David Uberti

The big moment to bookend this year was the quote-unquote Liberation Day tariffs announced in April by President Trump.

It really sparked market chaos, just the idea of a new era of trade barriers, really reorienting the global economy away from increased globalization.

Markets tanked.

Investors in Wall Street and elsewhere sold off risky assets.

But since then, investors have come back to the market in a very big way.

And that's in large part because of this AI boom.

Investors have poured money into U.S.

tech stocks, and that has really elevated markets to near record levels.

Tech companies are investing some $41 billion a year at current rates into data centers.

And what that means is a lot of labor.

It means a lot of concrete, copper, piping, cable, etc.

All of that adds up to an immense amount of economic activity that is propping up the U.S.

construction center.

And in some cases, depending on what part of the country you're in, it's propping up the overall economy as well.

We're talking thousands of construction workers that have come both locally and non-locally have sort of descended onto these very small towns.

They're staying in RV parks, hotels.

Some of them have put down roots in terms of new housing and whatnot.

And it's really injected a lot of cash into the local economy there, which has really created some immense changes in how people live their lives.

Home prices and rental prices in Umatilla and the surrounding areas have doubled.

So some of these sort of low-wage farm workers who have traditionally made up the backbone of the local economy, those people are having a harder and harder time paying for housing and keeping up with some of these higher salaries.