KPBS anchor Ebone Monet and George Belch, Senior Associate Dean of Marketing at SDSU, discuss some of the week’s top business stories.
Q: What’s going to be the impact for the new attraction at Disneyland, Galaxy’s Edge?
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A: Anytime a theme park like Disney adds a new attraction it's a major event. Clearly it's going to increase attendance. It's going to bring in new people. This one is particularly significant because first of all it's probably the largest investment Disney's ever made in expanding the park. You go back to 2012. They paid $4 billion dollars to Lucas films for the rights to Star Wars. Now it's time to get the return on investment for that big expenditure. Clearly Galaxy's Edge is going to be the way to do so.
Q: This week the California State Assembly banned the sale of fur in Assembly Bill 44. How big of an impact will this be for people who work in the fur industry?
A: PETA and other animal rights groups have been after the fur industry for a long time. They're very concerned about the conditions... the confinement...of the animals that are used to generate fur products. There was a fur ban in West Hollywood in 2011, Berkeley in 2017, San Francisco the same year. Last year Los Angeles City Council passed laws banning fur sales. So we should not be surprised by this at all. A lot of the manufacturers' fashion companies have already pledged not to sell fur products. The industry, of course, is upset. Their argument is you're picking on us. Their argument is let us regulate ourselves, you're going to create a black market for fur, and then conditions could perhaps even be worse.
I think you're going to see the bans continue. A lot of people say it's pretty much an outdated product.
Q: One of the nation's largest investment banks, Morgan Stanley, says we should be on recession watch based on recent market performance. Is a recession inevitable? What other areas should we be watching closely?
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A:There are other signs. Durable manufacturing is down. The business sector and the health care sector are down. Inventories are up. These are signs. Europe, other international markets, are not in recession but their growth has clearly slowed. But perhaps the big thing right now is trade wars. Yesterday, President Trump added Mexico to the tariff list. We already have the battle going on with China. The markets hate uncertainty. They hate volatility, but until we get the tariff issue and the trade war issue resolved we're not going to have any real clear picture of where the economies are going.
