'Tis the season of holiday bonuses ... for some

Coming to the Twin Cities in December, it's the twenty twenty six World Junior Hockey Championship. He scores. Team USA has got back to back. Tomorrow's superstars of the NHL will be in your backyard as team USA looks for a third consecutive goal. There's so much pride involved. You know, it's it's game seven every single night. Everybody's playing for that gold medal. Don't miss your chance to be part of the action. Secure the best seats today at worldjuniorsmn26.com. A look back at the big economic trends of 2025 and what's ahead for 2026. We'll have our last weekly wrap of the year. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Washington, DC, I'm Kimberly Adams in for Kai Risdoll. It's Friday, December 26. Good to have you with us. This is the last Friday of twenty twenty five, meaning it's also the last weekly wrap of 2025. So to look back and a little bit forward at the economic year that was, we've got Courtney Brown at Axios on the line and Rachel Siegel at The Washington Post. Hey. You too. Hi, Kimberly. Thank you for joining me this holiday week. Courtney, I wanna start with you because there were a bunch of big economic themes this year. And one in particular that showed up in this week's GDP report is this ever resilient American consumer. Doesn't matter if we've got tariffs, bad consumer sentiment, whatever. People are still spending. Courtney, you've been writing about this. Why? I I also am curious and surprised by the resiliency of the American consumer. And this isn't the only year that we're having this conversation about consumer resiliency. Right? This has been the story of The US economy for a while now. I think what makes it the most shocking is some of the factors that you mentioned that are new to the economy this year tariffs for instance. We've seen the consumer continue to spend despite some tariff related price increases. And I think the big question in it for my reporting in 2026 is how much longer can this continue, especially as the labor market starts to look a little bit more rocky? Will consumers, keep spending or will they start to be more cautious? That's a massive question for the economy going into next year. Rachel, what's your take? Why do you think people are still spending and what might stop them? Well, I completely agree with with everything that Courtney just said. And I also feel like it's hard to parse out different stories coming from different types of consumers and different types of spending too. So there's this big looming question about higher end consumers, you know, how much they're willing to absorb, how much bandwidth they continue to have for higher prices. And then I feel like there's this sort of additional question that follows from there of how much that kind of spending is dwarfing, you know, lower income consumers or people who …