Business & Education

Star Spangled Indicator

By Stacey Vanek Smith,

Echo Wang, Cardiff Garcia

Published July 3, 2018 at 4:54 PM CDT

There's a joke in China, that the first people in the world to know that Donald Trump would win the presidency were the flag makers. The reason? People were ordering a lot more Trump flags than Clinton flags.

Flags can be a symbol of national pride, a patriotic rallying cry, but they can also tell us a lot about free trade and the global economy. Today on the show, we speak with the owner of a Chinese factory that makes American flags.

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Business & Education

Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

See stories by Stacey Vanek Smith

Echo Wang

Cardiff Garcia

Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.

See stories by Cardiff Garcia