Making Cents of Oil Prices & Tariffs; Red Sea Emerges as New Front in Iran War
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The governor has officially ruled it as LeBron James Day in Philadelphia, and rightfully so. This is historic, as you said, is probably the right word.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vasugan. You heard it. Historic. And you probably already heard it today because it's such big news. LeBron James is going east. He's going to Philly. He's going to play for the 76ers. But why such a small contract? We're going to talk about that with the guy's voice you just heard, Noah Eagle, play-by-play commentator for NBC. Also, there's a new front in the war in the Middle East, and it is in the Red Sea, and it involves Houthi rebels. We'll talk about that with Richard Engel, who's on the ground for us in Israel. Up first, though. So it is Friday, which means it's payday or it's maybe the day after payday. But the check that you're getting doesn't feel like it's going as far as it once did.
Oil prices surged once again on Thursday to their highest levels in nearly two months, which means it's going to cost a lot more money to fill up your gas tank and to buy those plane tickets maybe if you want to go away in the end of the summer. And overnight, the president announced a new round of tariffs on 60 U.S. trading partners, each one ranging from 10 to 12.5 percent. So what impact could these have on the price that you are paying? For this, I want to bring in NBC News business reporter Ali Kanow. Hi, Allie. Hi. How are you? I'm good. So we just talked about President Trump's proposed tariff on Canada earlier this week. But these new tariffs actually went into effect overnight. Which countries and products are included?
And why did the president do this now?
Yeah, well, these are meant to replace the 10% global blanket tariff that officially expired at midnight. So these are the replacement tariffs. 60 U.S. trading partners, and we're talking about some of our biggest trading partners and some of the biggest countries in the world, Canada, Mexico, the U.K., the E.U. The big change here is really legal, like a legal loophole in a sense. So remember earlier this year, the Supreme Court struck down President Trump's emergency tariffs. So now the administration is turning to a new trade law, Section 301 of the Trade Act. So this is a different law that uses forced labor as the basis for these new tariffs. Now, the countries are pushing back pretty hard against that, and there are some few
notable exceptions. So certain types of coffees, fertilizer, fuel, animal products, sugar, they're all exempt from these tariffs. But anything that's not on that exemption list will be facing that 10 to 12.5% tariff.
So it's interesting because Wall Street didn't really seem to balk at this tariff news today. It seems like traders may have had this baked into the costs. Have companies also already worked these tariffs into their prices?
Well, companies have been dealing with the back and forth of these tariffs for quite some time. Now, I will say over the course of the past year, a lot of businesses have figured out ways to absorb these extra costs so that they don't have to pass on those costs to consumers again. Because ultimately, they want consumers to be spending on their products. And right now, the consumer is definitely more selective. They're definitely a lot more squeezed. Not only do you have these added cost pressures from tariffs, you also have added cost pressures from the war with Iran, which is now revving up again. And that's impacting gas prices, fuel, travel costs. So businesses need to be really careful about what...
when and how they raise their prices. So businesses have become pretty smart in navigating the changing tariff landscape, but it certainly is confusing to a lot of those big corporations and even everyday Americans when things change so quickly. So are people going to see higher prices because of these new tariffs? It's certainly possible that some of the imported goods affected, yes, you could see higher tariffs. But again, it all depends how businesses choose to navigate and get around this.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:01
2
How will the new 10–12.5% tariffs on 60 trading partners affect consumer prices?
5:01–6:26
3
Which countries and products are exempt from the new tariffs and why?
6:26–11:32
4
Have companies already absorbed tariff costs or will they pass them to shoppers?
11:32–20:02
5
How is the Middle East war driving oil and gas prices up in the U.S.?
20:02–24:31
6
What is the estimated financial impact of the Iran war on the average American household?
24:31–26:02
Speakers
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