Trump backpedals on Mexico, Canada tariffs
Trump backpedals on Mexico, Canada tariffs | The Excerpt
On Friday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY White House Correspondent Joey Garrison discusses President Donald Trump's postponement of new tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico that fall under the three nations' free trade deal. President Trump's sweeping freeze on federal funding has been hit with another legal blow. A deadline looms to avoid a government shutdown. SpaceX's Starship rocket broke up during its eighth uncrewed flight test. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise discusses a rapid decline in the U.S. butterfly population.
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Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Cody Godwin:
Good morning. I'm Cody Godwin in for Taylor Wilson. Today is Friday, March 7th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, Trump postponed the newly imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, plus the US has one week to pass legislation to prevent a government shutdown, and why scientists are concerned about the population of butterflies in the US.
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There's a new twist to the tariff saga, as President Donald Trump yesterday took executive action, postponing new tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico that fall under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement for one month. Taylor Wilson spoke with USA TODAY White House correspondent Joey Garrison for the latest, with Joey joining us directly from the White House.
Taylor Wilson:
Hello, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
Hey, thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for hopping on, Joey. So we have another tariff reversal here, Joey. What is the latest?
Joey Garrison:
On Wednesday, President Trump announced that he would be exempting auto imports from Canada and Mexico from these newly imposed 25% tariffs. And then on Thursday, that went further, by exempting all products that are part of the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. That was an agreement that was orchestrated by Trump during his first administration.
So what that effectively does is it shields, carves out about half of the imports from Mexico from being tariffed, and about 38% of the imports from Canada. So, when you couple that with what we've seen already with the automobiles, he has sort of scaled back what was originally these widespread blanket 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canadian goods.
Taylor Wilson:
And Joey, did Trump outline any reasons for this latest switch? I know we've seen the markets kind of freak out this week, especially. Did he mention that, and how else did he argue for this latest chapter turn?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, so President Trump signed these. And he actually signed both of them together, both the auto exemptions, as well as the ones on the US-Mexico-Canadian Agreement, but he didn't really explain exactly why. He just kept reiterating the April 2nd date, and that is what he keeps circling over and over when these so-called reciprocal tariffs go to effect. That's whereby the US imposes the exact tariff rate on any country's goods in which they tariff US exports.
So that's essentially, "If you tariff us, we're going to tariff you back." It's impossible to ignore the fact that this kind of step back here, this walk back comes after the stock market has really been rattled by Trump's actions on these tariffs earlier this week. And there's been widespread anxiety among consumers about higher prices. Of course, Trump got elected in part because of a promise to lower their prices, and these tariffs, typically, are passed down to the consumer. So, I think you do have to look at the context in which he has backpedaled on these tariffs.
Taylor Wilson:
It sounds like he had a pretty productive call, Joey, with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, but he also went after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. How so? What happened there? And I know this isn't the first time.
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, they kind of have an increasingly hostile relationship with each other. Trudeau, of course, announced it earlier this year that he was going to step down once his party finds a new leader. That's not happened yet. But earlier this week, Trudeau had a defiant speech, remarks after Trump's initial tariff announcement, said, "Hey, we're going to hit you back." He imposed their own tariffs, really starting to trade war here. And he also took a hit at Trump over Trump's recent public blow up with Zelensky, and accused Trump of siding, of course, with Putin. And so there's a lot going on there.
And so, Trump continues to call Trudeau the governor of Canada, which is a slap at him of course, and this idea that Canada could be brought on as the 51st state. And Trump has accused Trudeau of jumping all over this tariff issue in order to stay in power. As you noted, Trump had very high praise actually for the Mexican president, and said that they created really working together on efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl, as well as migrants coming into the US illegally, but he's not had that same praise for Trudeau and continues to go after him.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, so I guess April 2nd is now the date to circle on the calendar. What are you keeping an eye out for, Joey, between now and then?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, April 2nd obviously is booked, but I'm still wondering whether there might even be more changes ahead on these current tariffs. We'll see, I guess when the market's open, whether this has done enough to change things. I thought it was interesting that President Trump, throughout his first term in office, would love to trumpet the market whenever there was a stock market rise. But now, when asked about the tumbling, he said he's barely been paying attention to it, and accused it of corporate globalist companies that are the reason that the stock market has responded negatively. And so, I think that was an interesting change of tune when it comes to the stock market from Trump.
Taylor Wilson:
There's news on this seemingly every day. Joey Garrison covers the White House for USA TODAY. Thank you, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
Hey, thanks, Taylor.
♦
Cody Godwin:
The Trump administration yesterday suffered another legal blow in its efforts to freeze federal funding for programs that do not align with his agenda. A second judge blocked it from implementing a sweeping pause on spending grants, loans and other financial support. US district Judge John McConnell's decision was built on an earlier temporary restraining order he issued in January, and came after another judge in Washington last month issued a preliminary injunction that similarly blocked what she called, "An ill-conceived, abrupt pause on up to $3 trillion in federal funding." The administration is expected to appeal the decision.
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We have a week to go until federal funding dries up and the US government shuts down if Congress can't pass legislation by March 14th. A shutdown would force a majority of federal workers to stop working and go without pay. Services deemed as essential, like border protection, air traffic control, and power grid maintenance, as well as payments for social security, Medicare and Medicaid would continue, but other things would be interrupted. Services at the National Parks would be closed, environmental and food inspections would stop, researchers at the National Institutes of Health would not be able to admit new patients, and IRS tax help would possibly be interrupted.
Republican leaders in both chambers say they want to extend current funding, and House speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that the details of the proposal will be available as soon as today, but absent Democratic support for the proposal, it can only afford to lose one GOP vote in the house, where Republicans currently control the chamber, 218 to 214. Democrats and both the House and Senate have said Republicans cannot count on them to help keep the government open if they aren't given a say in the package.
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SpaceX's Starship rocket broke up during its eighth uncrewed flight yesterday. The incident sent debris shooting through the sky and temporarily affected flights at some South Florida airports. It was the second setback of its kind for SpaceX since January. The previous Starship demonstration on January 16th ended in a fiery explosion after the Starship vehicle was lost during its suborbital flight. SpaceX, which conducted an investigation with the FAA, determined that mishap was due to a series of propellant leaks and fires. For more, and if you want to check out the video of yesterday's raining debris, check out the link in today's show notes.
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Butterflies in the US are in trouble, with their numbers declining rapidly. Taylor Wilson spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent, Elizabeth Weise, to learn more.
Taylor Wilson:
Beth, always a pleasure. Thanks for hopping on.
Elizabeth Weise:
Oh, always here to bring moments of joy and happiness into people's lives.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, let's try to find some joy out of some, I'd say kind of negative news out of the butterfly world. How severe, Beth, has this butterfly decline got in in recent years, just what are the numbers there?
Elizabeth Weise:
It's down 22% across the board from 2000 to 2020. So 22% is a lot. In some species, it was much higher. Some species, it was much lower. There's only one species that really did a lot better, but it's an odd one up in the northwest that kind of has peaks and valleys, and it happened to hit a peak and then a valley. So yeah, 22% across the country.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. So like so much that we talk about, Beth, is climate really at the heart of all this?
Elizabeth Weise:
For butterflies, it's three things. It's lack of habitat. I mean, we're just increasingly building on wildland, we're growing crops on wildland, and there's just less place for butterflies to live. It is climate change, especially in the southwest because they can be pretty sensitive to heat. I mean, not that heat kills them, it's just that their preferred food might not grow as well if it's warmer, or it might be growing at the wrong time for the butterflies when they need it. And then also, increased pesticide use, because when butterflies eat things that have, well, insecticide on them, it can kill them as well.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. So beyond just being kind of nice to look at, nice to have in the back garden, why are butterflies such an important part of nature? Why are scientists really so concerned about this?
Elizabeth Weise:
There's two reasons. So first off, butterflies are just important in and of themselves. They're actually, surprisingly, and I did not know this, they're really important in helping to pollinate, for example, the cotton crop in Texas, butterflies and certain types of flies. So, they're pollinators, they're beautiful, of course, but they also exist as a food source for a lot of birds. And so when we have fewer butterflies, we have less food for the birds.
But it's also true that butterflies are a harbinger of what's happening to insects more broadly. And it was interesting, 'cause when I talked to one of the guys who'd done this research, he said, "We've got really good data on butterflies." And partly, it's 'cause people love butterflies, 'cause who doesn't? But they're also really easy to count, because you can see them and you know what you're looking at and you're like, "Oh, look, there's a monarch. Oh look, there's a tiger."
When you are counting other insects, it's really hard. Like he said, I used to count wasps and you had to capture them and take them back to the laboratory and look at them under a microscope to identify them. So, butterfly decreases are kind of a proxy for other insects. And insects are insanely important. They are the pollinators, right? All these plants that we depend on to eat and survive evolved to be pollinated by insects, and the insects are dying off and that's not good.
Taylor Wilson:
In terms of potential fixes here, Beth, and we're talking about big, broad issues, is there anything that we can do, anything on the horizon to kind of reverse these trends?
Elizabeth Weise:
There are, and the good news for butterflies especially is that they reproduce really fast. So if you give them more habitat, they will often rebound pretty quickly. Simple things like it's possible that you can limit the amount of pesticides that farmers are using perhaps in a certain portion of the butterfly's lifespan, and that could increase things.
The other thing is that it doesn't take a lot of land for butterflies to do well. And so, some researchers at Tufts had good data showing that even just allowing your backyard to be kind of an oasis for these pollinators can be really helpful. And that's as simple as planting a couple of native plants in your garden so that there are things that your local butterfly species like to eat, using less or no insecticides, having a diverse group of plants, and letting some areas get a little wild so they have some place to nest and have a habitat.
And then, and this depends on how your HOA or your neighbors like or don't like this, but if you could leave a little bit of your lawn to grow into like a more meadow-like area, that's the sort of habitat that butterflies really love. And they really can rebound, at least locally, and every little bit helps.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with USA TODAY. Thanks, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
As always, a pleasure.
♦
Cody Godwin:
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. Were produced by Shannon Rae Green and Kaylee Monahan. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. If you use a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
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