On today’s show: Daniel Flatley of Bloomberg News explains Trump’s tariff policies and some of the economic pressures around them. The Guardian examines why the Department of Education is investigating allegations of antisemitism on college campuses. CNN’s Deidre McPhillips looks at what happened the last time the U.S. faced a significant measles outbreak — and the valuable lessons learned from the public-health response. Plus, the House passed a stopgap funding measure to avert a government shutdown, Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire proposal, and the NTSB released its preliminary report on the D.C. plane crash. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Full Episode
Good morning. It's Wednesday, March 12th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, the Trump administration threatens big funding cuts for higher education, lessons learned from the last major measles outbreak, and a possible beginning of the end of the war in Ukraine.
But first, widespread tariffs from the Trump administration on foreign steel and aluminum are expected to take effect today, which would impact all countries the U.S. imports these resources from. Both steel and aluminum will be tariffed at 25 percent.
And for one of those countries, Canada, Trump initially planned to double the tariff rate in response to a recent surcharge on electricity announced by Ontario. But he withdrew that threat after Ontario rolled back their tax. Trump's tariff strategy has been a roller coaster so far, with threats and reversals. The stock market has been on a similar volatile ride.
And it's left many wondering what exactly the president is trying to achieve with these tariffs. So we called up Dan Flatley, who covers national security and economics for Bloomberg News, for more insight into Trump's goals.
Essentially, what Trump is trying to do here is reorder international trade and try to revitalize American manufacturing. At the same time, he's also trying to raise revenue to extend his tax cuts from 2017 that were enacted in his first term.
But Flatley told us it's difficult to know if the threats, delays, and reversals are part of Trump's strategy and an indicator that it's working as intended because he's getting some concessions from foreign leaders, or if these walkbacks signal that his plans are flawed.
Of course, that is all sort of this grand experiment that's happening in real time. And so there is a school of thought that all of these moves on tariffs may be ultimately, you know, him trying to get some sort of grand bargain with Canada and Mexico and with China to basically bring in more revenue to the United States, achieve what he calls a more even playing field for U.S.
workers, and to resource U.S. manufacturing.
In Trump's first term, he did not issue tariffs as widely as he has in this term. But those tariffs didn't result in the promised increase in American factory jobs or heightened inflation that those for and against the tariffs had forecasted. This time, the president has said he believes being more aggressive with tariffs could lead to bigger economic impact.
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