NPR.

A few months ago, I found myself in the middle of a construction site in Dallas.

It was full of dust and wind, and workers in hard hats going up and down in freight elevators.

This is the new Dallas office for Goldman Sachs, or it will be in 2028 when it's fully built and has thousands of employees working there.

Goldman is spending more than half a billion dollars to build this 14-story campus right in the heart of Dallas.

Hmm.

The Mamdani fear is real, but it's also an example of how the political rhetoric around Yallstreet is a useful marketing tool for Texas.

Because however much the financial industry is growing in Dallas, it's still got a long way to go to replace New York.

What are you seeing in terms of this moment for the economy?

I think it's a very weird moment for the economy.

And there, the, everything that you just mentioned are very worrying signs.

But I do think there are a couple of important caveats as you said.

We don't have the official jobs data.

The private data that we have is various proxies, but it's not the full picture.

It's also important to point out that unemployment is still relatively low.

What impact does that have on the broader economy?

Right.

I mean, I think, as you pointed out, the, the challenge for businesses and consumers and investors is it's 80% today, it was 145% a few days ago.

Um, there's just no certainty, and 80% is a huge amount still, but there's...

there is also just the question of, like, is this the final answer? What is the change going to be? As you pointed out, businesses can't make decisions, they can't hire, they can't invest in anything if they don't know what sort of economic conditions they're going to be working with.

And meanwhile, this is already hitting consumers.

My, my colleagues at NPR have done some reporting about what sorts of prices consumers are seeing, and they've asked people to send in receipts from, um... showing the impact of tariffs.

My colleague Emily Fang talked to one woman who had ordered a wheelchair that had to come from China in early March.

The decline has been led by a drop-off in tourists from Canada who have boycotted trips to the US over Trump's threat of making their country the 51st US state." I don't care who you voted for, but if your city or your business is impacted by any politician's politics and policies, you feel that in a very deeply personal way.