy next door imports from China and you don't, you've got an advantage, but if you see them increase their asking price, do you bump yours up a little anyway? Third, consumer demand is shifting, and not always in ways that are obvious or predictable or even bad. In times of economic precarity, sales of items such as lipstick and mini bottles of alcohol tend to go up.

"All of those dynamics, in this volatile environment, if you're thinking about it as a business, how do you thrive? How do you do better? You need to understand all of those things," Zawada said. "That's where technology comes in. It's much easier now to have visibility on costs, see the reactions to the market, and then respond with prices."

Customers recognize how volatile things are and may expect price changes. The willingness to accept these adjustments makes it easier for businesses to do some resets and expand their margins in competitive areas to get more breathing room. This is the type of margin-padding some companies did during this more recent episode of inflation. And if customers reject the increases, businesses can see that, too.

Shikha Jain, the lead partner for consumer and retail for North America at Simon-Kucher, a business consultancy, said that determining the price of a good is a lot more than just picking a number.

"What does it do for consumer demand? How do we balance acquisition and retention? What does that mean for our internal balance sheet and cash flow in terms of our P&L," or profits and losses, she said, "and what does it mean from a competition and market landscape standpoint?"

She pointed out that companies have gotten better at figuring all of this out in recent years, especially in the wake of a pandemic that was wildly disruptive to supply chains and consumer behavior across the globe. "We haven't had a stable environment in a long time," she said.

Consumers do not like dynamic pricing, even if it sometimes works to their benefit. Happy hour is dynamic pricing, as are early-bird specials, last-minute flight deals, and flash sales. But to many people, costs constantly moving up and down feels manipulative. They're suspicious it's going to actually work in their favor.

It's also the case that dynamic pricing isn't really designed to handle what's happening now. It's usually about supply and demand — that Saturday night taxi being a much hotter commodity than the same one on a Sunday at 2 p.m. — not about whether the president of the United States will jack up the price of everything coming out of China.

"This is a completely different situation, where you are looking to government policy and how that could change very quickly and how you would change your prices in response," said Eric Greenleaf, a marketing professor at NYU's Stern School of Business who researches pricing.

Businesses that sell online can change prices quickly, or just ride the wave of the Amazon algorithm. Some supermarkets and big box stores, such as Walmart, now have digital price stickers that can be adjusted in real time. Consumers are likely to be somewhat understanding that companies aren't having a good time with tariff-by-tweet. One risk businesses face in using slick dynamic pricing tactics, however, is that customers may view it as a little too slick. To blunt any backlash, they may want to pass the buck a bit. So the next time you go to the grocery store to pick up your favorite coffee brand, and it seems pricier than you remember, maybe there's a little asterisk next to the price tag that reads, "*This price increase was brought to you by President Trump, not me."

"There'll be a lot of firms, and this is easier online, where they can literally say: 'Here's what we wanted to charge you. Here's the tariff. Here's the total price that you're paying,'" Greenleaf said. "Of course, that will probably upset the Trump administration, but businesses want to make clear that they're not profiting off of this."

It's not that different from restaurants slapping on egg surcharges earlier this year. Were wholesale eggs more expensive? Yes. Was it easy for customers to wonder whether they were justifiably 50-cents-an-egg-at-Waffle House more expensive? Also yes. But Zhang, from Wharton, said a tariff surcharge may be a better way to go for businesses than plugging tariffs into whatever pricing algorithm. They can take it off once the tariffs go away, and it's easier to calculate than whatever incremental adjustment happens across the supply chain. Plus, he said, "You can just blame Trump."

Not knowing who's to blame is, of course, part of the problem from a consumer perspective. And just because tariffs go away and companies cool it on all the price changes doesn't mean the sour taste it's left in people's mouths will fade so fast.

"Whereas tariffs can change rather quickly, consumer optimism takes longer to recover," Greenleaf said.

Consumers are exhausted. The past five years have been filled with upheaval, and the chaos feels unrelenting. It's understandable people just want their shampoo to cost whatever it costs, no games. But the economy is increasingly gamified, including on pricing, whether or not people want to play.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Secondhand shopping can be pretty hit or miss. In the hit scenario, you find a delightfully low-priced treasure and wind up with an item that's cheap, unique, and, if you care, environmentally friendly. In the miss situation, you sift endlessly through items, only to come up empty-handed. Or, worse, you make a 45-minute drive to check out that old but "rust-free" truck you found online, only to discover the seller just painted over the decay.

Luckily, an increasing number of resale transactions are landing in the "hit" column. Companies are working to improve the secondhand shopping experience, especially online. Brands are embracing the resale trend. More consumers are willing to try it, too. In an era when people want their possessions to say something about themselves, and as we constantly cycle through microtrends, thrifting has gone from "ick" to "cool."

Now, in the face of escalating economic uncertainty, secondhand shopping may have even more appeal. There are no tariffs on vintage items. If a recession does hit, more people might find themselves seeking out the lower prices — and raiding their own closets to see if there's anything of value they can put up for sale.

"What secondhand provides is not just a very sustainable and economical way to shop, but once you've bought something, it's a way to monetize it, so you can actually tap into the value of your closet and circulate," Manish Chandra, the founder and CEO of the peer-to-peer secondhand marketplace Poshmark, said. "And those economics have never been stronger than today."

Consumers like deals and discovery. Secondhand shopping is an increasingly popular way to scratch both of those itches.

Resale has been around forever. In the analog world, there have long been garage sales and shops such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army. eBay was one of the first companies to hit it big on the internet, and now, there are loads of resale platforms online, from ThredUp and Poshmark to Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. People have even taken things into their own hands by creating "Buy Nothing" groups. Consumers' love affair with cheap stuff seems limitless, and secondhand is an avenue for it to flourish.

"It's a cousin to the fact that the US consumer perpetually needs a deal," Dylan Carden, an analyst specializing in consumer technology and specialty retail at William Blair, said.

More recently, there's been a growing acceptance of secondhand among consumers and younger generations in particular. The imagined shopping experience is no longer a dusty, smelly shop on Main Street you begrudgingly go to with your grandmother on a Saturday afternoon. It's a little fun time on the internet where you can find some neat stuff to brag about getting a deal on.

"We've seen over the last decade the destigmatization of secondhand," said Alon Rotem, the chief strategy officer at ThredUp, an online thrift and consignment platform.

A July survey from Morning Consult found that about half of US consumers said they shopped secondhand within the previous three months, and a quarter said they sold something secondhand during the same time period. Clothing and apparel is the most popular category for secondhand commerce, followed by books and games, furniture and home decor, and shoes. Per a recent report from ThredUp and the retail analytics firm GlobalData, the US market for secondhand apparel grew by 14% in 2024, its strongest annual growth since 2021, and is expected to hit $74 billion by 2029.

"There is a trend toward vintage shopping, secondhand shopping, resale thrift hauls, etc., etc., powered by social media trends as well as economic pressure that is driving more consumers to maybe more casually dabble in secondhand," said Claire Tassin, a retail and e-commerce analyst at Morning Consult, who added that the segment's growth is thanks to "introducing new people into this market."

Secondhand has a broad appeal. Parents of young children tend to like it since their kids are growing so fast — and don't yet have strong opinions about what they wear. Lower- and middle-income consumers shop secondhand as a way to save money and get access to pricier things they perhaps couldn't afford firsthand. High-end shoppers participate, too, and often prize one-of-a-kind used and vintage items. David Rosenblatt, the CEO of 1stDibs, a luxury e-commerce marketplace, told me that half of their buyers have a household net worth of over $1 million, and their average order value is close to $3,000. 1stDibs' fastest-growing category is jewelry. Secondhand shopping is helping boost a variety of platforms as well: Facebook's Marketplace is so popular it's keeping people on the platform who would otherwise quit. And according to eBay, users globally searched "vintage" over 1,200 times a minute on average in 2024.

Hannon Comazzetto, the CEO and founder of AirRobe, a startup that partners with luxury brands to help their customers resell and rent their merchandise after purchase, said her company has been successful in convincing brands that consumers' ability to resell their items will make them buy more in the first place.

The secondhand ecosystem is vast in terms of price points, business models, and appeal. There are online and offline, peer-to-peer and consignment marketplaces. Many big-name brands have broken into secondhand, whether by offloading their returned or used inventory on partner platforms or undertaking endeavors of their own. REI, for example, launched Re/Supply in 2018 for customers to trade in their gear and buy used merchandise. Nick Jendrzejewski, the manager of recommerce at REI, said in an email that 650,000 members used Re/Supply in 2024 alone. "REI has transformed its used gear business from occasional in-store 'garage sales' to a comprehensive recommerce experience,'" he said.

Despite the growing popularity, secondhand selling is not a slam-dunk business. Resale can be challenging logistically and hard to make a profit on. If it's a peer-to-peer model, such as eBay, Facebook Marketplace, or Poshmark, the business is relatively simple in that you're just matching buyer and seller and letting them negotiate among themselves. You're not taking inventory risk, Carden said, "but the problem is you need scale," which can be hard to achieve. If the company owns the inventory, such as ThredUp, The RealReal, and even Goodwill or Savers, it can't control what it gets and whether that will be a match for consumers' interests and trends. Merchandise has to be sorted, stored, and, in some cases, verified. "You get cheap goods, sometimes for $0, but you need to sort through all that stuff," Carden said. "Most of it's going to be relatively useless, and then you have to price it."

Jendrzejewski acknowledged that operating REI's resale business is "challenging." Every item that comes through is one-of-a-kind and requires individual inspection. Unlike with new product lines, they can't forecast and order specific quantities. "This creates natural fluctuations in both product supply and product mix that we work continuously to balance," he said.

It sounds a little odd to say, but the trends that have propelled fast fashion are the same ones that have driven resale growth in recent years. As Chandra, from Poshmark, said, the two categories are "in some ways, tied at the hip."

Consumers are cycling through trends and goods at a faster pace than ever, in large part because of social media. We want things cheap and fast, which is possible thanks to the internet and smartphones that let consumers treat shopping like a low-stakes lottery. People are buying things directly from what they see on Instagram or TikTok. Constantly improving algorithms serve them items they might want, even on secondhand websites and apps themselves. People increasingly say they care about sustainability, but that doesn't mean they shun fast fashion and the likes of Shein and Temu.

"That shows you it really is value is No. 1, because they're finding short-term value in fast fashion, they're finding longer-term value in secondhand, and they're really trying to reconcile those two paradoxical forces," Rotem, from ThredUp, said.

On the seller side of the equation, offloading stuff — including for a potential profit — is getting easier. On Poshmark, people can seamlessly snap pictures of their clothes, upload them, and sell them right away. ThredUp sends clean-out kits for people to box their stuff up, send it back, and get paid. 1stDibs vets and approves all of the roughly 7,000 sellers on its platform, the vast majority of whom are professional sellers, and gives them access to an international group of potential buyers.

Platforms are also leveraging technology — including AI — to make life easier for both sides of the buyer-seller equation. Steve Dool, a senior brand and marketing director at Etsy-owned Depop, said in an email that the company recently announced a partnership aimed at helping sellers edit and improve their photos using AI. (It also removed fees from Depop sellers in the US last year, perhaps a more important boost.) Chandra pointed to Poshmark's "smart list" tool, which generates listing details for sellers. On the buyer end, the RealReal is trying to use AI to identify counterfeits. ThredUp has released an AI tool that lets buyers upload images of looks and search for items with that vibe in its inventory. "It's making discovery easier, more fun, and ultimately bringing it closer to the experience of shopping new, which is one of the more powerful drivers there," Rotem said.

Like basically every part of the business world, the secondhand industry is weighing the impact of President Donald Trump's widespread tariffs, the stock market's downturn, and increasing worries about a recession. Based on my conversations with insiders, it's sort of a mixed bag.

On the one hand, a recession is bad, full stop. It means consumers pull back on spending, especially discretionary, focusing more on wants instead of needs. A lot of what people get on the secondhand market falls into the wants category. Concurrently, a scenario where people are strapped for cash means more might turn to resale to make an extra buck and start looking around their houses seeing what they may be able to sell on eBay or Depop. The result: Demand may fall just as supply goes up.

"It might become more competitive on the seller side for fewer consumers who have the discretionary funds to spend," Tassin said.

Even the luxury market could run into a problem. The stock market is down, which makes wealthy people a little more antsy about their money. "When people feel poorer, they're less likely to buy luxury," Rosenblatt, from 1stDibs, said. Over half of their sales are furniture, and a lot of their success tends to track the luxury housing market.

On the other hand, tariffs aren't a terrible deal for America's secondhand market. With limited exceptions, what people buy secondhand is already here. Shopping for used items may be a way to avoid tariffs and the inflationary pressures they may cause. Per the ThredUp and GlobalData report, 59% of consumers said they'll seek out more affordable options, including secondhand goods, if tariffs make new apparel more expensive.

"The introduction of the tariffs may lead to some shifts in consumer behavior as consumers become more price conscious and look to other retail options like resale," Dool said.

A more aggressive US trade policy may also give secondhand sellers a win in their war against fast-fashion competitors. In May, Trump is set to close a tax loophole that allows importers to avoid paying duties and taxes on shipments worth less than $800, known as the "de minimis" exemption, which is an important factor in how companies such as Shein and Temu are able to offer such low prices. "We think that that is an unfair advantage for fast fashion," Rotem said, adding that ThredUp has lobbied for the loophole to be closed.

Tassin said the tariffs could lead to a "potential boom" for secondhand shopping, given how much new clothing is imported to the US. She's a secondhand aficionado, and she's already started to notice tariff-related advertising from some of the sellers and platforms she follows letting customers know they won't be affected.

Still, none of the resellers I spoke to for this story were especially jazzed about the prospect of tariffs. As much as they're relatively insulated from import taxes, specifically, they're not immune to the potential economic harm they may cause. The economy gets bad enough, and people close their wallets on every front they can.

I should confess that I'm not a secondhand shopper. Don't get me wrong, I love a thrift store, but I refuse to shop at the ones in New York City because they are wildly overpriced. I've tried some of the online platforms, but the experience is just too hard. I get overwhelmed by all the options, and eventually, I get bored. I would rather not buy anything and repeat an outfit for the 20th time than spend two hours digging through various resale websites to find a dress for an event I'd rather skip in the first place. I can't imagine much of what I own is nice enough to sell. And even if it is, I'm not sure it's worth the energy.

The resale industry is betting that people like me will become converts, just like millions of consumers before. We'll get a taste for it after finding a real steal of a deal, or spend enough time scrolling that we finally click to buy. And then we'll buy again and again. And then, eventually, we'll start selling. And then we all join the circular economy or become part of the giant American yard sale. Maybe it's because we care about the environment. Maybe it's because that new-old chair really is a great find. Maybe it's because, in terms of price, used is often the best deal you're going to find.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Jen Donahue can't help but wonder whether a fellow skier took a bit of subtle revenge on her during a recent trip to Canada. Donahue and her husband, who are from California, took a trip up to Whistler, British Columbia, in March to enjoy the slopes. On their very first gondola ride up the mountain, they were seated next to a Canadian couple. While almost everyone else they met on the trip was very nice, the woman in the couple, Donahue said, was "straight mean." She was angry about the US's recent antagonism toward Canada, insisting Donahue and her husband make sure they buy Canadian products while on their visit and expressing dismay at the state of political affairs between the two countries.

"I think they're taking it really personally. She felt, personally, 'How could you do this to us? We've been so kind to you,'" Donahue said.

The woman's husband eventually got her to lay off, but before they parted ways, she gave the pair of American travelers some advice on which ski run to try. "She sent us down the most awful way, and we were like, 'Do you think she did that on purpose?'" Donahue said.

The spring and summer travel season is upon us. It's a time when people are excited to take a much-needed break and head out on vacation, in many cases, to a foreign destination. This year, American travelers are confronting a novel political scenario as President Donald Trump has taken a hostile stance toward countries that have historically been considered strong allies, such as Canada and those within the European Union. He's put in place widespread tariffs. His administration has issued loud public complaints about trade and defense relations with Europe. The president keeps joking about taking Greenland from Denmark and making Canada the 51st US state in a way that seems increasingly not jokey.

For many Americans living and traveling abroad, their home nation turning into a global frenemy is making things uncomfortable. Some are rethinking their travel plans, and those who remain undeterred are bracing for some thorny conversations. In recent days, I talked to tourists and expats about how tensions were playing out in their journeys, and the consensus was that while the situation isn't dire, it's making things awkward. People travel to get away from reality, but this year, they're having a harder time achieving that. As the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are — or, rather, there are your country's politics.

Donahue goes to Whistler once a year or so, and before this past trip, she had never had a political conversation in Canada. This time around, politics came up often — people would ask about it, they'd all hesitantly laugh, and she and her husband would explain they think it "sucks," too. "Everybody else almost felt sorry for us," she said. "It's embarrassing."

Inbound travel to the US from many foreign nations is expected to take a hit this year. Flight bookings from Canada to the States have plunged this year, and Canadian airlines such as Air Canada and WestJet have reduced flights to US destinations. Bookings from Europe to the US have fallen, too. Foreign travelers are turned off by America's inward turn and adversarial stance. They've also seen stories about tougher border security and travelers being detained upon entry into the US. Some countries, such as the UK and Germany, have put in place warnings for their citizens regarding travel to the US.

American tourists may also be scaling back some of their international travel plans. An analysis from Cirium, an aviation analytics company, of third-party air travel bookings from major US hubs to major European cities found that 12.6% fewer reservations had been made so far this year for June, July, and August compared with the same period last year. The Airlines Reporting Corp., which provides air transaction data, found that both international and domestic flight sales fell in February for US-based travel agencies compared to a year ago. International sales fell less than domestic sales, but both declines are a bad sign, given booking habits.

"Because of the deeper advance discounts and higher dollar price rise closer to day of departure, summer international tends to book sooner than domestic," Bob Mann, an aviation analyst, said in an email. He added that at a JPMorgan analyst-investor conference in March, multiple executives brought up poor recent sales, including international and transatlantic. "While one month is not a trend, it could signal an inflection point," he said.

To be sure, if Americans do scale back on air travel this summer, it may not be because they're worried about politics. Virgin Atlantic has said it's seeing a slowdown in travel from the US to the UK, citing economic uncertainty. Consumers are concerned about the economy and their own income prospects, and that may lead more of them to stay home or wait on booking. Still, for some travelers, the potential for negative international attitudes may be part of the calculation.

Even if American travelers aren't staying home, they're readying themselves for some questions and encounters they haven't dealt with in the past. On the American travel guru Rick Steves' blog, there's lengthy advice (and debate) about whether Americans are still welcome abroad. Forums on Reddit have intense discussions among expats and tourists about what to anticipate, how to handle tense situations, and a sense that this year is different from years past.

Leila Bulling Towne, an executive coach in California, told me she's rethinking her approach to her coming trips — she's going to Mexico in the spring, and then in June, she'll be in Germany and Belgium. She has both American and Irish passports, and she plans to travel with both, just in case. Bulling Towne has traveled a lot throughout her life, and she never imagined she'd be so worried about her reception as an American.

"I felt like in the past, the worst that maybe people assumed about Americans was that we were loud and maybe not polite in a church or didn't respect someone or assumed everybody spoke English," she said. "Now, I feel as if it's a little I'm not bringing the usual pride that I have as an American."

Bulling Towne has a lot of friends and family in Germany, and she said they'd been "quite honest that there's a pretty good anti-American sentiment" there. "As much as I can try and speak the local German dialect, I'm still going to be loud and clear coming through as an American," she added.

Carol Harms, a retired teacher from Seattle who's doing a lot of foreign travel in her golden years, told me in an email she tries to avoid the topic of politics as much as possible in her journeys "because, on a personal level, I am ashamed" of the Trump administration's actions. Politics talk doesn't make for great vacation talk, but it's sometimes unavoidable. She was just landing in London when the November election results came in, and people were "puzzled" — good-natured but curious.

In January, on a cruise in South Africa with a lot of Brits and Australians, almost everyone asked her about the election. "Most continued to be polite but were far less cheerful than before," she said. "One outspoken Trump supporter was avoided by most people." Now she's in Japan, surrounded by many Brits and Australians once again, and their attitudes have changed drastically. "Many of them are simply angry," she said, though it's not directed at her personally. "They feel completely let down."

Ambrose Conroy, a management consultant from California, has found that in many of his recent business travels, his clients in Ireland and Germany are clamoring for clarity.

"A lot of these people are people that I've known for a very long time. I think they're confused and frustrated by US policy," he said. "We're dividing the world with this right now, and unless we get simplicity and clarity, it's going to continue to be divisive."

Some American expats find themselves in situations where their home country is now antagonizing the country they call home. That's the case for Elizabeth Van Horne, an English teacher from Colorado who's been living in France since 2013. Her French accent is good enough that people don't immediately realize that she's American, but once they figure it out, they inevitably want to talk Trump. "He's front and center of all those conversations," she said. Some people treat her with a sense of concern — as though she's gone through a natural disaster. "The vibe that I've been getting is pity," she added.

She teaches English to many business students, who historically have wanted to travel to the US to visit or even launch their careers. This year, she has only one student who wants to go to America; the rest are going to try Canada, Australia, or maybe the UK. A colleague who was going to visit the US with her family has decided to delay the trip.

"It's hard to see the place you love so much is being viewed so negatively," she said. Her infant son has dual citizenship, and she wonders what he'll think of the US when he gets older, if he'll want to visit or live there. "I don't know what his view will be."

The complications of traveling while American are hardly new. American tourists have long had a certain reputation — they're loud, they're entitled, they don't try to speak the language. There's a reason "tell people you're Canadian" is common travel advice, even if that may be an urban legend. (Though reporting for this story, I did come across a Canadian who was worried people might confuse her for an American while she was abroad.)

Trump is hardly the only politician whose policies American travelers have had to reckon with while on the road. During the George W. Bush years, they had to answer questions about a president who launched two unpopular wars and a culture that tried to make "freedom fries" a thing. More recently, with President Joe Biden, they had to explain why a country would try to reelect someone so old and try to justify some of his global policies.

Tom Predhome, a retired consultant from New York who moved to Malta in 2023, said Trump is a "natural topic of conversation" when people meet Americans there, but he also found under Biden there was a lot of concern about foreign policy, namely, Israel and Gaza. "You'll get people saying things like, 'Oh, Biden or Trump is really no different,'" he said. In 2017, he and his wife were with a tour group in Borneo, where the topic of Trump was so contentious that things between some American tourists almost came to blows. He remembers telling the tour guide, "I'm sorry. I apologize for my country."

The point of travel is that it's supposed to be a way to leave worries behind. It's a chance to escape from the day-to-day, to forget for a while about obligations and work and responsibilities — and, in theory, politics. I don't know about you, but my idea of a good time on vacation is not lying on the beach and chatting about how Republicans are going to keep their small-margin coalition together as they negotiate the next reconciliation bill.

But this travel season, Americans may have no choice but to face some of the Trump-composed music and deal with some less-than-friendly hosts. As much as Donahue was a little flabbergasted that the Canadian skier had sent her and her husband down a bad path, they heeded her advice with regard to what else to do while they were there. They bought Canadian products, including sweatshirts from a very obvious local brand. They tipped extra. Her husband wore the same sweatshirt with a Canadian flag and a beaver on it every day. "We wanted to blend in," she said.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

This is going to be a "strange" year for Pride, Kevin Kilbride says, given everything that's going on. About one-third of New York City Pride's corporate partners are still holding back their sponsorship dollars this year, with just a couple of months to go before the event, explains Kilbride, who handles media and marketing for the organization. "That is unusual," he says. "We've seen folks moving a little bit more cautiously, what they would say is strategically."

Some sponsors have expressed political concerns, pointing to the White House's antagonistic stance on diversity, equity, and inclusion and the current climate more broadly. Others are gesturing at tariffs or general economic instability as the cause for their hesitation in committing big money, which organizers have to take at face value, even if it's hard to imagine the politics aren't part of the calculation. Case in point: Kilbride says that a "pretty significant" corporate sponsor has asked to be a silent partner of this year's New York Pride, though it hasn't scaled back its funding.

"Our businesses have long been a leader in trying to support this community and push this movement forward and more into the spotlight," Kilbride said. "And it's unfortunate that that not across the board seems to be shared by all of the former partners."

LGBTQ+ Pride month is close on the horizon, in June, and organizers of events, marches, and celebrations across the country are in the final stages of securing funding and sponsorships. In contrast to years past, when, if anything, the complaint was that Pride had become too corporate, planners are encountering a much different, colder scenario. This year, businesses are anxious about their involvement. While some are sticking to it, others are scaling back donations or declining to participate entirely. They're scared of the Trump administration's anti-DEI stance and threats of retribution. They're worried about the potential social media backlash. And they're reacting accordingly.

"There's a variety of responses. One is there is obviously retreat," said Bob Witeck, a communications strategist focused on the LGBT business community. "A number of companies have made the decision that this is a fraught environment in which to take part."

San Francisco Pride has had several big sponsors back away this year, including Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, Diageo, and Nissan. It may be on track for a $200,000 shortfall in its anticipated $4.1 million budget. Suzanne Ford, the executive director of San Francisco Pride, said the companies backing away have been wishy-washy about why.

"Obviously, the Trump administration and the war on diversity, equity, and inclusion, I think, has affected some corporations' decisions about who they sponsor," she said. "Some corporations are hedging their bets, not trying to inflame one side or the other and trying to just stay out of the fray."

The public attention on the dropouts has helped inspire other sponsors to jump in and fill the gap, Ford said, including Levi's, which is returning after a three-year hiatus, Benefit Cosmetics, and La Crema wines. As news about withdrawals trickled out, San Francisco Pride also brought in $30,000 in donations from individuals last month, and organizers believe some companies could still make donations even if they choose not to officially sponsor. Pride is a boon for San Francisco: A 2015 economic impact study found it injected $350 million into the local economy every year, thanks to more than half a million visitors attending the two-day celebration. Ten years later, Ford thinks that number could be $1 billion as crowds have continued to grow.

"Pride, over its history, has faced difficult times, and we've always found a way, and we'll find a way now," she said.

A Diageo spokesperson said that Diageo plans to participate in events around Pride in San Francisco, such as offering promotions at bars through its Smirnoff brand. Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, and Nissan did not respond to requests for comment.

Ryan Bos, the executive director of the Capital Pride Alliance in Washington, DC, said a number of sponsors have dropped out of this year's event, including Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm and major federal contractor that could, in theory, find itself in the crosshairs of some of Trump's DEI-related executive actions.

"As you can imagine, being in the nation's capital, a lot of advocates we work with either have federal contracts or definitely receive federal funding," he said.

In an email, a Booz Allen spokesperson said the company is committed to supporting all of its employee communities and celebrating tribute months. They said the decision not to be a headline sponsor this year "does not reflect any pullback of support to this community."

Denver Pride has seen a decrease in funding for its events, which include a festival, parade, and 5K race. Natalie Zanoni, the organization's interim CEO, said in an email that among those who sponsored Denver's 2024 Pride and are coming back this year, average contributions have decreased by 62%. Other sponsors aren't coming back at all. She noted that Denver's Pride is unique in that it doubles as an annual fundraiser for Denver's local LGBTQ+ community center, The Center on Colfax, meaning the decline in sponsorship money will affect more than the size of parade floats. "The decrease in funding we are experiencing puts these critical services at risk, such as mental health support, programming for our trans and gender diverse community, youth, older adults, and more," she said. While they are "disappointed" by the situation, the group doesn't want to call out specific funders. "We also recognize that these decisions do not reflect the views and opinions of everyone within the organizations in question," Zazoni said.

Kojo Modeste, the executive director of Pride Toronto, said that Nissan Canada is the only company that's publicly announced its exit from the city's event. The company said in an email that it was a "local decision solely due to a reevaluation" of its marketing and media activations in a "variety of activities." However, Modeste said "quite a few" other sponsors have quietly pulled out. Many of the corporations haven't provided a detailed justification, though most are based in the US, which, given the current economic headbutting between the two countries, adds another element. "It sends a message without sending the message, without them telling us exactly that they're pulling out for these reasons," Modeste said. "I think there is a level of fear."

Some smaller Canadian sponsors are trying to step in to help fill the gap, which Modeste is grateful for, but their generosity will still leave the organizers with a shortfall. "The cost of doing the festival year after year keeps going up," Modeste said. "Even if we were to gain back 50% of that loss, it is not going to cover that big gap that is left."

It's not just the large Pride events that are seeing pullbacks. Jessica Laney, the president of Pikes Peak Pride in Colorado Springs, said the event has never really had large corporate sponsors. It's generally relied on grassroots support and smaller entities, but they've scaled back this year, too. Pikes Peak is seeing fewer sponsors at their $5,000 and $10,000 tiers, which represent some of their highest levels of giving. Government grants have dried up, too. "Those are pretty much gone now," Laney said. On the more encouraging side, they've had an uptick in smaller contributors, say, at the $1,000 level. "It's kind of like a change off," she said.

Pikes Peak Pride is still below where it was last year in terms of sponsorship dollars, but the group hopes more money will come in. It's being more proactive about outreach and doubling the number of fundraisers it hosts.

Alexander Clark, the board president of 406 Pride, which hosts Billings Pride Fest in Montana, said they've had some new sponsors jump in, including a large local hotel chain, and as of now, one of its five major sponsors is returning — and increasing its donation. As for the other four major donors, Clark said the organizers are taking a cautiously optimistic approach. "As we're approaching some of the bigger sponsors, though, we're expecting to get some pushback, because some of the companies that have participated in the past may not have that same DEI focus," he said.

406 Pride is what Clark admits is a "unique" organization and location, given that it's in a deep-red county in a deep-red state.

"Folks seem to have a 'keep to their own' mentality," he said. If they're part of the queer community, they'll come out, but if not, they "don't really bother with us."

That means in terms of sponsors, it's always been a more thoughtful decision to participate. This year, Clark is hoping partners will come back and then some, because organizers are taking a number of new — and more expensive — safety measures. They're installing concrete barriers instead of wooden ones and are hiring a security firm to back up local police. "I'm not taking any chances this year," he said.

These decisions to scale back Pride support aren't happening in a vacuum — they're taking place in a context when many corporations are afraid to engage in anything that might appear DEI-esque.

The White House has pledged to root out what it's characterized as "illegal DEI" from the federal government, government contractors, and, where possible, private companies and is seeking to make examples out of specific entities it believes have gone too far. Some conservative social media influencers are on the hunt for targets to rile up their followers about. Businesses don't want to be caught up in whatever the controversy of the day is, or the one that pops up tomorrow, or the day after that. This has led a number of major companies to scale back their DEI practices. Some have eliminated or overhauled programs aimed at underrepresented consumers, vendors, and employees, including the LGBTQ+ community, and have scrubbed mention of certain diversity-related terms from their websites, financial filings, and other documentation. Take Target: It faced blowback last year over its Pride merchandise collection and wound up scaling it back, even though the collection wasn't markedly different from anything it had done in previous years.

"If you and I were talking five years ago, the bigger issue was corporate exploitation," Witeck said. "So we're really back to, in a sense, what Pride was originally intended to be. It was sort of a civil rights activation."

He added that some companies, instead of sponsoring celebrations or parades, are donating to community causes instead. "In some respects, that's a positive move," he said.

Fabrice Houdart, a human rights advocate who focuses on LGBTQ+ rights and corporate social responsibility, pointed out that the Trump administration has not targeted Pride, including this year's World Pride, which will happen in Washington, DC. In Houdart's mind, companies may just be taking advantage of the opportunity to walk away from initiatives they were never really that attached to in the first place.

"Right now, the wind is not very pro-LGBT and therefore they're thinking, 'Well, I'm just going to throw out the baby with the bathwater and run away from that community as quickly as I can,'" he said. "In many ways, what it shows is that there was some amateurism in the way the company expressed their values."

All of the Pride organizers I spoke to expressed disappointment about former sponsors' handling of this year's events. Parades, festivals, and other gatherings cost money to put together, and less money may mean they could need to scale back their plans, though, in certain areas, such as security, medical services, and insurance, there's no compromising.

"People are getting the message that Pride is fragile. It always has been and always be," Ford said.

Historically, some corporations have been ahead of the curve on LGBTQ+ rights — General Motors, for example, extended marriage benefits to same-sex couples before same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide. Organizers also said they were starting to look for more grassroots, individual support going forward so that they won't be so reliant on big business and whatever cultural and political tides they're reacting to.

"You've got a free event that we're trying to make as accessible to as many people as we can. It's very, very hard to make that happen without corporate support," Kilbride said. "It's still, I think, going to end up being on the queer community. In my opinion, we are our own sponsors during Pride Month, so I think that's kind of what the future is headed towards."

In the meantime, New York City Pride is planning to get fundraising for this year wrapped by the beginning of May. Some of the attention on sponsors dropping out is bringing some of them back to the table, and there's hope additional visibility could inspire other companies to step up — corporate anxiety works both ways.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

You know that sensation when something feels off, but you can't quite put your finger on it? That sensation of "I don't feel so good about this," even though the "this" is a little fuzzy. That's the state of work for many people right now. So if you're a little uneasy about the job market, you're not alone.

The economy's felt like the other shoe is about to drop for quite some time now. There was the euphoria of the Great Resignation, the post-pandemic era where workers had a lot of temporary power and did some job-hopping. That gave way to the confusing negativity of the vibecession, when Americans said the economy was terrible even though, on paper, it was good — and, despite their negativity, consumers kept spending like it was good, too. Then we got to the Big Stay, where workers decided to stick to what they were doing, whether they were happy about it or not. Sentiment picked up a bit after the 2024 election when people thought a Trump 2.0 economy would look as rosy as they remembered Trump 1.0. But now, the bad vibes are back. Workers are not feeling great about the labor market or their own jobs. The Big Stay has transformed into the Big Cling to Your Desk, Suck Up to Your Boss, Be Seen in the Office.

Consumer sentiment has been on the downswing recently, in part because people are feeling queasy about work. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index fell in March, driven largely by declines in people's outlooks on income, business, and the labor market. The concerns about the future pushed the Conference Board's expectations index to its lowest point in 12 years, below the level that tends to signal a recession. While people feel OK about the current labor market, they're worried about their future employment prospects and their future incomes.

"That's a sign that people are getting worried about their own situation," said Stephanie Guichard, a senior economist at The Conference Board, in an interview. She added that people are beginning to say they're more worried about their family financial situations, too. "We are at the point where they may start changing their behavior."

Surveys from the University of Michigan reflect a similar doom-and-gloom mood toward the labor market. Consumers' expectations for unemployment over the next year are at their worst level since the Great Recession — two-thirds of them think unemployment will go up. According to the University of Michigan's most recent reading, consumer sentiment has declined across the economy, cutting across age, income, and politics, as people are feeling increasingly anxious about a wide variety of measures, including their own personal finances and the labor market. Even high-income consumers are worried about their situations.

As with the Conference Board's findings, the University of Michigan's survey shows people aren't just worried about the broader labor market, they're worried about themselves.

"If labor markets truly weaken or people believe that labor markets are going to weaken, and now they're expecting their incomes to be less stable than they were before, they're not going to be willing to go out on a limb and spend at the same high level, take financial risks, make more investments, start new businesses," said Joanne Hsu, the director of consumer surveys at the University of Michigan. "People are not going to be comfortable doing that if they're perceiving weaknesses throughout the economy."

On paper, the labor market remains quite solid. The unemployment rate is healthy relative to history, though it's a bit elevated from recent historic lows, and layoffs remain steady. The quit rate is a little below where it was pre-pandemic, which reflects the "stay where you are" attitude, but overall, signs from "hard" data are flashing yellow.

Daniel Zhao, the lead economist at Glassdoor, told me that mentions of layoffs in the platform's employee reviews are up by 5% compared to last year and are steadily climbing. "Even if workers are still employed, that doesn't necessarily mean they are happy in their jobs," he said. Some of the commentary is from people talking about the ongoing effects of previous layoffs, expressing feelings of burnout because their workplaces are understaffed. Or, they're worried that they'll get swept up in the next round of cuts. "Employees might not see any reason why there wouldn't be another round of layoffs if they feel like the business and the economy are in a similar position," he said.

People see the headlines about a white-collar recession, and they're unnerved, whether they're knowledge workers or not. They see the news that businesses may be rethinking hiring plans and wonder if they'd be able to find a new gig if necessary.

The word of the day is "uncertainty" — the US Economic Policy Uncertain Index is higher than it was during the pandemic. There's a constant sense of whiplash across many parts of the economy and politics. What's happening with tariffs seems to change daily. Announcements of mass government firings and confusing reinstatements are happening constantly. Many businesses and workers expected Donald Trump's second term to look like his first one, with tax cuts and relatively unserious tariff threats and a general business-friendly stance. Instead, they're faced with a new version of Trump whose tariff gyrations are making business planning impossible and who doesn't seem to care if the stock market falls because of his actions.

"Everybody hates uncertainty, whether you're talking about executives down to front-line workers," Zhao said.

"A lot of people only are like, 'Wow, the mix of policies is worse than I thought, but I'm not exactly sure what policies are being implemented and what I should prepare for," said Guy Berger, the director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute, a labor-analytics firm.

There's a level of paralysis amid the chaos. With so much instability, many workers and businesses feel like they have no choice but to stay put. That means employees are sticking with their jobs, and businesses are easing off the gas on hiring plans until there's a better sense of what's going on.

"People are hesitant to really even expand sizably or leave their job and find other ones that are a better fit," Allison Shrivastava, an economist at Indeed, said. "Everybody's just kind of frozen, waiting and seeing."

Some of the worker sentiments and anxieties are not that different from, say, 2023 or 2024. There's long been a subtle recognition that nothing lasts forever, including an extra-worker-friendly jobs market. The vibes have been off for a few years now. But the economists I spoke with said that something distinct is happening that may make things different. Instead of gesturing broadly at the state of things, workers are specifically negative about their personal outlooks. The level of uncertainty in the economy is palpable. That means they may be likelier to decide to really batten down the hatches, try really hard to hold onto their jobs, and, in turn, start reigning in their spending. (Though that last one is TBD — throughout this inflationary and vibecessionary period, consumer spending has been remarkably resilient.)

"Employees do feel pretty uncertain about the future," Zhao said.

Berger emphasized that just because workers feel worse doesn't mean they're right that things actually are worse. As mentioned, on paper, the labor market and economy look pretty good. Stocks are down, yes, but as the saying goes, the stock market is not the economy.

"So far, everything we've seen in terms of data is pretty small scale," he said. "There's nothing here that so far suggests that we've fallen into this doom loop where we're going to tip into a downturn where things are going to get worse. If I had to guess, it's going to be an incremental worsening."

For workers who are on edge, the idea of incremental worsening isn't especially heartening. That means many people may be making the calculation that it's better to stay where they are, avoid asking for too much, and hope to stay in the boss' good graces. The next time you run into the CEO, tell them you like their shoes or something.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Lee insists he's "famously" a very good Catholic. He's a moral person — his mother raised him right. And by his internal calculation, it's OK to shoplift from Whole Foods. Why? Because of Jeff Bezos.

From about 2020 to 2022, Lee, a 20-something communications professional living in the Washington, DC, area, engaged in what he describes as "grand theft auto-ing" from his local Whole Foods store. He would cheat the scale at the hot bar, pocket spices, or take home four lemons in the self-checkout aisle while only declaring two. Lee has never shoplifted from anywhere else — not Safeway, not a local store. He's largely stopped taking from Whole Foods because he moved to a different neighborhood that doesn't have one. However, he told me, there's one by his gym he'll pop into — and steal from — from time to time.

Lee has weighed the ethics of what he's doing. At one point, the guilt got to be so much that he confessed his misdeeds to his mother. Once he explained his reasoning — Amazon's market power, Bezos' wealth, what the billionaire has done at The Washington Post — she came around.

"If a billionaire can steal from me, I can scrape a little off the top, too," Lee says. Lee is a pseudonym — the same goes for all of the shoplifters and ethically (and legally) compromised individuals quoted in this story. Over the past several months, I've spoken with nearly a dozen of them — some I found through their confessions online; others reached out when they heard through social media I was working on this story.

Practically speaking, it's a good moment to be a billionaire in America — you've probably got more tax cuts on the way, and the president is nice to you as long as you're nice to him. Maybe your stocks are down, but you're still a billionaire, so it's fine. In terms of public perception, however, the superrich have seen better days. Americans are vandalizing Teslas to get back at Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg's "Zuckermoon" is over. As for Jeff Bezos, some people are stealing from him — or, rather, his companies — in an effort to exact revenge. Like Lee, they're enacting some moral payback, one fancy cheese from Whole Foods or fudged Amazon return at a time. They're sticking it to The Man, who in this case is one specific individual.

These subversive infractions directed at Bezos and his billionaire cohort may be rooted in legitimate gripes with the state of the world and its unfathomable wealth inequality. On the spectrum of crime severity, swiping $20 worth of goods from a multibillion-dollar corporation does not rank high. But the justifications people offer are just that — justifications. None of what they're doing is actually making the type of impact they might like to see, and they're conveniently ignoring Bezos' positive contributions, such as his philanthropy. And they could be causing unintended harm to the non-Bezoses of the world, as in, everyone else. Many retailers have put items behind glass cases to combat theft, which is a headache for everybody. Shoplifting can demoralize workers, and if enough people do it, it may lead companies to raise prices, or in the case of return fraud, mean businesses make sending unwanted items back a lot harder.

In the realm of retail theft, middle-class consumers and opportunist thieves are a growing group of culprits. It's difficult to tease out the exact size and scope of the cohort, given how incomplete retail-theft data can be. Amazon isn't exactly shouting its shrink numbers from the rooftops, and other companies have even admitted to mistakes in assessing the problem. But as one loss prevention professional put it to me last year, everyday, ordinary shoplifters are "like a giant organized mob, they just don't know each other."

Many of them abide by a certain code around who they take from, and the swath of small-time larcenists I've spoken to consistently say that anything Jeff Bezos-related falls into the "allowed" column. He's the second-richest man in the world, he's highly visible, and they don't love what they know about him personally. They feel like they're balancing the scales in stealing from one of his companies, undertaking some sort of Robin Hood-esque endeavor where they take from the rich to give to the poor, the comparatively poor being themselves.

Take Jesse, a 30-something tech worker who until recently would steal entire bags of groceries from Whole Foods with his roommates. A friend at Instacart tipped them off to the opportunity — with so many personal shoppers roaming around the aisles, workers weren't going to notice another person loading bags or whether they were paying for what was in them. Once, they got expensive steaks from the butcher and left without paying for them, later grilling them out on a friend's roof.

"I never felt bad for the corporation as a whole, because it was Amazon and, you know, it was Jeff Bezos," Jesse said. "He just profits so much taking advantage of the little people, so if we as little people can bite back a little bit, and that's me taking $100 maybe out of revenue for him, that's a little bit of a middle finger."

Separately, there's Carson, another Whole Foods bandit whose friends joke they're actually "liberating" items from the store, not stealing. As Carson, a 30-something who works in the nonprofit sector, told me for a story last year, he likes slipping salmon lox into his laptop sleeve and estimates he saves about $1,000 in groceries a year by shoplifting, largely from Whole Foods.

"It's easy to look at him like a Lex Luthor," Carson told me recently, referring to the Superman villain.

Carson isn't just extracting his purported payback through Whole Foods. He likes to throw big, complicated parties, so he'll buy $1,000 of decorations from Amazon, use them, and then return them.

"Who's actually hurt in this strange, dehumanized system?" he said.

Reporting for this story, I heard the same sentiment over and over from shoplifters and less-than-honest Amazon shoppers. One Whole Foods nabber, a 30-something tech worker, justified their penchant for lifting from the grocery store as a mix of ease, quality, and antipathy toward one of the richest people in the world. "My lack of remorse for any of this is — it's a big corporation. They have so much money, eggs are $10, screw them," they said.

One 50-something business owner explained how they would exploit a loophole in Amazon's return system to get what amounted to free money for runs to an Amazon Go store in their office building. When I asked whether they felt any sense of regret, the answer was succinct: "F— no. He's the most successful entrepreneur alive."

Jimmy, a 30-something government worker, told me he's "indifferent" toward Bezos, and he does feel somewhat bad about engaging in some light return fraud. One of his gaming controllers recently broke, so he bought a new one, stuck the old one in the box it came in, and sent it back undetected. Still, he's not losing sleep over it. "We know how much money that company makes. They're not going to be worried about that $70," he says. "I feel like the Batman of returns. I choose my targets."

The Bezos bashers' complaints ran the gamut: Whole Foods is a gentrifier; he's just too rich; shooting himself into space is gauche. Whatever anyone's precise justifications, there have been plenty of headlines and accusations that paint Bezos and his companies in an unflattering light. Amazon's e-commerce practices are bad for the environment. His businesses have been widely criticized for their approach to workers, including subjecting them to brutal work conditions and engaging in wage theft. His recent political turn and push to exert more influence over The Washington Post, which he owns, has turned many people off and reportedly lost the paper thousands of subscribers.

To be sure, Bezos has also given people plenty to be happy about. It's super convenient to have stuff delivered to your door at the drop of a hat. Whole Foods is, for the most part, a lovely shopping experience. But in an era where billionaires are viewed as the bad guys, and there's growing anger about extreme wealth inequality, it can be easy for people to overlook any upsides. There are a handful of guys in popular culture who epitomize the enormous gap between haves and have-nots. Bezos is one of them.

It is fair to wonder, though, if stealing from Whole Foods or returning a dress you wore to a wedding is the best way to get back at Bezos. It's a bit of a stretch to think the answer to that one is yes.

I reached out to Garret Merriam, an associate philosophy professor at California State University, Sacramento, who studies ethics, to get his read. He told me there are likely three broad categories of thinking going on here. There are those who don't really consider what they're doing to be stealing — they're oblivious to it. Like taking a pen from the breakroom at work, they figure it's baked in when they grab a snack as they browse the Whole Foods aisles. There are people who recognize it's cheating, but they don't think it's wrong, given Bezos' wealth and his business practices. In a context where Amazon has paid millions of dollars to settle wage theft lawsuits, they figure lying about a lost package is a small way to try to even things out. And then there are those who feel a sense of political desperation — they're powerless in the face of massive political and economic forces, and this is an outlet for some sort of action, even if futile. "The target is misapplied, but the anger is, I would say, understandable," he said.

People have a tendency to try to neutralize potentially unsavory behavior by coming up with ways to justify their actions, Emmeline Taylor, a professor of criminology at City St. George's, University of London, said. In this case, they tell themselves things like, "Bezos is bad, Amazon won't even notice, this seems like a victimless crime," to make themselves feel better and like they're in the right. "They've sort of rehearsed this in their head so many times or even said it out loud, they start to believe it themselves," she said. "That's what allows them these sorts of moral gymnastics."

While people may see their actions as a way to get back at Bezos, the sheer size of the modern corporation creates a level of removal that makes it easy to sit back and think, "Who cares if someone pulls one over on them?" After all, it feels like they're pulling one over on us all the time.

"When we take from a store or a workplace, it gets a little bit easier to distance yourself," Terrence Shulman, the founder of the Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending, and Hoarding, said.

Beyond the fact that theft and fraud are, you know, against the law, anti-Amazon avengers may not recognize the collateral damage they could be inadvertently causing. If you steal from Whole Foods, Bezos won't know, but the store manager who's fired over it will. (I did survey some Whole Foods workers about this, and several of them confirmed that (a) they see a lot of middle-class and even seemingly wealthy shoplifters, and (b) they may be a little bothered by some of it but are not in a tizzy.) Before you lie to Amazon that your package never arrived or return the wrong item, you might want to check who the actual seller is.

John Roman, the CEO of BattlBox, which sells outdoor gear and equipment, would rather just sell everything from his own website, but they've got to be on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms just because of the reach. He's currently dealing with a return fraud situation — someone bought a new spotlight from him, said they didn't like it, and shipped an older model back. BattlBox didn't even realize what had happened until they sent the returned item to another customer who flagged it. Roman has filed an appeal with Amazon, but there's "no telling" whether the company will side with him.

He doesn't really blame people for doing this. By making returns so easy and taking "the customer is right" philosophy to the extreme, Amazon has fostered this behavior. "I don't think the average consumer even understands that it's not Amazon selling the product," he said, pointing to the fact that Amazon regularly introduces an Amazon Basic version of a best-selling item — which then gets prominent website placement near or above the original — in order to get in on the action. Roman even understands the get-back-at-Bezos stuff, given how the ultrawealthy are viewed.

"I'm not saying I agree with it, but I fully understand the people that view that they're giving it to The Man, but the reality is that you are actually hurting small businesses," he said.

Ironically, shoplifting at other retailers has been a plus for Amazon's business — people frustrated that everything is locked up at CVS and Target just go to Amazon's website instead. It's not clear how big of a problem shrink is for Whole Foods and Amazon since the company doesn't break it out in their financials. When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was asked about return fraud in a CNBC interview last year, he sort of shrugged it off, saying at the company's scale, "You get a bit of everything."

"It matters to them, but does it matter enough to put the time and effort into trying to stop that? I would say probably not," Arun Sundaram, an analyst at CFRA Research, said. He joked that given how profitable some other arms of Amazon's business arms are, if it wanted to give free food to customers for a month, it probably could.

Amazon declined to comment for this story. Jeff Bezos did not respond to a request for comment.

I'm not trying to say that the logic among Amazon and Whole Foods thieves is, "I woke up in the morning mad at Jeff Bezos because killed The Washington Post's Kamala Harris endorsement, so now I'm going to steal overpriced salami from Whole Foods." Attitudes are generally more removed and hazy. They view snacking while shopping (without paying for said snack) as a victimless crime, with the only potential victim being Bezos, even if that's a stretch.

"I don't know who I'm hurting," Lee said.

In the current economy, it's hard not to feel like you're being taken advantage of at every turn. Everything's getting more expensive, but corporate profits are still going up. Companies are constantly cutting costs, whether that means laying off workers or making it impossible to talk to a customer service representative on the phone. People feel like they have to be on guard against business trickery and slights. If you've shrugged and said, "That's how they get you," enough times, you start to think about how you'll get them. People feel like big business has broken the social contract, so they can break it back.

If people want to hurt Amazon with their pocketbooks, the best thing they can probably do is just not shop there. But that would require effort, planning, and forgoing the luxuries of on-demand shopping, which many people don't seem so willing to do.

"That would be a moral response," said Stuart Green, a Rutgers law professor who focuses on the moral theory underlying laws. "I don't think you can steal things that you like and then say you're doing it because you don't like the company."

At least it's better than setting Teslas on fire.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Look, to put it plainly: You almost certainly shouldn't buy a delivery burrito using a buy now, pay later plan. I know it may be tempting. It's burrito season, getting out of the house can be hard, and having stuff you do not need dropped on your doorstep is a fun tiny luxury of our tech-enabled world. But if you're considering using a Klarna financing plan to DoorDash your Chipotle order, maybe take a beat.

With all the DoorDash fees, plus the tip — and, yes, you should tip — that little treat is going to run you quite a bit more than you bargained for. Splitting the cost up into four payments may make you feel better about your little indulgence — and may even encourage you to add on a second little treat. But there are some potential downsides. You might wind up missing payments, in which case on top of delivery fees and tip, you'll also be hit with late fees and overdraft fees from your bank. By the end of it all, your $20 burrito could wind up costing closer to $70.

I don't mean to be judgmental. If you really insist on paying for food delivery on a payment plan, you can. In fact, DoorDash and Klarna are betting you will.

Last week, the delivery platform Doordash and the soon-to-IPO payment company Klarna announced a partnership through which customers will be able to buy now, pay later on food orders. People will have the option to pay right away, like normal, using Klarna, but they'll also be able to split the cost into four installment payments for purchases above $35 or, eventually, push the payment to a later date. In a press release announcing the agreement, company executives said it was intended to make "convenience even more accessible" for consumers and offer payment options that were "essential to meeting our customers' needs."

The announcement, um, raised some eyebrows. On the one hand, it's a free country, and anyone is welcome to pay for a burrito taxi in $10 installments over a month and a half. On the other hand, this scenario might involve more risk than reward for consumers, many of whom are already drowning in debt.

"It certainly doesn't seem like a positive development except for Klarna and maybe DoorDash," said Robert Lawless, a law professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in consumer finance. "I just don't think it's an advisable way to be paying for your DoorDash."

The BPNL industry, which includes companies such as Afterpay, Affirm, and Klarna, has taken off in recent years. The total value of loans originated by the industry jumped from $2 billion in 2019 to $24 billion in 2021 to $34 billion in 2022, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. BNPL was initially seen mostly as an option for large-ish purchases — maybe a Peloton bike, if you're still into that, or a couch. The flexibility can be useful, by splitting payments into smaller, what might be more manageable amounts, and charging zero interest if payments are made on time. Buy now, pay later companies often do not do extensive credit checks as credit card companies do, meaning the option may be more accessible to some consumers.

The optionality and ease of use helped BNPL boom during the pandemic, but in recent years growth has slowed. In an effort to reignite expansion, companies have increasingly been allowing (and encouraging) consumers to use it on smaller-dollar and more trivial purchases, even groceries. In terms of consumer finance, it's a disturbing sign that some people might need to put essentials on payment plans. But businesses aren't just offering BNPL out of the kindness of their hearts; it's because they think they can make money off of it.

"We're seeing it for smaller and smaller and smaller purchases," said Anastasiya Ghosh, a marketing professor at the University of Arizona. "Part of it is driven by these partnerships. So you see more and more merchants like DoorDash that are willing to participate and engage, which to me signals there is a revenue stream."

Part of the way BNPL companies make money is through merchant fees, where the platform that actually books the sale pays a fee to the payment partner, like Klarna or Affirm. This is similar to credit card swipe fees, but the payouts tend to be even higher. Businesses sign up for merchant fees because giving consumers expanded payment options like BNPL makes them likelier to buy and increases the size of their baskets.

"It works on our optimistic view of ourselves in the future. Obviously, in the future, maybe my income stream would improve or I would stick to my budget better," Ghosh said.

It's not that different from the psychology around credit cards, but we've also had years of consumer education around their risks. With BNPL, not so much.

Buy now, pay later users tend to be in more precarious spots than the average consumer. A June 2023 survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that women, renters, people without college degrees, low-income people, and those with lower credit scores were more likely to report having used BNPL in the previous year. BNPL may also make people's finances worse: Its users have been found to see fast increases in bank overdraft charges and credit card interest and fees compared with consumers who don't use the option. The use of buy now, pay later has been linked to increased total spending, too.

The concern is that people who use BNPL might buy more even when they shouldn't. They wind up with multiple short-term loans they're trying to pay off every two weeks. It's hard to keep track of, as the bills or automatic withdrawals can hit at different times. That makes it easy to miss payments and easy not to recognize just how big of a hole one might be in. For some consumers, this may result in excessive levels of borrowing and debt cycles they can't get out of.

"Let's say you miscalculate something. You pay a late fee of $7 to $10 on your order, and then maybe you have to pay an overdraft fee because of a cash flow issue," said Nadine Chabrier, the senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. "So you could really balloon the amount of money you pay for just one thing."

Food delivery with companies such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, and GrubHub has become a weirdly controversial topic on the internet over the past few years. The kerfuffle is always the same: Someone posts something about all the delivery fees making their order extra expensive, someone else says they should just go pick it up or cook for themselves, and then everybody yells about whether it's offensive because some people can't leave their homes or cook or some other protest. On this DoorDash-Klarna announcement, you can already hear a similar argument: What about people who can't afford that burrito right this second but really need (OK, want) it and for whatever reason don't feel that they have another option? I posed this question to every expert I talked to, and the answer was mainly, sure if you want to do this, go ahead, but it's not in your best interest.

"People have the free will to make a choice of the way in which they want to pay for something, but there may be unintended consequences," Chabrier said.

"DoorDash and Klarna will "undoubtedly tout the idea of, 'Well if you pay for it in four payments, it's the same as up front,' but we're not talking about major purchases where that's going to save you any type of money," Lawless said.

Breaking up large payments for goods that we're going to use for years can make sense. You buy a house on a mortgage so you can pay it off over years as the value (hopefully) goes up. You get a car loan so you can pay it down every month with the money you make driving to and from work. Paying down larger purchases over time frees up cash for other needs, or for investments that will grow over time. But a quick food order may not fall into this category.

"There's a good economic case for financing investments over the long term, and we have stretched the definition of durable goods in a lot of ways," said Michael Madowitz, an economist at the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank. "Delivered food may in fact be the least durable good we've tried this with."

Amid the backlash to the announcement, Klarna and DoorDash are trying to emphasize their partnership is about more than burritos. In an emailed statement, a DoorDash spokesperson said the company's customers already had "plenty of ways to pay" including PayPal, Venmo, SNAP/EBT, and credit cards, and added that this option wasn't just for food orders. "With over 25% of customers now shopping beyond restaurants in categories like retail, beauty, and home improvement — whether it's the gaming console or laptop for your kids, the new barbecue ahead of summer grilling season, or the running shoes you need for tomorrow's 5K — this partnership provides even more flexibility, control, and options," the spokesperson said. They also pointed to a Klarna blog post about the deal. A Klarna spokesperson said the partnership was "especially important as DoorDash expands its offering into electronics, big-box retail, and gifts."

This partnership isn't the end of the world in terms of signaling some sea change in consumer credit; nor is it a sign that a recession is here. These companies are offering people more ways to pay so they'll buy more, perhaps, than they had planned. This is a way to squeeze more cash out of consumers.

This is happening at a moment when the cops who are supposed to be on the consumer beat — the CFPB — may not be doing much, Madowitz noted, given the current White House administration's hands-off bent. "I don't know if this is the kind of thing CFPB, SEC, or both should have a very close eye on, and maybe we just won't ever know," he said.

Regardless, the option to pay in installments is coming to a DoorDash order near you. Maybe think twice before you take advantage of it.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Fawn Weaver has never been able to run her business without worrying about tariffs. She launched her Tennessee whiskey brand, Uncle Nearest, in 2017, right before the European Union slapped tariffs on American whiskeys and bourbons as part of a back-and-forth trade war with Donald Trump in 2018. That means Weaver's international sales strategy has been affected, basically, since "day one," she says. And because Uncle Nearest was a new kid on the block, the company didn't really have much wiggle room on prices.

"We couldn't pass on those tariffs to the consumer," she says. "We had to absorb them, and there was absolutely no way we could absorb them."

When Europe suspended whiskey tariffs in 2021, Weaver wasn't home-free, either. She knew the suspension might not be permanent, especially if Trump landed back in the White House. So when he won in November, Uncle Nearest pulled international sales from their annual earnings forecast in anticipation of a return to the trade war.

"We had to make a decision to not focus as much on international until the trade war was over," she says. "Well, it's not been over."

And return the trade war has: The EU is threatening to implement a 50% tariff on American whiskeys. And now, there's a new and surprising trade foe: Canada. The United States' neighbors to the north aren't putting tariffs on US-made bourbon in response to Trump's various economic threats; they're simply making it impossible to buy.

"They pulled us off the shelf right along with Jack Daniels," Weaver says.

The reignition of the international brown liquor battle is another headache for an industry already reeling. After multiple years of solid growth in the 2010s and a pandemic-driven boom in 2020, domestic US whiskey sales have been on the decline, while international sales have flattened. Data from IWSR, an analytics firm focused on the alcohol industry, found that sales volume of US whiskeys fell by 1.2% in 2023, and another 2% in 2024. Globally, sales were flat in 2023 and are on track to decline in 2024. (American whiskeys include bourbon, Tennessee, and rye. The distinctions are key since all bourbons are whiskeys, but not all whiskeys are bourbon. If it's American or Irish, it's whiskey, with the "e." If it's from Scotland, England, Japan, or most other places, it's spelled whisky.)

For customers, this could mean some of their favorite craft brands might struggle and even fold if they can't get on enough shelves in America or abroad. Ironically, though, the bourbon industry's tariff-related headaches may wind up being a plus for American drinkers in the near term — distilleries could wind up with a ton of inventory they can't sell overseas and push more volumes and varieties onto the US market. That could mean prices on American booze come down in the near term, though some analysts say distributors could just charge more on everything, wherever it's made.

There's no denying the industry is facing troubles, but Weaver chafes at the idea of calling what's happening a bourbon "bust." Uncle Nearest is growing as a brand, and there are still plenty of whiskey drinkers out there, at home and abroad. Instead, what's happening is more of a normalization, and one she thinks more people should have seen coming.

"Everyone was so caught up in this 'boom,' no one was forecasting for the correction," she says. Whatever the case, Trump's latest moves are a sobering moment for an industry that can no longer deny its growing pains.

The modern whiskey trend in America dates back to the "Mad Men" era of the 1950s and '60s, explained Marten Lodewijks, the president of IWSR US. It's popularity started tapering off in the '70s — people tend not to want to drink what their parents drank. In the '80s and '90s, whiskey really struggled, which was a curse and a blessing, because it got to sit and age until it picked up in popularity once again in the 2000s, around when the show "Mad Men" came out.

"Those were sort of the glory days for Scotch whisky," Lodewijks said. "The bourbon industry was a little bit later to the party, but obviously they weren't blind to what was happening. And so they rose with the tide as well."

Over the past decade or so, bourbon has really taken off, too. Much like Scotch, bourbon makers have focused on premiumization — improving the quality and raising the price point. Where it was once seen as a product for drunks, it's now considered fancy. Because bourbon ages for less time than Scotch and has laxer rules around it in areas such as ingredients, distillers can be more dynamic in their approach, too. "You can sort of take more chances," Lodewijks said. "You don't have to wait 12 years to figure out whether or not your innovation is a complete miss or a potential success."

Per the Kentucky Distillers' Association, an industry group, Kentucky produced 3.2 million barrels of whiskey in 2024 and has a record 14.3 million barrels aging. Multiple new producers and brands have popped up, bourbon collecting has risen in popularity, and some consumers have been willing and able to spend big on high-end bottles.

The COVID-19 pandemic put these trends on overdrive. People were sitting at home bored with money to spend, and they were spending more of it on alcohol.

"There was a massive runup during COVID," said Tzvi Wiesel, a longtime whiskey investor and trader and the CEO of Baxus, a spirits trading platform. "So all of these distilleries and investors and everyone got a little bit ahead of themselves, and they're like, 'Oh, there's going to be this level of demand and growth is going to continue forever.'"

Private investors got in on the action, pouring money into distilleries and upping production. "They built the capacity to make a million new barrels a year," Wiesel said. The problem was, there wasn't actually a sustainable place for that demand and growth.

The influx of money chasing the increased demand led to what's become a market flush with product that has nowhere to go.

"The hedge funds and the private equity players, they've gone out and bought barrels, but they don't have a brand to go along with it," said Trey Zoeller, the founder and chief strategist at Jefferson's Bourbon. "When bourbon was very scarce, that might've been a good investment. Now, there's not nearly as many buyers for that as there were when there's such scarcity."

Despite hopes for a new normal, bourbon has long been a cyclical industry. Optimists expected the upward trajectory kicked off by the pandemic to continue, but the market's come back down to earth.

On the one hand, demand is clearly decelerating. By 2022, Americans had returned to their normal drinking habits — when you're back in the office, pouring an old-fashioned at 2 in the afternoon is a real no-no. Amid inflation and dwindling pandemic-driven savings, there's also been a squeeze on consumers' wallets. Alcohol is a discretionary item, meaning it's a want, not a need, and when budgets are tight, people tend to lay off. There are structural factors in play as well. Gen Z is drinking less. Cannabis may be taking some market share from booze. GLP-1s such as Ozempic appear to curb alcohol cravings. Those are "probably having an impact on the margins," said Nadine Sarwat, an analyst who covers the beverage and cannabis industries at Bernstein, though it's not clear they're huge factors — most 24-year-olds (of any generation) are not high-end whiskey drinkers.

On the supply side, the decline in consumer interest is happening at a time when there's a glut of whiskey available. Because bourbon has to age for at least a couple of years — most are kept for four to six years — producers have to anticipate demand years in advance. It's become increasingly clear that a lot of producers overshot their estimates. There's a ton of bourbon sitting in barrels with no bottles to pour it into or brands that want to buy it. (Some brands distill their own whiskeys; some buy it from larger distilleries on contract; some do both and even blend different barrels together.) While distillers can sit on barrels for a while, there are limits, depending on the product. Most bourbon has about a 10-year age limit before it turns. Many investors are on a tighter timeline ito get their returns, meaning they have to cut prices on barrels to move them on the market.

"What I was paying for four-year-old Kentucky bourbon three years ago, I can now get 10-year-old Kentucky bourbon cheaper," said Blake Riber, who runs the craft spirits platform Seelbach's and blogs about the whiskey industry at Bourbonr. "This is just wild, the pricing on it and how much that has just crashed in, call it, 12 months."

Some producers have started to recognize the writing on the wall and scaled back, such as the distilled spirits maker MGP and the alcohol conglomerates Diageo and Brown-Forman.

"The challenge that they're all going to be facing over the next few years is, what do I do with all of the extra liquid in order to either let it age more or are there other outlets that I can use?" Lodewijks said. That may mean more flavored whiskeys or more whiskey-based ready-to-drink cocktails — whatever gets it poured before it goes bad.

The tariffs, of course, are throwing a wrench in an already difficult situation. As part of Trump's trade war, the EU is mulling ending the suspension of its tariffs on American whiskeys in early April. And this time, the bloc could set the levies at 50%, double the 25% from the president's first term. Trump, in turn, has threatened a 200% tariff on wines, Champagnes, and other alcoholic products out of France and the rest of Europe.

It's not entirely clear what it would mean for the American bourbon industry if the EU tariffs take effect. Given the recent glut and change in domestic appetites, growing sales outside America has been a key release valve for producers. Bernstein's Sarwat estimates that tariffs would result in a 10% hit to operating income for Brown-Forman, which owns brands such as Jack Daniel's and Woodford Reserve.

"Because US volumes have been really sluggish over the last couple of years, the international market has always been a real positive for increased penetration, and so any further challenges in that market does not help," she said.

Lodewijks said the EU's original 25% tariff led to about a 20% decline in whiskey sales to Europe, but that doesn't necessarily mean we know what a 50% tariff would do. "There's a point at which more and more consumers aren't willing to spend or spend the money that it would take to buy the product. So I'm not saying necessarily it'll be more than 40%, but likely, it would be more," he said.

The broad point of Trump's trade war — with Europe, China, whoever — is ostensibly to encourage companies to make more goods in the US. But in spaces such as alcohol, it's not so simple. Tequila has to come from Mexico. Scotch is always from Scotland. American whiskey companies would love to sell more to people at home, but American drinkers are not picking up what they're putting down. If tariffs go into effect on alcohol products coming into the US, people won't necessarily switch over to domestically made bourbon. If you're predominantly a wine drinker, you may not be jonesing to swap that for Wild Turkey overnight. And for the industry and Americans who do drink brown liquor, the tit-for-tat battle may not be a win either.

Last time around, American bourbon and whiskey companies ate a lot of the cost of tariffs instead of increasing prices. But not everyone in the space has such a luxury, especially the smaller guys who've already been pushed around by the bigger guys. They're trying to fight for shelf space wherever they can get it and are still trying to recover from the 2018 tariff bout.

"After the tariffs, everything fell off a cliff, and it has not recovered at all," said Becky Harris, the former president of the American Craft Spirits Association and the founder of Catoctin Creek distillery. "The big producers do recover. They recover why? Because they have massive amounts of money, they can splash back into the market."

That means some small producers may go under if they cannot find a place to sell their products. Given the industry's competitiveness, they could also try to increase prices, though that may be tough. The bigger manufacturers and distributors have broad portfolios of products that encompass different types of alcohol from different parts of the world. If they see a price increase on imports to the US for one of their product lines, say, a European wine or Mexican tequila, they may increase prices on American-made products, too, either because they have to or just because they can.

"It's very likely that under the cover of tariffs, domestic products will also go up in price," Lodewijks said.

While some analysts and industry professionals told me the supply glut could lead to producers dropping their prices in the short term in an attempt to move their booze, Tom Fischer, who runs BourbonBlog.com, said the long-term news may not be as encouraging.

"If distilleries lose sales in Europe due to higher prices from EU tariffs, those same American distilleries may raise domestic prices to offset lost revenue," he said. "This has been shown to happen in the past with other goods, so we hope that bourbon won't be the next casualty."

Trump's trade war has the potential to hit the industry in more tangential places, too. Riber noted that not much glass manufacturing happens in the US, and he's starting to hear concerns from bourbon brands about potential tariffs on glass imports and needing to raise prices to make up for it. "At some point, that's going to have to get passed on," he said. Wiesel brought up the increased need for warehouse space as bourbon piles up that can't be sold. "Distilleries are going to have to invest a ton into the actual physical infrastructure to hold onto all of these barrels that they own that are maturing for longer because they don't have a place to sell them," he said.

And then there's Canada, which the president has picked a somewhat confusing fight with. He's threatened 25% tariffs on imports from Canada, has said he wants to make it the 51st state, and has taken an overall aggressive approach to the country. It's sparked a sense of patriotism in Canada — along with boycotts on American-made products, including bourbon.

"Canada is just pulling American products. They're essentially sending notes to their suppliers saying, 'Hey, no, I don't have anything against you, but my customers are not buying American right now. They're angry,'" Harris said. "And they said, 'Even when the tariffs are gone, this is going to take a while, so don't hold your breath.'"

Fischer expressed similar concerns about the potential European tariffs. "A 50% tariff risks pricing us out of key markets, and once those consumers shift, they may not come back," he said. "You can't just roll back a tariff and expect loyalty to return overnight. This is long-term damage."

Weaver, from Uncle Nearest, is still optimistic about the future. Bourbon is one of America's most important exports "in terms of symbolism," she said, and if you look at bourbon's history, "we've always had these times when people are drinking less of it, but then it comes roaring back." She gets that the president is doing what he thinks he needs to do to negotiate trade agreements. In the meantime, it might be nice if he gave the industry a bit of a PR boost.

"The best thing he could do is literally say, 'Hey, America, this is going to be in our best interest,' because this is clearly what he believes, 'but while we're working this out, we really need you to double down on bourbon,'" she said.

Maybe "Buy American" can become "Drink American," even if the president himself doesn't drink.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

It's genuinely amazing how cheap a new TV is these days. A 65-inch LCD television that probably would have cost $1,500 or $2,000, a decade ago is now under $500. And in a world where everything's so expensive — cars, houses, eggs — there's some comfort in knowing you can still indulge in your guilty pleasure show at the end of the day, in high quality, for a pretty low cost. If you can't afford that fancy vacation, at least you can live a little vicariously through "The White Lotus."

That's the deal American consumers have begrudgingly made over the years. A lot of the elements of the supposed American dream are wildly pricey — to the point that for many people they're out of reach. Healthcare is wildly expensive. College tuition is nuts. Navigating the housing market is panic-attack-inducing, whether you're trying to buy or rent.

What's still accessible is the cheap stuff. The cost of consumer goods such as toys, clothes, and electronics has gone down. We tolerate the price tags of the big stuff, in part, because we have no other choice, and in part because at the very least we're entertained, we're connected, and we can fill our homes and closets with stuff. Maybe you can't move up in life, and once available opportunities are shut off, but hey, at least you can get something fun and weird for $5 on Temu.

But now, that grand bargain is changing. Inflation has made the cost of once accessible stuff a little hard to stomach. And tariffs threaten to blot out the last of what's affordable. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently declared that "access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream." Unfortunately, it's the whole shebang, or at least what it's become. And even that might be about to be taken away, too.

It didn't used to be this way. Throughout most of history, consumers weren't inundated with things. Most people had a limited amount of clothes — often made by the women of the house — and furniture and possessions. Their stuff lasted throughout their lifetimes, and when something broke, they fixed it instead of tossing it to buy a replacement. But with the Industrial Revolution and eventual "Mad Men" era of advertising, mass-produced stuff became widely available and attractive to everyone. Along with savvy marketing campaigns came manufacturing tricks like planned obsolescence, where things are built to die, and financial innovations, like consumer credit, that made it easier to pay for all that stuff. And, of course, there's globalization, meaning it's possible to make a bunch of cheap stuff outside the US and ship it in.

Chip Colwell, an anthropologist who is the author of "So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything," told me that it's not just the "capacity" to make all this stuff that made Americans start to accumulate it, but "also really this ideology of abundance." It became possible and desirable to constantly have more, in order to keep up with the Joneses and with our own ideals of consumerism. "The culture of consumption that we have is absolutely predicated on supercheap stuff that we can easily throw away and not have to worry about," he said.

The consumer economy is a driving force in the American economic engine. We spend money to keep the wheels turning. It's become part of our patriotic duty — after the September 11, 2001, attacks, political leaders told Americans to keep spending and not let what happened "in any way throw off their normal level of activity." The ability to spend on what we want when we want is viewed as a pillar of American freedom.

"Now, there's no shame in being materialistic. In fact, materialism is part of our consumer citizenship," said Wendy Woloson, a history professor at Rutgers University who is the author of "Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America."

The churn of stuff cuts across income levels, too. A survey from The New Consumer and Coefficient Capital found that Shein shoppers were likelier to say they cared about sustainability and the environment than the average consumer — eyebrow-raising, given that Shein's clothes and business model are pointedly not good for the planet. A separate March 2024 analysis from the credit card data company Earnest Analytics found that nearly half of sales for Temu, another cheap Chinese retail marketplace, came from people making over $130,000 a year. Given the way wealth has been concentrated at the tippy top of the economy, it tracks: Nearly everyone outside the top 10% of income earners is feeling squeezed by costs of things such as healthcare and higher education, and cheap consumer goods are an outlet to exercise some agency. And in uncertain economic times, everyone's feeling a little price-sensitive.

The Trump administration's recent moves have some important implications for the cheap-stuffification of the American economy. The president is taking a protectionist approach to trade, implementing tariffs that could make the inexpensive things consumers have come to rely on quite a bit more expensive. Retailers such as Best Buy and Target have begun to warn of price increases. The stream of super-low-cost inane items from Shein and Temu could be cut off should President Donald Trump get his way. The prices of clothes, electronics, and toys are likely to go up — the things that up until now have been reliably affordable.

"The whole agenda is let's make it so that it's not the default option to buy just the cheapest, crappiest stuff from overseas when we should be making more of it in America," said Dan Frommer, the founder and editor in chief of The New Consumer.

But shifting the entire supply chain for goods from overseas back into the US is a transition that, if it happens, will be painful for consumers. We're used to a world of more more more — we don't know what it's like to do less less less.

"We don't have that experience of contraction. The system has grown and grown and grown and grown and grown, and the system is based on growing and growing and growing," said Susan Strasser, a historian of American consumer culture. "You want the end of the quarter report to be better than the last end of the quarter report. That's the whole point of it. And so in no sense are people prepared."

I'll go back to the example of TVs — the great American escape. Televisions, like many consumer electronics, have gone down in price even as they've gotten better over the years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, television prices have decreased by 98% since 2000.

"The reason why the prices fall is because of business investment," said Paul Gagnon, a vice president and industry advisor on consumer technology at Circana, a market research firm, adding that companies invest "continuously in new manufacturing facilities that are more efficient and therefore can produce for at least the same amount of money a product that has a lot more performance, or for less money, something that's larger."

Much of this activity, however, is taking place outside the US.

Patrick Horner, a practice leader in TV set research at Omdia, a tech advisory firm, explained that 10 years ago, 49% of assembly for televisions imported into the US was happening in China. But after Trump's first term and the tariffs he put in place on China then, manufacturers moved more of their assembly operations to Mexico. Now, around 60% of American TV imports are made there. You can see the problem: In his second term, Trump has announced 20% additional tariffs on top of existing tariffs on China, and he's also threatening a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico that's (for now) supposed to be implemented in April. Omdia estimates manufacturers with existing factories could shift partial production to tariff-free countries in six months to a year, but building a new factory would take years. And, again, no one knows what Trump's next target could be.

"TV makers are looking into shifting some assembly out of Mexico and relocating it to someplace that doesn't have tariffs," Horner said. "But the thing is, Trump could very much say, 'Hey, Vietnam's on the radar screen, now they're getting the 25% tariff.' I don't think that anybody can accurately predict where the next tariff action is going to take place."

Gagnon said some particular factors kept prices on TVs from going up too much in response to Trump's tariffs in 2018 and 2019. At that time, retailers bought extra inventory to try to get ahead of price increases and it happened at a moment when supply chains to make critical components were expanding and pushing prices down. "Even though the tariffs caused the costs to go up on TVs imported from China, a lot of the components of the TV went down," he said. The context now is different. "It's pretty hard to see how an increase of 25% on the imported cost of a TV from Mexico to the US, given the profit margins for a lot of these TVs, wouldn't result in a price increase," he said.

It's not a bad thing to contemplate the end of the era of cheap stuff. The rate at which we're able to accumulate things without having to think about the trade-offs — environmental, labor-related, or otherwise — is alarming. I don't want to sound like a scold here, but our kids don't need so many toys, our closets don't need to be so full, and that barely old phone doesn't need to be swapped out. Getting a new fun thing may deliver a temporary endorphin hit, but most research shows it doesn't make us happier in the long run. It's not our fault we're like this. Corporations and marketers have turned us into stuffmongers, and even our political leaders encourage us to keep buying.

If and when tariffs start to increase prices and make even the most reachable things unreachable, it's going to feel annoying and unfair. Goods aren't going to become higher quality overnight; tariffs will just make them costlier. That TV isn't made to be fixed when it breaks; it's made to be replaced, whatever the price of said replacement. Fixing something isn't just a physical skill, Strasser said, "but to some extent, it's an emotional skill and a way of framing your relationship to material goods that's just completely different from anything that we've experienced in the last 50, 60, 70 years."

Like it or not, the American dream is a little bit about access to cheap stuff. It's that giant TV that at least lets you watch the football game (assuming you can find it wherever it's streaming, which is increasingly expensive). It's a repeat pair of those sneakers that wore out suspiciously fast. It's even a "Live, Laugh, Love" sign, a seasonal pillow sham, or random holiday decoration. And now, that all might be ripped away, too.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

There are few activities more delightful than getting a little wine drunk and hitting up the local Target to go treasure hunting. Sure, you pretend you're there for a legitimate reason — to pick up toilet paper or trash bags. But whatever the plan was going in, you wind up with a basket full of random goodies: a bikini for a vacation you're not taking and party favors for a gathering you're not having. A yoga mat! Hot Cheetos! Five packs of gum! At Target, the world is your oyster in terms of stocking up on stuff you absolutely do not need. Even if you're doing Target sober, you wind up drunk on stuff.

But lately, that Target trip has been a little less joyful, if you're even going at all. The Minneapolis-based retailer has been going through a rough patch as price-conscious consumers cut down on just-for-funsies buys that fuel Target's sales. And in terms of politics, it seems like Target can't get anything right. For the past two years, it's found itself at the center of America's culture wars, drawing the ire of conservatives and progressives alike. For some consumers, popping into Target (or refusing to) has turned into a political statement, though it's not clear what statement it even makes.

Target can't decide what it stands for, ideologically. For many businesses, that's fine, but in Target's case, cultural relevancy is baked into the business model, and it keeps waffling on how it wants to be relevant. What Target stands for economically isn't working right now, either — it's operating from a place of weakness. The result: a Target that can't keep a, well, target off its back.

If you want to get a sense of how things have been going for Target lately, just take a look at its stock price. Target shares are down by more than 30% over the past year and by over 50% since their 2021 peak. While its most recent quarterly earnings were generally in line with Wall Street's expectations, it hasn't reported strong financial results since the pandemic. The retailer also said sales were off in February because of the weather and "declining consumer confidence," and it has anticipated tariff-related price increases in a matter of days. Things are not working in Target's favor, in part, because it relies on discretionary spending — basically, the nonessentials. As people pull back on that kind of spending amid inflation and worries about the economy, that hits Target where it hurts.

"People expect prices to rise, and that's causing people to spend more conservatively, and that's causing them to think twice about throwing this or that other thing into their cart," said Zak Stambor, a senior retail and e-commerce analyst at EMARKETER. "Target's business relies on people throwing this or that into their cart." (EMARKETER is owned by Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider.)

Target is struggling to differentiate itself and compete against Walmart, Amazon, and Costco, said Michael Baker, a managing director and senior research analyst at D.A. Davidson. If a consumer's focus is product selection and wowing customers with compelling offers, Costco's the answer (or at least as good as Target). If it's convenience, it's Amazon. If it's price, Walmart wins. "That doesn't mean that Target can't find their niche," Baker said, but the niche it does have — wants and not needs — is one that doesn't work great in this environment. "With the wind at their back and people spending a lot on discretionary items, we think Target can compete reasonably well, but in a more difficult environment, the increased competition over the past decade or so, I think, makes it that much more difficult for them," he said.

Target is also struggling to catch up in some booming areas that are working for its competitors, like groceries and e-commerce. Both efforts have been undertaken "halfheartedly," said Zhihan Ma, a senior research analyst at Bernstein. Target largely relies on its stores to fulfill online orders, which may be cheaper in terms of the up-front cost to implement, but it's very labor intensive, as associates are expected to deal with in-person shoppers and e-commerce customers in tandem.

Beyond the slow-walked investments, one of the key differentiators for Target — a relatively enjoyable shopping experience — has been undercut in recent years. Target's attempts to fight retail theft mean more merchandise winds up locked up. Like with other retailers, some locations have problems with inventory shortages or crowded aisles. The result is a shopping experience that isn't a bang-up time, which is especially damaging for Target, where a bit of fun is part of the point.

"The business is what the business is to a large extent," Stambor said. "Target is a place to find that cool other thing that you didn't expect to throw into your cart."

While Target has been having a tough time financially over the past couple of years, it may be even worse when it comes to the news. Yes, there are some positive headlines about Stanley's "Wicked"-themed cups and everything it's doing with Taylor Swift. But there are a lot more negative headlines Target would rather not see.

One of the ways Target has sought to differentiate itself from competitors is by embracing a rather cosmopolitan identity. It does collaborations and deals with designers, big-name brands, and celebrities. It tries to get higher-end consumers in the door. It's a bit fancy — there's a reason people use a little French accent to call it "Tar-jay." That means some of its consumers, particularly those who are more progressive leaning, expect more from it, and in some cases, Target has been happy to oblige.

"In some ways, they're victims of their own success," Baker said. "Target has come to stand for fashion and fun and it is really a very culturally relevant retailer," he said, which puts it more in the crosshairs than Walmart and Amazon.

As recently as 2020, Target was leaning into this identity. The Minneapolis-based retailer had positioned itself as a leader on racial justice in response to George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. The moves seemed to go over well until 2023, when it stumbled into a series of culture-war woes. That year, many businesses faced a backlash after a Bud Light marketing campaign featuring the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney sparked outrage among some consumers in the spring. Heading into the summer, Target's Pride month collection — something it's been doing for years — became the subject of right-ring focus. Some of the hullabaloo was completely made up, such as false social media reports that Target was selling "tuck-friendly" bathing suits for children. But the dust-up also moved from social media to the real world: Some angry shoppers were actually attacking associates and destroying store displays. Target scaled back its Pride collection, moving items to the back of the store in some locations and pulling some items altogether. It later said the backlash hurt sales.

Since then, Target's been stuck in a loop of corporate identity indecision that it seems unable to get out of. The decision to scale back on Pride made no one happy — some consumers were already upset about the merchandise's existence in the first place, and others were upset because Target backed down. Target declined to comment for this story, but with regard to its diversity strategy and business outlook, a spokesperson pointed to links to its "Belonging at the Bullseye Strategy" and its fourth-quarter results.

Target has taken a similar please-no-one approach when it comes to its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. In January, the company said it was axing multiple DEI initiatives, including ending its three-year DEI goals, wrapping up a program to invest in Black-owned businesses, and stopping participation in external diversity-focused surveys. Target's DEI efforts and reversals have been met by resistance on several fronts. On the right, the retailer has been hit by a lawsuit brought by the state of Florida, among others, saying investors weren't made aware of the risks of Target's DEI initiatives and potential backlash. On the left, the Atlanta pastor Jamal Bryant has called for a 40-day boycott of Target over its DEI rollback.

"Any time a company is visible, it's a target for activists who have one agenda or another," said Brayden King, a management professor at Northwestern.

At a moment when much of corporate America is anxious about the political environment, Target, in particular, seems to be bearing the brunt of all these swirling emotions. Many people feel powerless when it comes to actual politics, so pouring their frustrations into things they can control — where and how they shop — turns into an outlet for some sort of action.

The big issue, however, isn't that Target sold Pride merchandise or undertook DEI initiatives, it's that it so openly waffled on all of it. Again, it's similar to Bud Light: The near-ubiquitous beer brand did a tiny marketing campaign with a transgender influencer, and when that caught fire online among right-wing personalities, the company panicked and backed down instead of keeping calm and staying the course. When a company capitulates to backlash and cowers, it suggests what it initially did was incorrect — and ultimately pleases nobody.

Wavering draws more attention to the issue. It signifies weakness — which, in the case of Target's business, is part of the problem. It also degrades trust with consumers and turns the company into a more obvious target for activists down the line.

"That kind of seesawing back and forth and saying one thing and doing another, that's what gets brands like Target in trouble," said David Albert, the chief insights officer at Collage Group, a consumer research firm that focuses on multicultural audiences. "We've seen here, especially with Target, is that they've eroded that trust because they're not doing what they say and they don't say what they do."

It's not clear how much the political noise will impact Target's bottom line. The 2023 Pride backlash did ding sales, but that was a temporary problem. As a general rule, the vast majority of boycotts don't work. Consumers are set in their ways and often prioritize convenience. If there's a Target down the street or a Walmart 30 minutes away, most people will stick with Target. Also, if you really start to worry about whether each and every business you interact with aligns exactly with your values, you will likely find there is nowhere on Earth you can shop.

"Boycotts, of course, are very effective tactics for drawing attention to a cause," King said. "It will have this effect of making Target look bad. But do I think that it will affect what Target does? Probably not."

Just because boycotts rarely work doesn't mean they never work. Bud Light, for one, really did see a decline in sales. The evidence is mixed on whether February's single-day "economic blackout" was effective, but there are at least some signs it may have moved the needle. Ma, from Bernstein, said it's too early to tell if the DEI-related backlash will hurt Target's long-term financials, but she acknowledged that it may introduce more "volatility" into its shorter-term results if it continues to find itself embroiled in cultural backlashes. "It doesn't help, for sure," she said.

In terms of the business basics, Target has plans to get back some of that Tarjay sheen. It's amping up its private-label offering, creating more in-house brands that resonate with consumers and give them a reason to go to Target, specifically, rather than somewhere else. It's seeking out more flashy collaborations and partnerships, like with Warby Parker. It's scaling Target Plus, its third-party marketplace. It's still hoping consumers will do a spin around the store for those glorious little splurge buys on top of the basics.

Still, in the retail landscape, Target isn't in a highly enviable position. Between price-sensitive consumers and tariff whiplash, the macroeconomic landscape is not stacked in its favor. And its soft business outlook means that in terms of the culture war, it's operating from a place of weakness, which raises the chances of making a misstep. Instead of companies worrying they're going to be the next Bud Light, they're likely starting to worry they'll be the next Target.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

The kids these days aren't drinking as much as they used to. They're doing sober dating and alcohol-free game nights and whatever zebra striping is. But you know who is still boozing it up? Their parents and grandparents. While the media (including this publication) has been chattering about Gen Z and millennials scaling back on alcohol, many of us have missed that older generations are bucking the trend. Many baby boomers are turning into baby boozers. They're hitting retirement, they have savings to spend, and they're enjoying a little life victory lap — accompanied by a glass of wine (or three).

A recent analysis of customer credit card spending by the Bank of America Institute found that overall spending at bars in January was up 1% from the year before. The group responsible for the increase: baby boomers, who upped their spending by 4% and seemed to be opting for the bar over going to a restaurant. While Gen Z and millennials are still spending a larger aggregate amount at bars (the last time you went out, you probably didn't see the bar teeming with cougars and silver foxes), their tabs are shrinking. Gen Z, for example, decreased its spending on bars and alcohol stores in January by 15% compared to the same month in 2023. The youngs are backing off of the hard stuff; baby boomers aren't following suit.

"The interesting thing that's happening is that a higher share of baby boomers' going-out budgets is being dedicated to bars," said Joe Wadford, an economist at the Bank of America Institute.

A consumer survey by CGA by NIQ, a food-and-beverage industry research firm, found that average monthly spending on bars and restaurants by people between 21 and 34 fell from $166 in fall 2023 to $154 in fall 2024. During that same time period, spending by people over 55 went from $129 to $170 (of course, not all of that was on booze). The percentage of over-55 Americans who say they drink alcohol has increased from 49% in the early 2000s to 59% today, Gallup found; among people between 18 and 34, it fell from 72% to 62%. The proportion of older adults who say they sometimes overdo it has also gone up during that time period, while for everyone else, it's gone down. Older drinkers are also drinking more frequently. A Business Insider analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that spending on alcoholic beverages, adjusted for inflation, has gone down among most age groups since the mid-1980s — except among people over 65.

Overall, older people still drink less than younger people, but the generations are moving in opposite directions. Baby boomers are raising more glasses while their kids and grandkids are laying off.

So what's going on here? For one thing, baby boomers have been spending big on alcohol for years, and that's not going to change at the flip of a switch, especially now that their kids are out of the house and they've no longer got The Man to answer to. They've got time and money to spend, and they want to spend some of it on alcohol — and the nice stuff, too. Now that they can afford it, they're buying nicer wines and premium-brand liquors, eschewing the cheap options of their tight-budget youth.

"They're very much in this kind of YOLO period of their lives where it's like, 'I've got money; I feel good; people are living longer, healthier lives. I am traveling more compared to prior generations,'" said Kate Bernot, the lead analyst at Sightlines, which researches the alcohol industry. "They're just kind of in this prime time where buying nice stuff sounds good."

Younger adults have their bank accounts pulled in different directions. They're trying to buy homes or are saddled with mortgages. They've got car payments and childcare costs and student debt. Baby boomers, the youngest of whom are in their early 60s, are free of many of those expenses. They've reaped the benefits of rising home prices and a booming stock market. If you're 23 and struggling to pay your rent, you might have no choice but to swap a night out on the town for a quiet evening in with a six-pack to save money. A 65-year-old who doesn't have work tomorrow for the first time in 40 years and is sitting on a nice little nest egg isn't making the same calculation. As Gen Z and millennials are aging into more financial obligations, baby boomers are aging out of them.

"For the older generation, if you think of economic headwinds and economic issues, they perhaps might not have been as affected as much as young people," said Matt Crompton, a vice president at the market research firm NIQ, who focuses on the restaurant and bar market.

Older people may not listen to or be as aware of the health concerns around even moderate drinking as younger people. They came up in an age when some amount of drinking was considered healthy — that glass or two of red wine at night was supposedly good for their hearts. They've got ingrained habits they're not going to be quick to drop in the way younger people might in trying out Dry January, Sober October, or swapping nonalcoholic options into their routines on occasion.

"They have always been pretty strong alcohol consumers since they turned a legal drinking age, so they're just continuing those patterns, and now they just have money and time," Bernot said.

Crompton pointed out that while cannabis is competing for the "buzz dollar" among young consumers, that's not so much the case for most older ones. "The older consumer often will stick with what they know," he told me.

Baby boomers may not be who we think of as the typical alcohol consumer. We don't see them much in alcohol ads or in the media. But that doesn't mean that they're not excited about exploring alcohol — and brands are starting to notice. During the Super Bowl, Michelob Ultra ran a commercial featuring Catherine O'Hara, who's 71, and Willem Dafoe, 69, playing younger competitors on the pickleball court for beer. Brands are "finally waking up to the huge spending power and interest" in alcohol boomers have, Bernot said.

For the alcohol industry, the boomer boozer represents an under-the-radar market to serve. But there's a looming issue: As the cohort ages from "fun retiree" to "old old," they're going to become less frequent consumers. As people get into their mid-70s and 80s, they really slow down on drinking, and, at some point, they die. According to Sightlines, baby boomers account for 40% of all alcohol spending in the US. Brands are working to replace them, but meeting the tastes of a younger generation — especially when they're cutting back in general — can be tricky. This is an issue for wine, in particular. Silicon Valley Bank's latest report on the state of the US wine industry found that wine is the favorite of the three major alcoholic beverage categories for people over 60, while it ranks last for people under 60, behind spirits and beer.

"I hope we are all past the notion that we shouldn't worry about younger consumers coming to wine, and all we need to do is wait or, said another way — be patient and do nothing," wrote Rob McMillan, the founder of Silicon Valley Bank's wine division, wrote in the report. "Doing nothing won't change our present situation."

Baby boomers aren't getting sloshed every night in their retirement communities — or at least most of them aren't. But they aren't stepping away from alcohol in the same way that younger generations are, and they're keeping the party going longer than generations before them. Grandma might still have her two glasses of wine at dinner, while Mom has half a glass, and her 21-year-old daughter opts for a Diet Coke. Or Dad still goes to the bar for the big game and spends $30 on a handful of beers, while his son watches at home with some NA Athletic brews shared with friends. The elder half of the family can't figure out how to get the games with all the streaming services now, anyway.

Health considerations aside, boomers are in a moment when they have the space and finances to enjoy a drink more than they have in a long time. So, they're seizing the opportunity.

"It really boils down to where they are with their life stages," Wadford said. "The baby boomers are just enjoying some well-earned downtime."

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.