The countdown to Trump's biggest round of tariffs

USA Today

01-04-2025

The countdown to Trump's biggest round of tariffs | The Excerpt
On Tuesday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY White House Correspondent Joey Garrison has the latest ahead of Wednesday's expected tariff announcement from President Donald Trump. Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood. They are asking for the Supreme Court's help. U.S. imports surged to record heights as consumers stocked up ahead of tariffs. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise discusses the future of fire-resistant neighborhoods. How did April Fools' Day originate? Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to [e-mail].
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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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Tuesday, April 1st, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, the countdown to a major date surrounding tariffs, plus new data on record U.S. imports from January, and we discuss fire-resistant neighborhoods in the wake of recent years devastating wildfires.
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Taylor Wilson:
President Donald Trump has marked tomorrow, April 2nd, as the date he'll announce details for his widespread tariff plans. I spoke with USA TODAY White House Correspondent Joey Garrison for the latest. Thanks for joining me, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
Hey, thanks for having me on.
Taylor Wilson:
So Joey, big day tomorrow, this April 2nd date that's been circled on the calendar for weeks. What is on the way as it pertains to tariffs?
Joey Garrison:
What Trump plans to do tomorrow is begin the, what he's called, reciprocal tariffs that affect really all countries that trade with the United States. What he's promised to do is slap tariffs on imports coming from those countries at the same rate in which they tariff United States exports. And so Trump has made the argument that the U.S. has been getting screwed by these countries for years and that this is needed for the United States to reduce the trade deficits with those various countries. He's also made this argument really without a lot of evidence, that this will reinvigorate, rejuvenate domestic manufacturing in various key industries in the United States. Things that have depleted really since the 80s and 90s. And so that's kind of the argument President Trump has made as we finally arrive at what Trump has called Liberation Day, coming here on Wednesday tomorrow.
Taylor Wilson:
And I guess, Joey, we should expect retaliatory action from the EU and others. Is that fair to say?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, I mean, we've already seen retaliatory tariffs coming from countries like Canada, China, following Trump's tariffs that he's already put in place. Now, the Trump administration has circled really about 15% of these countries that have the largest trade deficits of the United States as the ones that will be most affected. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called these the Dirty 15. They include China, among them, countries that the administration is planning to target heaviest with these. Once we see the specifics on a lot of these numbers, we're going to see that it's really concentrated, and most of the revenue from these tariffs will be coming from a handful of places.
Taylor Wilson:
Joey, I know we've all been kind of wondering aloud for weeks on just kind of how this will land with consumers. We're a day away now; what's the sense?
Joey Garrison:
Most economists expect this is going to increase prices for a lot of goods for Americans, and it comes at an interesting time given that Trump in part was elected to his presidency on this promise of taking down inflation. But tariffs are taxes on goods and tend to get passed down to consumers. They're an inflationary practice here, so I think that's the most immediate effect for Americans. Now, Trump will tell you that there'll be an effect, maybe more in the long term, that is going to rejuvenate manufactured in the U.S., but it's really tricky to point to when exactly that'll happen. I think that the White House will probably start claiming various economic announcements that come after this date. Maybe it were a result of this. We'll have to see whether that was in fact the case. But in addition to those two things, I think the stock market we've already seen, based on what Trump's previous tariffs, since the stock market nosediving, and if this is indeed the biggest yet, it's going to be very important to check the stock market whether there's a big selloff as a result on this Wednesday.
Now Peter Navarro, the top White House aide who's overseeing a lot of the tariff policy, and he said that this is going to raise $6 trillion for the United States over the next decade. And if it is indeed that scale, some economists are calling that one of the largest tax hikes in the United States history. I mean, in terms of the amount of revenue you're all of a sudden collecting from companies as a result of these tariffs. And so, if it's that kind of scale, and we'll see if there's a huge market reaction. Now again, the Trump administration says a lot of that money, if we're talking about that kind of money raised over a certain amount of time, then that can be used to take down part of the U.S. deficit. So that's again one of the strategies the White House is talking about.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, as you mentioned earlier, Trump has really said that these moves will revive U.S. manufacturing. What do experts say about those plans, Joey?
Joey Garrison:
Well, I think that they look at them with a lot of skepticism. I mean, you're trying to reverse decades of economic gravity here in terms of how a lot of these manufacturing jobs got outsourced to various other countries. You're talking about a huge transformation, and maybe tariffs could be a piece of that, but I think there's other things that are probably part of bringing some of these industries that have faded for the United States in recent years. And so I don't think the administration has really articulated how down the road the Americans start seeing that kind of thing. I think that'll be one of the big challenges they have is to try to begin making that argument in the way that people see it, to convince Americans that this was the right policy for this moment.
Taylor Wilson:
President Trump has been very strong-willed on these tariffs, Joey, even amid all this economic uncertainty you mentioned. Has he changed his tone at all this week, or has he been pretty consistent?
Joey Garrison:
After building these tariffs up for several weeks. He said, "Well, the numbers might be more conservative, more lenient, narrower than a lot of the countries might expect," but nevertheless, he said, they'll still be significant for these countries. So it again kind of continues this whiplash approach to these tariffs that Trump has used since he returned to the White House is one minute talking big tariffs on Canada on certain sectors. The next minute it's canceling some of them; even when it came to previewing these tariffs, he's kind of gone back and forth on whether it's going to really hit these countries hard or whether it's going to be lenient. So, I guess, we'll see what actually materializes tomorrow.
Taylor Wilson:
Joey Garrison covers the White House for USA TODAY. Thanks, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, as people race to stock up in advance of President Trump's announced tariffs. The U.S. imported more goods in January than in any other month since the government started tracking the data. The import surge was driven by major increases from the country's three largest trading partners, China, Canada, and Mexico. According to a USA TODAY analysis of recently released U.S. census trade data. Together, those nations provide nearly half of the foreign goods consumed in the U.S., and they were key targets of tariffs that went into effect last month. More tariffs, including a 25% tariff on autos and auto parts, are scheduled to begin tomorrow. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood, and they're asking for the Supreme Court's help in a pushback by the Trump administration. South Carolina wants to lock Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program because it performs abortions. A lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group, said the taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund facilities that choose to profit off abortion. That lawyer, John Bursch, will be representing the state when the Supreme Court takes up South Carolina's appeal tomorrow. Medicaid, which is funded primarily through federal dollars and operated by states for their low-income residents, already prohibits coverage of abortion in most cases. But South Carolina argues that money Planned Parenthood gets from the government for providing birth control, cancer screenings, physical exams, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and other health services frees up their funds to provide more abortions.
Nearly half of Planned Parenthood patients nationwide get their healthcare through Medicaid, although that share is lower in South Carolina, which has tighter eligibility rules than most states according to the organization. Three other states, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri, already blocked Planned Parenthood from seeing Medicaid patients, and many other Republican-led states are expected to do the same if the Supreme Court sides with South Carolina.
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Could wildfire-resistant neighborhoods be part of the future? They're already here in California. I spoke with USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise for more. Thanks for having on Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Happy to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
What can you tell us about this new fire-resistant development in California? What is this?
Elizabeth Weise:
It's this company, KB Home, and they're down in San Diego County. So I talked to the owner of the company, and not a year ago he saw this demonstration where they basically set fire to two houses, one built in the 1980s and one built to new fire standard codes. And the 1981 burned to the ground, and the other one did not catch on fire. And this was kind of when he was like, "Whoa, we need to do this to the homes we're building in fire-prone areas." And they had a project that was going to go up in Escondido down in San Diego County, which is in a very fire-prone area because it's in my favorite phrase, the wooey, the wildland urban interface. And so, they, like, on a dime, pivoted and revamped the 64 homes and the entire subdivision so that it fit with fire safety standards, which was pretty amazing that they did it so quickly.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, I want to get a little bit to the heart of some of this technology, Beth, and you mentioned that 1980 home that just went right up in flames. What really is different about fire-resistant homes now compared to in previous eras? What technologies available now, I guess, that wasn't a generation or two ago?
Elizabeth Weise:
It doesn't take a lot of technology. It just takes kind of thinking about how does fire work. So really simple things: you cover your gutters so that embers don't get in the gutters because you usually have, you know, leaf or needles there; they catch on fire, and then your house catches on fire. In your eaves, if you have airspace because you want your house to breathe, you cover that with filters, because if you've been anywhere near one of these big fires, I mean miles away, these embers just float through the sky, and they can get sucked into your house and then your attic is on fire from within.
And once it's on fire from within, your house is gone. Stucco on fiber cement sidings so that it doesn't burn, tempered glass windows that they don't shatter in the heat because that's a problem with older homes, like the house itself hasn't actually caught on fire, but the heat is enough that it shatters the windows, and then you have a big gaping hole where all the embers can come in, and then your drapes and your couch are on fire, and then your house is on fire. Metal fencing, because, and they've shown me pictures of this. I mean, you can see it if you look at some of the LA fire drone footage where there's these lines of fires that are kind of creeping up towards a house, and they're following these beautiful, wonderful wooden fences straight to the house, and then they catch the house on fire. And so they use metal ones instead, and they don't burn.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, I'm curious, Beth, if this is just, I guess, specific to California and this neighborhood, or is this approach translatable around the country? Anywhere that gets wildfires?
Elizabeth Weise:
This is actually translatable around the country, and I was actually just talking to some folks in the insurance industry, and a lot of states are looking at this. At this point, mostly in the West, California, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona are all looking at this because they're all building in areas that are fire prone. But we're seeing these kinds of fires... I mean, there are fires right now in Florida and North Carolina; there are fires everywhere right now. It's getting drier and it's getting hotter, and things are burning.
Taylor Wilson:
I think a lot about class differences in natural disasters, Beth; it's like, will fire-resistant homes be affordable in the near future? Is this approach feasible for, say, massive apartment complexes and other types of living structures?
Elizabeth Weise:
It's not an inordinately expensive thing to do to a house. I mean, we're not talking tens of thousands of dollars. In fact, there was one report that suggested that kind of doing things that would really protect a house pretty well, maybe $1,700. I mean, you have to get up, and maybe you replace the vents that go into your eaves, but we're not talking like some insanely new technology. What's interesting about what happened in Escondido is that it's a whole subdivision. It's getting built all at once. So, one, you have economies of scale, so it's much cheaper if you kind of do every house this way all at once. And then it's really, it's a force multiplier because that whole subdivision then is much less combustible. And actually it functions kind of as a firebreak for all of the homes around it too, because fire is not going to start in that, and then it's not going to go through it and onto the next subdivision or the next group of houses.
Taylor Wilson:
That's a great point, fire resistance being good for the entire community. This is another interesting piece, Beth. Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with USA TODAY. Thanks, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Happy to be here.
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Taylor Wilson:
And I'm giving you forewarning: today is April Fool's Day. While there were similar holidays in ancient Rome and Britain, the oldest historical reference appears to come in a Flemish poem from 1561 when a nobleman sends his servant on fool's errands on April 1st. That's according to a history of the holiday written by Stephen Winick of the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center. By the 1800s, April Fool's Day had become a mainstay of American culture. "The 1st of April is the day we remember what we are; the other 364 days of the year." Mark Twain is credited with saying that, according to the Encyclopedia of American Folklore.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. If you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.