The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: Tariffs, HHS Cuts & Bodega Cats

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

The tariff plan rolled out by President Trump this week threatens to upend the global economic system. We look at the potential impacts. Then, widespread cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services threaten the agency's ability to do its many jobs. And, a look at a New York City tradition. This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, political correspondent Susan Davis, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and health policy correspondent Selena Simmons-Duffin.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

Hi, this is Corrine from Northwest Louisiana visiting my home state of Nebraska. The sound you are hearing is the spring migration of a million sandhill cranes. For thousands of years, these birds have stopped to rest and refuel on the Platte River on their northward journey. It is quite a spectacle. Oh my gosh. It is quite a spectacle. This show was recorded at 1238 PM on Friday, April 4th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but the Sandhill Cranes will be dispersing to Alaska and Canada.

Enjoy the show. Wow. I thought those were frogs almost. But that's a good one. Enjoy the show. Wow, I thought those were frogs almost, but that sounded amazing. I got a joke. Want to hear it? Yeah, of course. Why was the frog late to work? Why? Because it got toad. Oh, okay. I can't say crowed. I saw that on a billboard. I do want to say that oftentimes nature sounds are relaxing, but that sound honestly sounded a little stressful to me.

That was a little anxiety inducing, but I think that those were the best timestamps where I'm like, what, what is this? Where are you? Yeah. It's thrilling. I love it. Hey there. It's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Deepa Shivram. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Okay. So a lot happened this week and the tariffs that president Trump announced, you know, are a major shift in how the global economy works.

And Sue, let's get into that. You know, what fascinates me here is Republicans used to be the party of free trade, right? But this party under Trump has pretty much swung in the opposite direction. In terms of this political realignment that's sort of happening, I mean, is this, do you see it as a long-term adjustment? Look, I think this is going to be a pressure test of just how far party loyalty can go under Donald Trump.

I think on the outside right now, it does appear like the most Republicans, especially on Capitol Hill, seem to be on board with this. But I don't really think that's true. I think there is very broad and very deep concern on a quiet level that these tariffs might go too far, that they could do a ton of political damage and economic damage. And just one example I would point to, it was notable to me this week that both Kentucky senators, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell, two Republicans who have come from very different economic perspectives in the past, equally bash these tariffs. Rand Paul wrote an op-ed for Fox News just today. He said, quote, the truth is tariffs are taxes. He called for immediate termination of them. And at the

same time, McConnell criticized Trump for this saying the tariffs will only hurt working families. So I do think that those reflect more Republicans on Capitol Hill than are willing to publicly right now go against the president. But if there starts to be serious economic repercussions, I think that could get louder and louder. Yeah, but why right with McConnell and Paul, they're selling Kentucky bourbon to Canada and Canadians are taking them off the shelves. And there's a lot of distilleries that are really upset about this and saying that they're losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a lot of cases. So every kind of state is going to have their own economic ramifications from these things.

And the more that it does affect the people and the businesses in their communities, I think the more you might see people at least try and make an effort to maybe phase these tariffs out. But it is notable that this was a party, as Deepa said, that was very pro-free trade and now has become uber protectionist in the model of Donald Trump. There is one thing to be said about the criticism, right? Writing an op-ed and willing to go against President Trump, which is something that Republicans in Congress don't often do. But like to take it to the next kind of step here, if they wanted to, you know, exert their control in

Congress, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa has co-sponsored legislation for Congress to have more control over presidential tariffs. Is something like that, you know, likely to pass? Do you think there would be enough support for that? I mean, it's a little too late. And look, what's happening on Capitol Hill right now is a continuation of what has been, and maybe arguably a decades long trend of Congress sort of ceding its legislative power to the executive branch. Congress should have a role in these tariffs and improving them, but they have allowed the presidency over the years to play a greater role in deciding these trade agreements. So it's a little too little too late because

I'll say this, they just don't have the votes and they're not going to get the votes because Donald Trump is not going to sign legislation that limits his ability to enact tariffs and they don't have a veto proof ability to override it. And the world in which a Republican controlled Congress is overriding a president Trump veto is just not a world we live in yet. Well, I want to read you one quote that really struck me. And this was from Donald Trump. He said, A lot of people are tired of watching the other countries ripping off the United States. They laugh at us behind our backs. They laugh at us because of our own stupidity. Was that the other day when

he was announcing these tariffs? Nope, that was 1987 on with Larry King Live. So this is a long held, ideologically rigid belief that Trump has. And when you have ideologically rigid beliefs that don't adjust with the times, sometimes you put them in place and roll out that policy. Maybe at the wrong time when people were complaining about prices all throughout the presidential campaign. If Donald Trump was going to be running for another election, for another term, I'm not 100% certain he puts in these kinds of broad sweeping tariffs, but he's not going to be

the one who really feels the political blowback if there is blowback. That'll be on the Republican Party. No, and he's like really doubling down, right? But at the same time, I mean, the markets are showing really strong disapproval of these tariffs like they were down yesterday. As you know, President Trump is someone who's saying, you know, America has been taken advantage of but he's also someone who, you know, generally speaking, cares about what Wall Street thinks of him and has had that relationship.

But I'm wondering from both of you, like how does that push and pull kind of square out? Or is it too soon to say? Well, I think that, you know, Trump, what we're starting to see is that his economic approval is under where his overall approval rating has been. And that can be a real problem for a president who said that he was going to fix prices, that he would correct prices on day one and bring them down, which certainly hasn't been able to do. There were two polls out this week that really struck me, one from APNORC, one from Reuters

Ipsos. Both of them showed Trump down to his lowest approval rating overall since he's become president again at 42% and 43%, respectively. When you dig in on the economic approval numbers, AP's poll, Trump was at 40%. Reuters, he was at 37%. And just 30% for his efforts to lower the cost of living. Those should be really flashing red warning signs for a party that had promised to lower prices. What I think is so interesting about this moment too is like we are pressure testing also this idea that the experts are all wrong, right? Like Trump is making this economic

policy decision in the face of basically every expert economist around the globe, right? Like there isn't a ton of either data or policy history to back up that what he's doing could be as successful as he is projecting it to be. And I mean, I think it'll be pretty apparent soon and it'll get more apparent as time goes on over whether Trump made the smartest bet that a president ever made on his own, or if like the experts were still right. And this was a really bad economic decision to make. And I agree with Domenico, like I think, I think this is explicitly what a lot of voters are paying much more attention to than things like Doge or any of the sort of internal workings of

the Beltway. I think if people start going to the grocery store in three months and their groceries are double the price, like the political repercussions of that will be real. As this like reshaping of the global economy is happening, which is what Trump and his administration have sort of sold this as, that change is not something that can happen overnight or maybe even in the rest of Trump's term, but the lasting impact of this, I mean, the immediate impact,

but then also if a new administration tries to come in and undo this, is that possible or is the damage just too far done? Well, I think it depends on what the outcome is. Like, look, if you take Trump out his word, maybe the economy is booming in four years and the next president wouldn't want to undo these economic policies if they prove successful. But they are very risky. I don't think that that is an overstatement at all. And I think it's important to remember, economies can collapse really quickly. And we witnessed that in 2008 when almost overnight,

it seemed like the US economy was about to collapse and Congress had to rush in and pass a rescue package of hundreds of billions of dollars. And in this moment, the risk is the president himself, right? Like he is the one injecting the insecurity into the economy. And the thing I think we have to keep in mind here is like, if this goes poorly, if this is souring throughout the rest of the year, Trump has a pretty ambitious agenda he wants to get done on Capitol Hill.

His one big beautiful bill to extend his tax cuts, it's expected to include provisions relating to energy and immigration agendas. I think that that could make that much, much harder. And so the ripple effect, if this goes poorly, if his popularity tanks, of then enacting big legislation on his behalf, I think gets just that much harder. Look, when you talk to people around Trump, right, they'll say that, and he said this, his theory of the case is really an overhaul of the American economy overall. I mean, you know, a lot of people, you know, those same experts will point to the fact

that NAFTA in the 1990s North American Free Trade Agreement, you know, really shipped a lot of jobs outside the United States and manufacturing sort of cratered in this country. And that's the idea of what Trump wants to be able to do is bring back manufacturing, in some respects, build a wall, not an actual physical wall, but a wall of tariffs that makes it so high that people will want to build parts and cars

and everything else in the United States. But it's a humongous gamble and it's not a four year proposition. It's much, much longer term. One thing I would say that in the moment is backing up Trump right now is that we should also know today there was a pretty strong jobs report. And that is the kind of counter information that I think people are going to start to see if employment is strong and if people are hiring, that might give Americans more confidence in what the president is doing. I think if things also start going in the other direction, that's another indicator

that people are going to start to freak out. Yeah. And that panic sets in. In the meantime, President Trump is digging in deeper. He posted on his platform, Truth Social Today, and said that, quote, my policies will never change. This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before. So no shift from the president. No, and I think that that's part of what's causing uncertainty is like Trump is saying he's going to enact all these tariffs. But even at the same time today, he said he's negotiating with Vietnam right now to maybe adjust those tariffs. So that part of what makes the dollar so secure is that for

so long it had certainty to it, that there was a certainty to the American economy around the world. And Trump just injecting so much uncertainty, just the uncertainty can have an economic impact because so much of the global market is often been centered around the strength of the US dollar, right? So I think that like part of what you are at least reading in foreign press and what foreign governments are saying is like, if you can't rely on the president of the United States to be a sound negotiator, then it creates all sorts of ripple effects. I was a little surprised to see Trump this past week say, literally said, I couldn't

care less if they raise prices, because people are going to start buying American made cars. I couldn't care less. I hope they raise their prices because if they do, people are going to buy American made cars. Like, I don't think I've ever heard a president say that they hope prices go up on anything. People buy a lot of cars from a lot of places around the world, whether it's Japan or Korea or the United States, and that is one of those things, you know, as politics goes, you're supposed to feel people's pain, right? And that has a much more of a let them eat cake feel. All right, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back, and NPR's health policy correspondent, Selena Simmons-Duffin, is

with us today. Hey Selena Selena. Hey, Deba. Okay, so you're here because there have, in addition to all the other things happening this week, there have been a lot of changes to the Department of Health and Human Services. And we want to talk through some of that. So let's just start really broadly. Very big picture here. What are the big responsibilities that HHS has been tasked with? So HHS is the kind of umbrella organization

that has all of the health agencies in it. So Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, all of those and then a bunch of other kind of smaller agents like new health secretary is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And last week he announced he was gonna

undertake an overhaul of all of HHS. is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And last week he announced he was gonna undertake an overhaul of all of HHS. And as part of that, he was gonna cut 10,000 jobs. In addition to what he says were 10,000 people who have left either early retirement offers or the full from Elon Musk's team. All together, 20,000 fewer employees at HHS across all the health agencies would be to be just about 25% of a cut.

That's a huge cut. And the way it was kind of described last week in this sheet about how this would look is, you know, hey, HHS has 82,000 employees, it's really big, it's sprawling, and there's a lot of kind of administrative redundancy. So we're going to come in and streamline. So after the emails that people were losing their jobs came in at about 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the first of April, and the cuts as we have come to kind of understand them are really not administrative streamlining. Whole branches of health agencies were cut.

It has been such a confusing week trying to figure out exactly what just happened and what it means. So the department secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has moved really quickly this week to reshape the department. So when you say these things that did get cut, like what is included in that? What got cut? Yeah, some labs shut down, including a big lab that tests food safety in San Francisco. Though in Morgantown, West Virginia, there was this enormous lab that did research on black lung for minors and did tested N95 masks to make sure that they were up to snuff. That lab is gone. And then you see there is this division that worked on violence prevention, and the team that worked on rape prevention was cut. I would say that when I reached out to HHS and said,

there are laws that say you have to do this research on mining health and there are laws that say you have to give out these funds related to rape prevention, gonna happen with these functions. I got back a statement that said all statutorily required functions are still gonna happen. They're just gonna be reorganized. And the changes that we just have no idea how that's going

to go and what it's going to look like because we just are getting very, very little information about the vision here. So many of these cuts have been haphazard, right? I mean, we've seen this in so many other agencies where, you know, DOGE, Elon Musk Group, the Department of Government Efficiency has gone in, you know, looked at spreadsheets, axed certain things because they didn't like the numbers or thought that it was waste or thought it was duplicative, and then wound up hiring people back because they realized that those were jobs that were vital functions that people within those agencies wound up asking them to come back.

And we've seen that happen with HHS too, right? I mean, there were principal investigators, for example, people who run labs who got notices that they were going to be part of this reduction in force. And then it was like, whoops, oh yeah, it didn't mean you guys. There was a coding error. So you know, that's, that's the kind of thing that really introduces a lot of just nervousness and inability for these agencies to function more efficiently, which is supposed to be the goal. Yeah, it is really weird when you also have, you know, someone like Elon Musk, who leads

the Department of Government Efficiency himself saying like, you know, we're going to make some mistakes. And when this happens, it really kind of undercuts, you know, how confident the public can be. I mean, Doge is a demolition crew. It's not a surgical team, right? Like there is an element of recklessness happening all across the government here. These cuts are happening fast. They're happening without stakeholders having time to walk through what the policy implications will be, what the consequences would be. And I think with an agency like HHS, it amplifies the political risk because these are like human lives we're talking about, right? Like HHS takes care of people that private industry doesn't

want to take care of, right? Like it's not necessarily like, oh you reduce government and the private market will come in and serve these roles. Like one of the services that I read was cut this week is Meals on Wheels, which provides meals largely to low-income seniors. I mean, these are fragile people that I think politicians across all spectrums agree need help. And when you cut programs like that, which I think is safe to say are relatively popular within their communities, I think there's not only is there a potential human cost to this, but there is obviously a very real political cost. And again, I think Congress starts to get nervous about these kinds of things. Because look, Doge and RFK Jr. are implementing these cuts. But when your Meals on Wheels stop showing up, and you know, you can't get access to certain services you had before,

who do you call? You call your member of Congress. Totally. Yes. And Selena, you know, we were talking about this earlier with with tariffs. If there's a world in which, you know, things get cut or things get changed, how quickly can they be put back together? So in other words, you know, you were talking about some labs being closed and research facilities shutting down if they were shut down this week. And Secretary Kennedy, the department doge decides to, you know, say, just kidding, it's a mistake. Is that something that can just build back up by Monday? It's actually kind of a case by case thing. But one example of the, oops, we made a mistake,

please come back. My colleague, Yuki Noguchi, connected with a CDC employee who was based in Iowa. And there are a lot of programs that HHS runs to get specialized people into different parts of the country. She loved her job, she was doing health promotion work. She was so excited. And then she got laid off and then told,

actually, can you come back? And by the time she got that notice, she'd moved on. I mean, she was leaving Iowa. She was not only is that a loss for the federal health agencies, it's a loss for that community. These used to be agencies that long had bipartisan support, bipartisan funding. They were among the most trusted in the federal government, but really COVID changed all of

that, right? Largely because of a lot of widespread online misinformation, agencies became lightning rods. Officials were really vilified by the MAGA right. And we're seeing the results of that now. I totally agree with that, Domenico. I think we are living in real time, the political aftershock of the pandemic. I don't think cuts like this to agencies like this could be possible if not for a fueled

sense of distrust in the quote unquote establishment and the management of that event and the idea that like, look, maybe the CDC and NIH and all these organizations Do need to be rooted out from the core. Okay, we're gonna leave it there Selena Simmons Deffen. Thanks so much for joining us today Thanks for having me All right, one more break and then it's time for can't let it go And we're back and it's time for can't let it go that's the part of the show where we talk about the things from The week we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. And Sue, I will toss it to you to kick us off.

The thing I can't let go this week is an adorable photo bomb incident that happened in our nation's capital. As we know, we're coming off of peak bloom of the cherry blossoms. And when the cherry blossoms are peak bloom, many people head down to the Tidal Basin to get their family pictures taken. And a local family went down to the Tidal Basin last weekend and were taking pictures of their adorable children when they realized that in the background of one of the pictures is former president Barack Obama. And the photographer posted the shot on social media where it has the two adorable children and in the background walking is Obama and what appears to be likely a Secret Service agent of some kind. And the parents loved it so much, they said they were going to frame it and put it in their house. And President Obama even responded to the photo and said,

like, sorry about the photo bomb. Hope you enjoyed the cherry blossoms. Oh my gosh. You know, it's so funny, former President Obama posted, I think on his own Instagram account, like Monday or something like that. And it was like, you know, it's so funny, former president Obama posted, I think on his own Instagram account, like Monday or something like that. And it was like, you know, some very dad style pictures of the cherry blossoms and was just like, Oh, it was fun to like sneak out. And I feel like everyone was like, Oh my God, like, that's crazy. No one really noticed that he was there. Then this picture popped off and everyone's like, some people noticed.

There have to be like memes generated of Obama now, like just photoshopped into a bunch of pictures. There are all a bunch of pictures. All of your family pictures. Of course. Oh my gosh. I was going to say that and I saw one earlier today and it's like the cute kids who are in the foreground and then in the background instead of Obama like walking by to photobomb the picture, he's like swimming in the title basin.

So there's already some great content coming out of it. He's paddle boarding behind them. The other thing I can't let go of of this photo suit is like, you're like, oh, what appears to be a Secret Service agent. Yeah, no kidding. This is like, you can spot these guys, it feels like from a mile away. Like he has the best posture I've ever seen. Right. They're not subtle. They're not subtle. That's so funny. Diba, what about you? What can't you let go of? So the thing I can't let go of this week is this story from the Associated Press about New York City's quote bodega cats. And so, you know, that's cool.

They're everywhere. They're, you know, the cute tiny creatures who are wandering around your local bodega, but apparently they are on the wrong side of the law. And so the story is basically about how there's regulations in New York that ban most animals from any stores that sell food. And obviously, if a cat wandering around products that you're ingesting into your body, there are some concerns about that legally. But there's so many people in New York who are trying to protect the bodega cats from being You know legally prosecuted I guess and the best part of the story

Honestly is that there's so many photos it is like a huge photo shoot of all these different cats in these Bodegas around New York where they're like curled up by like the batteries and sitting next to the carton of milk And they just they look like they own the bodega like they are in charge and they're here to sell you your convenient goods or maybe a bagel I don't know. I feel like cats believe in low regulations. They don't seem like an animal that supports a heavy regulated New York City. Well let's just let's just you know everything's pros and cons in this world right and New York let's be honest there's so many people, you tend to get some rodents, right? Mice, rats, all of that. Guess what keeps those things away? Cats. Good point.

So, you know, like I think if we put this before the regulatory bodies in New York City, they'll be giving awards to these cats. I feel like we should already give awards to the cats. Like, why not? What's stopping us from doing that? This also feels just very American. Like, it just feels like the kind of thing that like an American city would regulate cats in stores. Like, I feel like you go other places in the world and there's like animals just like everywhere. There's always cats all over the place, but we are trying to ban the cats, unfortunately.

Dominica, what about you? The thing I can't let go of is an AP story also about a communion wafer in a Catholic church in Indiana that had some red spots on it. And people thought, oh my goodness, this could be miraculous. You know, the blood of Christ potentially. So they had it tested at a lab. Guess what it was? Bacteria and fungus. Oh my God. What?

It was bacteria and fungus that is commonly found on, guess where, human hands. That's the miracle. That's it. All right. That's a wrap for this week. Our executive producer is Mathony Maturi. KC Morrell edits the podcast. Our producers are Bria Suggs and Kelly Wessinger.