Morning Wire - Trump’s Tariff Fallout & Military Standards Equalization | 4.4.25

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

Global reaction to President Trump’s tariffs, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth makes military standards the same for males and females, and Colorado Democrats move to make the state a transgender sanctuary. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Good Ranchers: Visit https://goodranchers.com for free bacon, ground beef, bacon, seed oil-free chicken nuggets, or salmon in every order for a year + $40 off with code WIRE. Jeremy’s Razors: Shave Boldly. Live Freely. https://jeremysrazors.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump's tariffs stunned the world and cause a stock market sell-off, but Trump's team is standing strong. Let Donald Trump run the global economy. He knows what he's doing. Will some short-term pain be worth the long-term gain? I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, April 4th, and this is Morning Wire. Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth announces the end of different military standards for men and women. Here at the Defense Department, we are restoring the warrior ethos. That starts with standards and going back to basics. And Colorado's Democrat-run Congress moves to make the state a transgender sanctuary.

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Hey, guys. Producer Brandon here. By the end of this episode, another family farm in the U.S. will have closed. You, however, can spring into action by subscribing to Good Ranchers today to make a positive impact and support American farms and ranches. Support the tradition of American farmers and ranchers who have spent generations working to feed Americans with meat exclusively and locally sourced. Subscribe now at good ranchers.com for free bacon, ground beef, seed oil-free chicken nuggets,

or wild-caught salmon in every order for a year, plus $40 off when you use code, Wire. Good Ranchers, American Meat delivered. As promised, Donald Trump reset the global economy this week with unprecedented tariffs. Now foreign leaders, markets, and businesses are racing to react. Daily Wire senior editor, Cabot Phillips is here to discuss the monumental shakeup. So Cabot, Trump promised fireworks and we got them. What's the fallout so far? Yeah, it's hard to overstate just how historic this move was.

There's no other word for it. For decades, presidents in both parties have almost universally embraced free trade policies and kept tariffs at a minimum. Trump's Liberation Day marked a fundamental shift in economic policy, the likes of which we have very rarely seen in modern history. Virtually every product entering the U.S. will now be slapped with at least a 10% tax. many will face rates in excess of 30 or even 40%.

Those numbers are some of the highest rates we've implemented in nearly a century. Markets took a tumble Thursday morning following the news, but President Trump woke up optimistic, conceding that the short-term impact could be painful, but the long-term benefits will be worth it. But there's no doubt this move is fraught with risk. Now earlier you mentioned markets, how much do they fall? Well, if you're a fan of buying the dip, you are in luck

because Wall Street took a beating yesterday, with trillions of dollars in market cap wiped out. Within hours of markets opening, the Dow plummeted 1,400 points. The S&P fell 4%. The NASDAQ fell 5%. Elsewhere, major U.S. brands with supply chains outside the U.S. like Nike, Ralph Lauren, and HP, saw double-digit declines. But it was mid-sized U.S. U.S. 2000 index, which includes smaller stocks, opened down nearly 7%. And the U.S. dollar slipped to its lowest point of the year, sinking more than 2% compared to the euro, Japanese yen, and Swiss franc. Put simply, it was a was arguably the worst day on Wall Street since COVID wrecked the global economy. For their part, the White House urged patience, calling on Americans to trust Donald Trump's plan. Here's press secretary Caroline Levitt making that case on CNN. To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump. This is a president who is doubling down on his proven economic formula from his first term. As the president

declared yesterday, this is indeed a national emergency. And it's about time we have a president who actually does something about it. And look, there is no doubt this is a high risk, high reward plan. Some U.S. banks like Goldman Sachs raised the possibility of a recession to 35%. But in the best case scenario, businesses bring manufacturing stateside, our trade partners lowered their tariffs, and the U.S. brings in massive new revenues. Here's Vice President Vance defending the move on Fox. During the first Trump administration, everybody said that Trump's tariffs were going to be

inflationary back then. What actually happened? We had 1.5% inflation. We had the fastest growing economy in a generation. This is a big change. I'm not going to shy away from it. But we needed a big change, Lawrence. We cannot keep going down the Joe Biden globalist pathway where we have $2 trillion of peacetime debt and deficits. We have manufacturing disappearing. That is not working for Americans. Amid the turmoil Thursday, the Trump administration got some welcome news from one domestic manufacturer looking to capitalize on Liberation Day.

Ford announced a new from America for America policy. American shoppers will now have access. to employee pricing on new cars from now until June. Now, how are other countries reacting? Well, it's been a mixed bag. Some dug their heels in, vowing to raise rates even higher. Beijing, for example, promised, quote, resolute countermeasures, while EU commission chief Ursula von der Leyen is already finalizing countermeasures, saying, quote, if you take on one of us, you take on all of us.

But other leaders expressed more cautious optimism and a willingness to cut a deal. Britain's Kirstarmer reiterated that his, quote, intentions remain to secure a deal, We saw a similar willingness to work on a deal from leaders in Brazil, Singapore, Switzerland, and Vietnam. The White House is betting that we are in a better spot than our competitors to withstand a trade war, and that eventually even our foes will be forced to come to the table. Here's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik with a message to our trade partners on CNN. We are the consumer of the world, right? We buy $20 trillion worth of goods, and we are basically the buyer of everybody else's in the world's items.

So what is the point of them going higher so that we go higher? And the White House says they are already in talks with a number of countries. We'll be keeping a very close eye on those negotiations this weekend. In the meantime, though, a new age of American trade policy is upon us. All right. Well, it's both exhilarating and a little nerve-wracking. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Any time.

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as HECSeth announced here. Well, he's announced that he's going to officially address what he has described as a decline in physical standards for service members, particularly in combat arms roles. Specifically, he says it is not acceptable for the military to hold different standards for men and women, and he promised immediate change. Here he is in a video statement on Monday. For far too long, we allowed standards to slip and different standards for men and women and combat arms, MOSs, and jobs. That's not acceptable. So what is Heg-Seth really saying here? Does this mean an end to women in combat roles, or is there another way to look at this? He's not restricting women from taking on combat roles at all. He's simply saying that once the training standards are

set, they will not be modified simply because the person doing the training happens to be female. Because combat training is and should be so intense, it's entirely possible that this will mean fewer women are able to complete it. And if that's the case, there will be fewer women in combat arms jobs. But it won't be because they're women. It will be because they cannot meet the prescribed standards. Those who can will continue to serve in that capacity. We should also note that Hegseff followed his initial announcement with a second video, explaining that the new revised standards would only impact combat arms jobs. Here's some of that. We're ensuring that any combat position across any of the services, and the services are evaluating that, has the same

standard for men and women, which means anybody can join, but the standard is to meet what it takes to do that combat job, rigorous physical standards so that your sons and daughters, those that join our military, have the best possible units, the most lethal units. All right, so give us some context for all of this. How did we get here? So to really break this down, you have to go back to 2013 when former President Obama's defense secretary, Leon Panetta, opened up combat arms MOSs to women. That acronym stands for military occupational specialty, and it refers to whatever specialty training a soldier might have after going through the basic combat training that everyone does. Before Panetta changed things,

women were already serving in supplemental roles that would occasionally put them in combat situations. They often served as medics or vehicle operators, for example, but they were not put intentionally into jobs like the infantry, where the only place they could go to do their job effectively was direct combat. But then Panetta decided to change all of this. What was the rationale there? It was all in the name of equality. The official policy statement was that if women could do the job, they should be allowed to have the job. But I, along with a lot of others, predicted early on what would happen once Panetta opened that door. very few women, if any, would be able to meet the tough physical demands of infantry training. So in order to be progressive and promote gender equality, either the training standards would have to be lowered across the board or the women would be held to a different and lower standard.

And that, according to the Defense Secretary's announcement, is exactly what happened. So why didn't anyone reverse course before now? It all comes down to the politics. Especially in today's political climate, no one wants to be the guy who told women they do not have what it takes to serve in combat roles. And even though that's not really what Hegset is saying here, that's how it will be portrayed by critics and legacy media. Major moves by the new Defense Secretary. We'll see how this is received. Virginia, thank you so much for reporting. Absolutely.

Colorado's Democrat-controlled legislature is poised to pass a series of radical left policies that would establish the state as a transgender sanctuary. The new laws would also make so-called dead-naming and misgendering discriminatory acts. joining us to discuss is Colorado State Representative Jarvis Caldwell. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, will you tell us what just happened? We have a law that was just passed in Colorado. Catch us up to speed here. Yes, sir. So House Bill 1312, also known as legal protections for transgender individuals, just went through the House Judiciary Committee last night. We voted on it at 1 o'clock this morning, and it passed along party line votes. So it still has to go to the full House or votes, and then it'll have to go over to the Senate.

And assuming it passes all of that, then it'll go to the governor's desk. All right. So let's walk through what's exactly in this. This is from the summary. Section 2 provides that when making child custody decisions and determining the best interests of a child for purposes of parenting time, a court shall consider dead-naming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual's gender-affirming health care services as types of coercive control.

What are we supposed to make of that? Yeah, so that's probably the most scary thing about this bill, is now when you're talking in terms of custody, the misgendering of a child is considered child abuse. That means when a judge is making custody decisions, if one parent is not affirming of the child's trans identity crisis and the other parent is affirming of it, then the preference for custody is going to go to the affirming parent. Now, Section 3 establishes effectively what is called a transgender sanctuary law for the state.

Can you explain what's going on there? So this is a question I raised in committee because I've had one of my district attorneys review this section. And they are confident that this violates the full faith and credit clause, Article 4, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which says very directly that states will honor and recognize rulings of other states with Section 3. Basically, if one parent were to take a child to the state of Colorado to get gender affirming care and the state that they came from did a court ruling to bring the child back, Colorado will not recognize it if this law passes. So defying other states' rulings. Now, I also want to highlight sections 8 and 9. They define dead naming and misgendering as discriminatory acts in the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act and prohibit these discriminatory acts in places of public accommodation.

What does that mean exactly? Yeah, so if you look under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, places of public accommodation is basically anywhere outside your own home. So what we're talking all businesses, we're talking public facilities, but if you misgender or, as they call, dead name someone, you could be in violation of the Anti-Discrimination Act, which could make you civilly liable and bring you before like an ethics type committee. That's one of the most troubling pieces of this, is that this is frankly a first-minute violation. It's a religious violation if you call somebody the wrong name. Final question. Is there anything Republicans can do to stop this from going through? You know, unfortunately with our numbers, not at the moment. And so I don't see any roadblocks from here to the governor's desk.

So unless our Democrat governor, Jared Polis, decides that this is just, it's too much all at once and vetoes it. Unless that happens, then I don't see any roadblocks for this going through the legislature. Scary stuff. If that does happen, it will be fascinating to see how the Trump administration responds. President of Caldwell, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate it. I'm a big fan of you guys. I listen to you and Ben Shapiro every day, so thank you so much. We certainly love to hear that. Thanks again. Thank you, guys. Thanks for waking up with us.

We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.