Retirement luck, Hassett hassles the Fed, and boneless chicken in ... court?

And I'm Adrienne Ma.

And today it is, in fact, Indicators of the Week.

We have the Federal Reserve's worst economic research ever, according to the White House.

And perhaps the most important economic question we've ever asked on this show. What's up with boneless chicken wings?

it's indicators of the Week. Darian woods, you're up first.

I was born. Year of the rooster. Is that a lucky year?

Okay, so someone who starts saving for retirement in, say, 1972, they would have a different outcome from somebody who started in 1980.

So it's like right before the dot com crash.

sitting well timed, well timed.

Ugh.

So that was during the Great Recession.

Yeah. So these are things that are completely out of your control.

I think it just goes to show how much of a gamble retirement is.

Thank you very much. Darian Waylon, you want to go next?

Yes. My indicator is 94%. That's how much of the tariff burden fell on US businesses and consumers during the first eight months of the Trump administration. This indicator comes courtesy of the New York Federal Reserve. It crunched the numbers for a recent BL blog post on its website. And I'm bringing it up today because White House economic advisor economist Kevin Hassett went on CNBC to talk about how much he hates this number.

It's, I think, the worst paper I've ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve System.

I think so. I mean, I saw this blog post because I subscribed to updates for the New York Federal Reserve's economic blog. But I think it's like a very widely read blog outside of economic circles. But yeah, now it's been mentioned on cnbc, so everyone can flock to it and check out the analysis for themselves. And I will say this 94% number that has Kevin Hassett so mad is very similar to an indicator we discussed in January, a German research institute that focuses on global economics and did its own calculations and concluded that Americans pay 96% of the tariffs. And these two analyses use different methodologies, but both are looking at import prices, in other words, what American importers pay for stuff.

Yes. Now foreign exporters are bearing a tiny part of the burden. The way this happens is that they lower their prices in response to tariffs because they don't want to lose out on sales. And but for the most part, according to this economic research, American importers end up paying higher prices because of tariffs.

Okay, so that is what the researchers say. But why, why is Kevin Hassett making a big fuss over this?

He told CNBC that he doesn't think the numbers reflect how tariffs have helped Americans. He says that tariffs on, for example, China are shifting demand to American made products. And he says that drives up wages and makes the American consumer better off.

Well, if you just look at the timeline, Trump's big announcement on tariffs wasn't until April of 2025. Real wages were going up way before then during the Biden administration. In fact, there's only a few months overlap between, you know, tariffs happening and the wage increases that Hassett is talking

about in his comments. Didn't, didn't Hassett also say that the Fed researchers should be more disciplined?

He didn't say they should be more disciplined. He said they should be disciplined for they should be economic work.

Yeah. So it went even stronger than being like, oh, they should have been more rigorous in their methodology. He was like, they should be disciplined. And I'm like, I don't even know what that is.

Did he elaborate?

They should stay after school and write on the chalkboard. I will take into account producer and consumer surplus 85 times. I don't know. I don't know what he wants them to do.

Okay, so we have covered two very important topics. We've talked about retirement and talked about the impact of tariffs on consumers and U.S. businesses. But I think we saved the most important topic for last, and that is chicken wings.

Not my favorite part of the chicken, but I know that this is an important snack food for a lot of people.

That's right. And a very well known purveyor of chicken wings is Buffalo Wild Wings, the restaurant chain. Sure you've all heard of it. And the indicator is 0. 0 is the number of chicken wings that you will find in Buffalo Wild Wings. Boneless wings. Entree.

But. But wings is right there in the name.

It is true. There's no wings in the boneless wings.

Boneless wings.

If you are confused, you're not alone on this. In 2023, there was a man in Illinois who went to a Buffalo Wild Wings, ordered the boneless wings, and he says he was expected to be served chicken wings that were deboned. But come to find out the meat in the boneless wings were actually made from chicken breast meat. What?

Right.

So this made this Customer very mad. And he filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming that he had been defrauded. And the plaintiff in this case says that Buffalo Wild Wings intentionally tricked him and other customers because chicken wing meat is more expensive than breast meat. And so it's in their interest to, like, trick people into thinking they're eating wings.

Oh, so it's like they're tricking customers into thinking they're getting a fancier kind of chicken than what they're being served.

That's right.

We've already lost the plot on our process.

I mean, the fact that we're still talking about this, like, you could see why there has been confusion in this case. Right. This case has dragged out for the last few years, and only this. The court issued. Issued a decision saying they're dismissing the lawsuit. And in the judge's words, the plaintiff's case had, quote, no meat on its bones.

Just to boil it down, he basically said that, you know, the boneless wing is clearly meant to be fanciful and that no reasonable customer would be confused by that. And he also said that the menu also includes items like cauliflower wings, which the plaintiff acknowledged he didn't expect cauliflower wings to have meat in them. So he was kind of like, well, I don't think you have a case.

Yeah. What do words even mean anymore?

This episode was produced by Indra Carreras with engineering by Jimmy Keeley. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and Corey Bridges. Cake and Cannon edits the show, and the indicator is a production of npr.