The Journal. - Trump 2.0: Trade Wars and Deportation Battles

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

Ryan Knutson and Molly Ball unpack the administration’s onslaught of new tariffs and break down what election results in Florida and Wisconsin mean for each party. Plus, they speak with WSJ’s Michelle Hackman about Trump’s aggressive immigration efforts including student deportations. Further Listening: -Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade  -Trump 2.0: Group Chat Fallout  -Three Federal Workers Hit by DOGE  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Molly. Hey, Ryan. How was your liberation day? Oh my gosh. So you know, we all put on our fancy hats. We went to the ticker tape parade and we blew things up. For example, the global economy. Right.

That's what the fireworks were. Investors' heads exploding over this news. We are, of course, talking about President Trump's announcement to impose massive tariffs on virtually every country in the world, something that he's been calling Liberation Day. And while the economy didn't quite blow up, Wall Street was not celebrating. Markets went down a lot, and a lot of business leaders are kind of freaking out right now. That's right. It was really, I mean, I feel like we've used the phrase shock and awe a lot on this show, but they really did decide to go big. And it's interesting because he

really went as far as he has ever threatened to go. And, you know, there was this idea that he could do something across the board, he could do something quote unquote reciprocal. He decided D all of the above. He did a version of an across the board tariff combined with what he called a reciprocal tariff but one that was not based on tariff rates but on trade imbalances. And so, yeah, they really went for it. From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Ryan Knudson.

And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, April 4th. Coming up, we'll talk about the fallout from Trump's tariff plan, go over some election results, and dive deep on Trump's deportation efforts. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by FX's Dying for Sex on Disney+. Based on the podcast of the same name, Dying for Sex tells the story of Molly, who is diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. Determined to feel everything she can

before she can't feel anything, she decides to leave her unhappy marriage to explore her sexuality, with some encouragement from her best friend, Nikki. FX is dying for sex, now streaming only on Disney Plus. Sign up now at DisneyPlus.com. So, Molly, the business world is reacting very negatively to Trump's tariff plan. The stock market is down. Many economists are now saying a recession is much more likely. How might this affect Trump politically if the economy is headed in the way most economists seem to expect? So, Ryan, this is the penetrating political insight

that you pay me the big bucks for. If the economy goes into a recession or depression, that would not be good politically for Trump or the Republicans. No kidding. I thought that everything bounced off Trump, no matter what it possibly is. And leaves him with his perpetual sub 50% approval rating. Now, Trump, as far as we know, can't run for reelection, despite some noises he's made in that direction. So the fallout for this is really on Republicans. Senator Rand Paul, Republican Senator from Kentucky, who is not a fan of tariffs, pointed out on

Thursday that when the Smoot-Hawley tariffs went into effect in the 1930s, Republicans lost the House and Senate for 60 years. So you do have Republicans pointing out that they think this would not be good for them politically. What the administration says is this is temporary. These are essentially growing pains for the restructuring of the American economy. You had the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on television on Thursday saying, give it six months and we're going to come out the other side and everything's going to be better. And we're going to have an America where we make things, where people have better jobs, where things are less expensive.

So they're saying, this is a little bit of an adjustment period, and maybe the markets just don't get it, but in the end, everybody's going to be better off. How much time do you think Americans will give Trump for things to turn around, before they say, no, this is not working for us. The signals that we are seeing is that people are already losing patience with this approach

to the economy. Generally, when the economy goes south, the voters inflict a very swift and decisive verdict on whoever is in power and they are not very interested in explanations about why it's somebody else's fault or why this is better for everyone in the long run. America spent much of the last century trying to set up this global free trade system. Trump has now undone that in a very short period of time. Is there any going back from this? Do you think that this is going to be just a sort of the bookmark end of free trade as

we know it? Or do you think that in a democratic administration or any administration that comes after Trump, unless he is successful in getting that third term that he's been talking so much about, where these tariffs could be rolled back and we could go back to the way things were beforehand? Well, you know, I try never to predict what Trump is going to do. And I do think we should point out that even today, most of the tariffs still have not gone into effect, so there's always a chance they take it back at the last second. Obviously there's a very intensive lobbying effort on the part of multiple governments and multiple industries to try to create carve-outs and get exceptions.

And that is one endpoint for this, is that it just becomes a sort of massive lobbying spree where people are able to get individual or country-based exemptions, and it actually ends up being far less than meets the eye at the end of the day. That being said, this reminds me very much of our discussion previously about the transatlantic alliance and the global security picture where once you have blown it up because it is based on trust because it is based on long-term stability it's very difficult to reconstruct because the trust is gone even if you could go back and recreate all the same agreements you would not

have that feeling that this is a lasting structure. This is an institution that has the durable backing of parties across the political spectrum. So I would say it's very hard to recreate an institution like that once you've destroyed it. Alright, I guess we'll have to wait and see if Trump is right and this ushers in a new golden age or if All those economists are right and this ushers in a period of economic hardship Meanwhile, I want to turn to something else which is these two special congressional elections in Florida These were to replace two lawmakers Matt Gaetz who Trump nominated for attorney general

but then later withdrew and Mike waltz, Trump's national security officer, who is of course of the signal group chat fame that we talked about last week. Molly, can you walk us through the results of these special elections and what we learned from them? Molly Slaughter So these are all very red seats. They both went for the Republican candidate by 30 or more points last November. The Republicans won both of these seats, it would have been shocking if they didn't, but they won them by much smaller margins, basically cut those margins in

half. Both of these new candidates who've both already been sworn in won by about 15 points instead of 30. So in the near term the result is Republicans are happy they have two more seats in Congress, We know how narrow their majority is. They really needed those two seats to be filled. On the other hand, it's a shot in the arm for the Democrats because their candidates overperformed by such a large margin. But the really big game was in Wisconsin. Right. In Wisconsin, a state that Trump only won by about a percentage point in 2024, there was an election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court where the liberal judge prevailed over her conservative rival.

How big of a deal is this result? These Supreme Court races in Wisconsin are quite consequential. There's currently a four to three majority for the liberals on that high court. This is a court that's deciding everything from congressional redistricting to abortion rights. So it makes a big difference, the ideology of which judge gets put in that seat. And both parties really went all in on this race, spending tens of millions of dollars to try to get their candidate elected. And one of the people who put in a lot of money was Elon Musk.

That's right. The other really significant point to make about this Wisconsin judicial election is that both sides really turned it into a referendum, not only on Trump, but on Elon Musk. Elon Musk spent about $25 million trying to get the conservative justice elected. The Democrats made him the centerpiece of their messaging in all of the ads that they were running and all of the things that the justice in question was talking about. They were talking about Musk trying to buy the election. They were pointing at the things that Elon is doing with Doge in Washington, really tapping into voter anger specifically at Musk.

And of course, Musk helped them by hyping his role in all of this, by going to Wisconsin on the eve of the election and putting on a cheese head and jumping around on stage and giving a big speech about the things that he believes in. And while Democrats were believed to have a slight edge, they overperformed. The liberal candidate won by a 10 point margin. And that really shows you that as much as we knew that there was a backlash to Trump and Musk brewing out there in America, as much as we knew that Democrats were energized and more likely to turn out, they exceeded expectations in this case. And that I think does tell you

that there is some political juice behind the Democrats right now. Musk did say on X that this is basically all part of his chess game saying, quote, I expected to lose, but there is value to losing a piece for a positional gain. All right, we're going to take a short break. and when we come back, we'll talk about immigration, deportations, and the border. Okay, Martin, let's try one. Remember, big. You got it. The Ford It's a Big Deal event is on. How's that? A little bigger.

The Ford It's a Big Deal event. Nice! How's that? Uh, a little bigger? Ahem. The Ford It's a Big Deal Event! Nice. Now the offer? Lease a 2025 Escape Active All-Wheel Drive from 198 bi-weekly at 1.99% APR for 36 months with $27.55 down. Wow! That's like $99 a week! Yeah, it's a big deal! The Ford It's a Big Deal Event! Visit your Toronto area Ford store or Ford.ca today. [♪THEME MUSIC PLAYING FADES IN, FADES OUT, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES OUT, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC FADES IN, MUSIC The Trump administration has made a big push on deportations during the first two months of his presidency, but not necessarily in the way people expected. In the last week or so, we've had tourists detained at the border, foreign students with green cards or visas basically snatched off the street, and even a Venezuelan immigrant

with protected status that the administration admitted it sent to a prison in El Salvador by mistake. To help break down where things stand on immigration, we brought in our colleague, immigration expert Michelle Hackman. Hi, Michelle. Hi. So, Trump made a lot of big promises about mass deportations and all the things that he was going to do to change immigration once he became president.

How would you say that that's all going now, that we're a couple months in? Yeah, so Trump on the campaign really emphasized not just that he was going to do deportations, but he talked about numbers. He was going to do the largest mass deportation in American history, when he would promise he was going to get rid of 15 million, 20 million people. And, you know, it's hard to say what we would expect the beginnings of a mass deportation to even

look like. But I seriously doubt that this is it. In the first six weeks or so of the Trump administration, deportations are actually down from the last year of the Biden administration. That's not a statistic that they want anyone to know. I want to ask about the border, Michelle. Crossings at the border are down under Trump. Is there anything specific that the Trump administration is doing to prevent people from trying to cross the border illegally, other than just to sort of send a signal that

this is not a friendly place for immigrants to come anymore? You're right. He has really slowed down things at the border they had already really dramatically slowed in the final year of the Biden administration. I would say the really big thing they did was that they ended a Biden program that didn't really have a catchy name. People called it CBP One after the app that people used.

So Biden actually already said, if you cross the border illegally, you're not gonna qualify for asylum. We're just going to shut you out. Trump said, even if you come to a port of entry, even if you come legally and ask for asylum, we're still not going to consider you. And so it's really shut down basically any avenue people have. And that's sort of acted as more of a deterrent, at least for now.

And so a long-term question is, are people going to be deterred forever from coming to the border, or is this deterrent-only strategy is going to at some point fail? Getting back to deportations, they seem to be happening at a smaller scale, but it seems like it's happening at a more high-profile scale, because we're seeing these students right now, specifically on college campuses, people who have visas, or in some cases, green cards, who are being picked up and deported. So, can you explain the strategy here and sort of what the legal basis is for that?

I think that's somewhat by design. They want to really make a big splash, and so they've started sort of taking on these high-profile cases. And one of them is the students who, you know, they claim have participated in pro-Palestine protests. They claim that these people are supporters of Hamas in different ways. And this is a battle that they really think they can win because they think most Americans

are sick of the college protests, that most Americans are more supportive of Israel than they are of Hamas. And so that they're not going to be so upset if they go after an international student who, for example, wrote an op-ed in her school newspaper expressing support for the Palestinian people. It seems like there's a sort of odd dichotomy here where, on the one hand, the sort of very straightforward, what you would think would be the sort of low hanging fruit of deportations, right?

A lot of people are already in custody or people who like they, we know where they are and we know how they got here. And those people are just, nothing's happening with them. But then on the other hand, these people who would seem to have legal status or who came to the country, you wrote about a group of people who were literally given guarantees of safety to come to this country and now that's being taken away, or these students that are being targeted. Is that strategic or does that have to do with a lack of resources? What's the reason for that?

You know, I have to say I'm not entirely sure. I suspect that it is about a lack of resources, that it's easier to go after someone if you know where they live and they have a visa and you can go through that process. You know, Trump talked a lot about going after criminals, but notoriously, people who are convicted criminals are better at dodging the police than everyone else. And so it's hard to go after those people. We've seen an uptick in people, you know, who are here illegally, but who sort of have no criminal record whatsoever,

who have lives in the US, who have US citizen spouses and children. Those are the types of people that we're seeing being targeted more. But it's a good question. Why are they not being deported in bigger numbers? I think we just don't have enough bodies to do the arresting. And that's something that Tom Homan, the head of ICE, has talked about, right? He has said that Congress needs to give him more money so that he can accomplish more of this agenda. Yeah, he's kind of the only one in the administration who came in from the get-go saying, I'm not sure how mass this deportation is going to be. I need to see what resources we have.

And now that's sort of pivoting well because Congress is negotiating this huge spending package and so Tom Homan is trying to put pressure on them to put in as much money as possible for ICE. Politically, Molly, how do you think that this is playing for the Trump administration? Because on the one hand, a lot of Americans really want the government and Trump to be tough, tough, tough. But then on the other hand, when you see these videos of like a tough student being picked up by these agents with masks on, there's also a lot of reaction from people.

I mean, primarily on the left, but not entirely. People saying that this is dystopian, this is terrifying to just be picked up and swept away like this. The politics of this are very interesting. So far, Trump's approach to immigration is more popular than his approach to most other issues. It is a slight majority in most polls I've seen prove of the way that Trump is handling immigration so far. It was, as you mentioned, a very central premise of his campaign, more important, he believes, than the economy in motivating people to vote for him. So people do seem to like that he seems to be taking control of a border that they felt

was out of control. I do think there is a chance that it becomes less popular as these incidents pile up. I do wonder if it does start to go into politically dangerous territory as more of these sort of sympathetic victims come out, as more and more people who appear not to have done anything to deserve it are being singled out and deported. People really respond to patterns. If it had been one case like this, I think the public would sort of be able to brush it off, but that these things pile up tends to affect public opinion more.

I want to ask about that long-term question. What do we see as the administration's end game on immigration, given that it has, as you point out, only been a few weeks and they are sort of picking their spots to send a strong signal, presumably this is all building up to something. Where, where is it going? It's such a good question, Molly. And I think maybe part of the problem is that everyone in this administration has a slightly different end game. You know, for someone like Stephen Miller, he ultimately wants to really, really significantly reduce immigration so that we're

only getting small numbers of people and they're sort of the best of the best from wealthy countries so that they won't ever end up on our welfare. And sort of that's why things are had seeming to head in that direction. But for other people, you know, for example, Kristi Noem, she's the Homeland Security Secretary. When she was in Congress, and when she was governor of South Dakota, she took a much more sort of rosy look at immigrants because they were really critical to running industries like agriculture in her state. And so I think she's thinking we've got to get this illegal activity totally under control. And at some point, that's going to lead us to a conversation where we can actually change the immigration laws.

Speaking of the immigration laws, we have a question from a listener, Doug Hunt from Colorado Springs, who is wondering about this very thing. Hi, Molly and Ryan. Now that the Republican Party is the party of working class Americans of every color and creed, it seems short sighted to deport 11 million migrants who fill much needed working class positions across American industries and agriculture. Why wouldn't the Republicans use their control of government to secure the border and reform

immigration policy to create a pathway to citizenship for these law-abiding migrant workers who might someday become loyal Republican voters? Thanks. That's a good question. I think there are probably two reasons. One is that a lot of Republicans don't see these migrants who are working in similar jobs as them as their friends. They see them as competitors. You know, these people are taking a job that then I can't have. And so helping them out feels sort of directly antithetical to their own interests.

I would say the other thing is a lot of Republicans I've spoken to, and this is kind of unscientific, but just from years of interviewing people, is that they're really driven by this sense of fairness and they can't get over to the fact that many, not all, but many of these people broke the law when they entered the country. And so why should they just be forgiven for that? Molly, what's your sense of whether or not we'll see immigration reform legislation get passed in Congress during Trump's administration? I would say it's very unlikely. And I've been, like Michelle, covering this issue for many years. I was here when they came close back in 2013 to passing comprehensive immigration

reform. And it was torpedoed essentially by a revolt among the Republican base, among conservative Republican voters. Republican elites, the business community, the Chamber of Commerce, the agricultural lobby, they would all love to see a big comprehensive immigration reform deal get done that would legalize millions of people and allow them to work in all of these industries and so on. But when you drill down on the specifics and try to get Republicans to vote for it, particularly Republicans in safe districts who are much more concerned about a primary threat, who

are much more concerned about someone to their right coming in and accusing them of not being loyal enough to Trump or not being conservative enough, they see that as more of a threat to them politically than the general election. So I think even though it remains politically popular, it is not something you're going to see this president or this version of the Republican Party taking up anytime soon. Okay, guys. Well, that was Enlightening as Always. Michelle, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. That was great. Of course.

Alright, Molly. Well, I know that this is... We're not at 100 days yet of the Trump administration, but this is my last episode with you. I am starting paternity leave next week. Congrats, Ryan. That's so exciting. Thank you very much. Yes, I'll be honest. I'm looking a little bit forward to stepping off

the Trump treadmill. You only made it three quarters of the way. You almost got you to 100, but you couldn't quite hack it. It's OK. I forgive you. Yeah, I don't know how you political reporters do it. You will be in good hands with Kate Leimbach though, who's gonna take my place

and get us across the 100 day finish line. And I will certainly be listening. You could submit a question. Do you know how to do that? I think I know who to email. I think I know. Yeah, I'm gonna do that. Thejournal.wsj.com.

Just another listener out there, a fan of the pod. Yes, I'm gonna do that actually. I am literally gonna do that. Watch for that. Watch the space as they say. That'll be fun. Before we go, do you have any questions about what the Trump administration is doing? Email us and let us know. Please send a voice note to thejournal at wsj.com. That's thejournal at wsj.com. Trump 2.0 is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Enrique Perez de la Rosa with help from Alessandra Rizzo

and edited by Katherine Whalen. Molly Ball is The Wall Street Journal's senior political correspondent. I'm Ryan Knudson. This episode was engineered by Nathan Singapok. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard. Fact-checking by Kate Gallagher. Artwork by James Walton. Trump 2.0 will be back with a new episode next Friday morning with Kate Leimbach.

See you then.