Amazon announced its expanding footprint, adding some 25,000 jobs in Long Island City in Queens and Arlington, Va. Some in those cities are worried about housing prices and congestion on the roads.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Amazon conducted a national search for a city to build a new headquarters in, and today the company announced that it will have two more – one in Long Island City, N.Y., the other in the D.C. suburb of Arlington, Va. NPR’s Alina Selyukh reports on the mixed feelings about the company’s expansion.

ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Amazon’s search lasted more than a year and drew 238 bids from across the country. But in the end, the company decided it could not do with just one new headquarters and settled for two. So now Amazon will be based in Seattle as always but also in Queens and in Northern Virginia. Here’s Amazon executive Jay Carney.

JAY CARNEY: Because the driving factor for us was access to existing talent and the ability to refer or lure talent, it would make the most sense to divide HQ2 into HQ2 and HQ3.

SELYUKH: Carney says the company seriously considered all of the bids from across the nation, and going forward, Amazon is likely to continue negotiating for smaller projects in other places, like a new corporate office in Nashville that the company also announced today. But ultimately, Carney says, for a new HQ, Amazon needed a place that would be easy to sell to potential new hires. So now it’s New York and Northern Virginia that are each getting more than 25,000 jobs paying an average of more than $150,000 dollars a year. A note – Amazon is one of NPR’s sponsors.

ANGELOS ANGELOU: We were of the opinion that no city in the U.S. can support this project based on the timeline and the criteria that Amazon set up for it.

SELYUKH: Angelos Angelou is an economic development consultant who helps tech companies find new office locations. He says Amazon wanted 50,000 people ready to go in a matter of 10 to 15 years. And that’s very hard to accomplish with just one location. But in the two locations it chose, six-figure wages that Amazon touts are already common. Plus, traffic and housing prices are already a challenge. All this is prompting a new wave of criticism for the company.

DANA AUSSENBERG: This neighborhood has already really scaled up very quickly.

SELYUKH: Dana Aussenberg lives in Long Island City.

AUSSENBERG: Great for Queens and great for Long Island City. But there’s just a lot of issues that need to be fixed first. And, you know, as someone who’s been living here for seven years, I don’t want to be pushed out.

SELYUKH: And here’s Ron Lafond who works in Crystal City in Arlington.

RON LAFOND: It’s good for the higher-end workforce in terms of options. I obviously have concerns about parking and transit and…

SELYUKH: For Crystal City, there was another surprise in the news today – its own name. The local developer has started calling it National Landing to woo Amazon. The neighborhood has been stagnant with many office towers, so locals here are generally optimistic about the prospect of Amazon jobs even as the company is slated to benefit from half a billion dollars in financial incentives.

In New York, however, city and state politicians are raising major concerns about the incentives. They’re even higher there at $1 1/2 billion. But for most residents, the biggest concerns are housing prices and road congestion.

KATIE CRISTOL: My name is Katie Cristol. I’m the chair of the Arlington County Board.

SELYUKH: Cristol is also a member of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, so I didn’t even have to finish my question to her.

Holy cow, 25,000…

CRISTOL: (Laughter) That seems like a lot of cars.

SELYUKH: Cristol says the county plans to invest in roads, better access to the metro, bus routes, more affordable housing. And she says public transit is actually underused in Crystal City.

CRISTOL: I know it can feel counterintuitive. We know Northern Virginia has some of the nation’s worst traffic. But by and large, there’s a transportation or transit infrastructure here in Crystal City that’s hungry for more riders.

SELYUKH: She hopes those new Amazon workers help pay for it all by buying 25,000 metro cards. Alina Salyukh, NPR News, Washington.

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, about union strategies following the midterm elections.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We’ve talked a lot about how last Tuesday’s election marked a turning point with the Democrats set to retake control of the House. But we were wondering what it might mean for this country’s labor movement. Now, labor leaders are claiming victory after Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker lost his re-election bid after eight years of fighting to strip unions of their powers. And, in Illinois, Governor Bruce Rauner lost his seat as well. He initiated a lawsuit claiming that mandatory membership dues are unconstitutional for public unions, and the Supreme Court agreed with him earlier this year. As we said, both of those governors have now been voted out of the office.

But we were wondering what, if anything, labor can do to recover the ground it has already lost. So we’ve called the president of the AFL-CIO, Mr. Richard Trumka, to talk more about this. Mr. Trumka, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

RICHARD TRUMKA: Thanks for having me on.

MARTIN: So we discussed the Scott Walker and Bruce Rauner elections. Were there any other victories that you want to claim? And were there any setbacks?

TRUMKA: (Laughter) The labor movement really did prove to be the driving force throughout much of this cycle. We knocked on over 2 million doors. We passed out 5 million flyers. We had 12 million pieces of direct mail, and I just have to say this, Michel. This is part of something that’s bigger than just politics or the last election. You’re seeing a tremendous upsurge in collective action throughout the United States right now.

MARTIN: I think that a lot of people would agree with you. But if – are you seeing collective action as expressed through union membership? I mean, you certainly know better…

TRUMKA: Yeah.

MARTIN: …Than anybody that membership has been falling in recent years. In part, that’s – what those two initiatives that we discussed in Wisconsin and Illinois did is that they helped sort of weaken the structural foundation of unions by making it harder to collect dues, for example, by depriving certain, you know, groups of workers of the opportunity to be represented by a union. Really, what can you do to address those structural problems?

TRUMKA: Well, first of all, actually, the last two years, union membership has grown. Last year alone, we organized 262,000 new members and three-quarters of them were under the age of 35. We’ve also begun doing strategic partnerships with other progressive groups. All of us have figured out that we’re all better off if we stick together. And so we’re reaching out to those community groups – people of color, any progressive group that’s out there. We’re working together more effectively and, quite frankly, in much more solidarity.

MARTIN: But we’ve seen states that had been reliably union – Democratic states like Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin – in the prior election supported President Trump. And the working assumption is that that could not have happened if some union members had not voted for President Trump. Why do you think that is? And do you think that you have changed their minds?

TRUMKA: A lot of workers believe that neither the economy nor the political system are working for them. Donald Trump said, I’m going to change the system. I’m going to shake it up from head to toe for you. They believed it. We went into Ohio in this last election. We talked to those people that had voted for Trump, and nearly 50 percent of them had changed their mind and are not going to vote for Trump or with Trump.

MARTIN: But the Republicans still won the governor’s race there over a credible…

TRUMKA: They did.

MARTIN: …Candidate.

TRUMKA: But we won up and down the ballot in Ohio. I mean, Sherrod Brown won a significant race. He’s been one of our biggest supporters. He won because he has a very clear articulated economic message that resonates with working people. They want to know what you’re going to do to help them with their wages, their health care, their pensions, their kids’ education, their ability to live a decent life after they retire. And he talks about that every day and not just talks about it when the polls say it’s – you should talk about it. But that’s part of his core values.

MARTIN: You’re talking about Sherrod Brown…

TRUMKA: Yes.

MARTIN: The Democratic senator won re-election. But Democrats did not succeed in retaking Ohio governor’s seat.

TRUMKA: No, they didn’t, but we made significant progress. And so, every time, we’re making more progress. When you ask about those people that had voted for Trump, they’re coming back across the street. They understand what’s in their best interests.

MARTIN: Overall, what’s your sense of how the country is going? I mean, if you asked that classic polling question, is the country headed in the right direction or on the wrong track, what would you say?

TRUMKA: I would say we’re on the wrong track right now because of the rise of some of the ugly rhetoric out there that is polarizing the country rather than trying to heal some of the wounds that are out, try to bring us closer together. And so we’re going to work to try to bridge that gap, try to heal people, try to solve some problems so that we can, actually, maybe help take the first step towards bridging the gap rather than widening the gap that exists in the country.

MARTIN: That was Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. We talked to him at his office in Washington, D.C. Mr. Trumka, thanks so much for talking to us today.

TRUMKA: Thank you.

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Massachusetts cranberry growers are halfway through the harvest. It’s been a good crop, but they’re worried about low fruit prices. We visit with one farmer and discuss the struggling industry.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Massachusetts cranberry growers are halfway through this year’s harvest season. It’s been a good crop so far. But they’re worried about how low fruit prices are affecting the industry in the state. Hayley Fager from member station WCAI visits a cranberry farmer, and she has this report.

HAYLEY FAGER, BYLINE: The leaves have just started to turn orange and yellow in Southeastern Massachusetts. I’m on a cranberry farm with Steve Ward, a second-generation grower in Middleborough. His 22-year-old son Justin Ward is out here today harvesting. Justin’s already started up the pump and flooded the cranberry field.

JUSTIN WARD: Before we got onto that bog, I said as long as you don’t fall in the ditch, we’ll be OK. Well, he fell in the ditch (laughter).

FAGER: That’s part of the whole harvesting process. Somebody always falls into the ditch. Picking machines remove the berries from the bushes, and the fruit floats to the top. Then it gets corralled into a big ring.

(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SPLASHING)

FAGER: I put on some waders and walk into the water with Steve. The pump sucks the berries up a tube.

STEVE WARD: When I talk to little kids, I say it’s like a whirlpool sucking everything in.

FAGER: Steve rakes the berries toward the suction box.

(SOUNDBITE OF ENGINE RUNNING)

FAGER: The fruit moves up through a washing system and onto a truck.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Welcome, everyone, to the cranberry harvest festival by Makepeace.

FAGER: I first saw this process at the 15th cranberry harvest festival, where I met Steve a few weeks ago. He says working on the bogs is hard and can be kind of lonely.

S. WARD: When I come to something like this, it reinvigorates me. The excitement that someone shows on their face when I talk about something that, I think, is kind of day-to-day, almost kind of boring at times, makes me feel good, makes me feel needed.

FAGER: The event brings nearly 30,000 people to the small town of Wareham, Mass. You can take a helicopter ride over the fields and even walk into the bogs.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: We are going to go wade in the cranberries.

FAGER: But this year was the festival’s last, and that’s a sign of bigger changes in the industry. Nationally, cranberry revenues have dropped. And farmers who staff the event just can’t afford to take a week off from harvesting. The problem is worse for Massachusetts growers because most of the bogs here are natural, which makes them less efficient than man-made bogs in places like Wisconsin or Canada. Farmers here are banking on state funding to upgrade their bogs.

S. WARD: If we don’t do that, other parts of the world and other parts of the country are going to put us out of business.

FAGER: Steve has mixed feelings about his son entering a struggling industry. But Justin says this job makes him happy.

J. WARD: I’m hoping to do it as long as I can, you know? This is really fun for me.

FAGER: Every year, they go out together when the first cranberries are ready to taste. And they find the very best berry that they can. And then Steve takes that perfect berry, and he holds it up over his head.

S. WARD: Now, Justin usually doesn’t jump in and say it with me because he’s laughing so hard.

J. WARD: Yeah.

S. WARD: But I’ll yell at the top of my lungs, first cranberry of the season.

FAGER: Even now Justin is laughing at his dad.

S. WARD: And Justin says, dad, why do you have to do it so loud? The neighbors are going to hear us (laughter). It has to be that way. The whole world has to hear it.

FAGER: Steve and Justin Ward are doing everything they can to stay in business. They say they’ll be out here every year for their own harvest celebration. For NPR News, I’m Hayley Fager in southeastern Massachusetts.

(SOUNDBITE OF RY COODER SONG, “JESUS AND WOODY”)

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Bassetts Ice Cream in Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market bills itself as the oldest U.S. ice cream maker. Owner Michael Strange worries about the trade war hurting his business.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Next, we’re going to hear a story of a very different business that you might not associate with tariffs – Bassetts Ice cream.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Thank you, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Thank you.

MARTIN: They say they are the oldest ice cream maker in the country.

MICHAEL STRANGE: Our company was founded by my great-great-grandfather in 1861.

MARTIN: That’s owner Michael Strange. He meets us at the bustling Reading terminal in downtown Philadelphia. It’s in a huge indoor market featuring row after row of vendors selling everything from freshly butchered meats to handmade doughnuts to handmade soaps and everything in between. The market opened in 1893, and Bassets has been selling ice cream here ever since. Just don’t make the mistake of calling it premium ice cream.

STRANGE: The term we use is super premium. And I didn’t come up with that myself. But it’s primarily based on the butter fat or milk fat that’s in the product. Ours is a 16.5 percent milk fat, which lends our ice cream that rich, creamy, silky mouthfeel.

MARTIN: Before we got a chance to taste that super premium ice cream, we asked Strange to talk tariffs. They’ve been very much on his mind.

STRANGE: Tariffs are definitely affecting our international business, most particularly our shipments to China. The tariff increases that have been going on back and forth between the U.S. and China were applied to ice cream imports from the U.S. into China. We started shipping our ice cream to China in 2008, and at that time, there was a 19 percent tariff on our product, which is significant. But we were able to capture that tariff in our pricing and still grow our business there.

With the recent back and forth of increases in the tariff, China added an additional 25 percent tariff to ice cream imports from the U.S., making it a total of a 44 percent tariff on ice cream shipped from the U.S. to China. That is such a large and measurable number that I regret to tell you we have not shipped to China since the imposition of that additional tariff. We do have an order in hand from our China customer. He’s a little more sanguine about the tariff increase than I am. He seems convinced that, sooner rather than later, both sides will roll back the tariffs after we come to some sort of an agreement. I am a little more pessimistic about whether or not these tariffs are going to be rolled back any time in the near future.

And, as a result of that, we are operating our business on the assumption that, while we have one order in hand that we expect to ship, I am operating on the assumption that that is going to be our last shipment to China until such time as those tariffs get rolled back. I hope I am wrong, and I could well be wrong. But, as of right now, we’re running our business assuming China is no longer going to be a viable market for us.

MARTIN: Now, some people we met in Pennsylvania like the folks at American Keg told us they are optimistic the tariffs will help bring business back to the U.S. and revitalize their companies. So we asked Michael Strange why he doesn’t see it that way.

STRANGE: Well, the thought as to whether or not implementing tariffs on China will ultimately cause them to reduce tariffs on U.S. products imported to China – that’s above my pay grade. I don’t know if that plan is going to work or not. But I do know that, in the short term, it is measurably affecting our total business. It would mean that we would have to lay people off if the other components of our business weren’t growing as rapidly as they are. So we don’t expect to lay anyone off. But, by the same token, we will certainly delay hiring anybody.

MARTIN: With the elections just a few days away, Strange told us that he doesn’t like to get involved in politics, but he is hoping Democrats take control of Congress so they can push back on the president.

STRANGE: I’ll be very candid. And I don’t know whether you’ll put this on the air or not, but I honestly – I question a lot of what our current president does. And I think a lot of it is just shooting from the hip, knee-jerk reaction without deep, considered thinking. And, honestly, I don’t think he’s really thought it through. I think he is shooting from the hip, and it is what makes Donald Trump feel good is what our policies are. To be honest with you, we’re just a little company. My sales are a tiny, tiny fraction of what most international companies enjoy. But it’s an important topic for me.

MARTIN: That was Michael Strange, owner of Bassetts Ice Cream in Philadelphia. Now, we wanted to talk more about how tariffs are affecting the business environment, so we called NPR’s Uri Berliner. He’s a senior editor covering business and the economy. Uri, thanks so much for joining us.

URI BERLINER, BYLINE: Sure thing.

MARTIN: So we just heard from two business leaders. One is a supporter of tariffs, and he said he’s cautiously optimistic that they will help. That was Paul Czachor, the CEO of American Keg. But he’s had to lay off workers. And then the other, Michael Strange of Bassetts Ice Cream, has not had to lay off workers, but he’s clearly worried, and he’s vocally opposed to more tariffs. And they both say that they are very uncertain about what is in store. So the first thing we wanted to ask is, is this uncertainty something that you are hearing, you know, across the country, you know, apart from these two guys that we talked to?

BERLINER: Well, yes. There’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty ranging from the very largest companies – companies like Ford and GM – to small companies like this keg maker because no one really knows where things are going. It was just in late September that the Trump administration imposed the last very big batch of tariffs on China – tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. That’s a lot. That’s a huge move.

But we don’t even know where this is going. President Trump spoke by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week about trade. He said they had a very good conversation. They’re supposed to meet later this month in Argentina at a summit, the G20 summit. Maybe there’ll be some progress there. But if there isn’t – if these two countries continue with the standoff – there’s just tremendous uncertainty about where this goes.

MARTIN: Is there any sense of winners and losers so far?

BERLINER: Yes. U.S. steelmakers, companies that make steel, say they are benefiting from the tariffs – companies like U.S. Steel and Nucor. There are a lot of companies that are paying a price from the tariffs already. And what we’re seeing mostly because they were imposed earlier are the tariffs on steel and aluminum. So a lot of companies that use steel for their production – everything from this maker of kegs to makers of heavy equipment like Caterpillar – they have to pay more for the steel they bring in or the steel that they buy. And that’s having an effect on their bottom line. Now, for the most part, consumers have been pretty protected from the tariffs. But this last round of tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods – that’s going to impact all kinds of consumer goods.

MARTIN: So is there any sense – given everything you just told us, is there any sense of what we should be looking at as this story continues to develop?

BERLINER: To some extent, the playing field has been cleared. The – you know, the U.S. and Canada and Mexico renegotiated a trade agreement. The tensions with the EU have calmed down somewhat. But really, now this is completely about the U.S. and China. And does this become an all-out war that lasts for years over that really these two countries become sort of fierce rivals, if not enemies, in the world of the – economics or whether these two countries see that there’s some benefit in ratcheting back the tension because they’ll both be harmed by that. This is the thing to watch for right now.

MARTIN: That’s NPR’s Uri Berliner.

Uri, thanks so much.

BERLINER: You’re welcome.

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.