On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to enact tariffs on some of the United States' largest trading partners. As president, he has made good on that promise — but with more than a few exceptions and caveats. This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, and chief economic correspondent Scott Horsley.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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ally and others. I mean, we've seen the political and economic reaction in Canada where we've seen them impose reciprocal tariffs of their own in response to what the Trump administration has put forth. You're also just seeing, I would say, the political culture sort of shift in real time where the United States and Canada have long been close allies and friends.
And, you know, to the degree that other countries retaliate once these April 2nd big tariffs are announced, we'll have to see. I mean, the Trump administration's argument, and this is true, is that certain countries do have much higher tariff rates on U.S. exports than the other way around. And so that is their argument. They want to level the playing field.
But again, Canada and Mexico, we had a free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, which the Trump administration signed in 2020, and which they have now ripped apart. Now, it is interesting. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum took a more conciliatory approach, a softer approach. She didn't impose retaliatory tariffs right away, although she threatened that she would do so on Sunday.
And maybe that's why she's gotten a reprieve a little bit more so than Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, with whom the president has a notably frosty relationship. And some people have said this all comes down to personalities, kind of like what we've seen with Ukraine. You know, it's just who does President Trump personally get along with?
I do think it's worth pointing out, though, that a batch of tariffs from the Trump administration, the ones that were put on China, were kept in place during the Biden years. Because I think if people just hear this at the outset, I think there's an assumption that tariffs are inherently good or bad.
And one of the questions I've had is, well, then why did a Republican administration put them in place on China and a Democratic one kept them in place? And I think that this is partly about, like, what is your end goal with the tariffs? And that's what I keep coming back to with the Trump administration. I don't have clarity over what is the end goal.
You know, if the end goal is to diversify your supply chains away from China, then fine. You've actually achieved that, I would say, to some degree. You have more things maybe being produced in a place like Vietnam.
But I think the challenge right now is when you have such sweeping tariffs on a whole bunch of countries, including your neighbors who you had a trade deal with, it's really not clear what the end goal is for putting all those tariffs in place.
All right. I think we're going to leave it there for today. Scott Horsley, so good to have you with us. Thank you for being here.
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