The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Attempts To Shut Down USAID And Imposes Tariffs

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

This past weekend, President Trump imposed new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. He has since walked back the 25% on Mexican imports after a conversation with Mexico's president. The others are still set to take effect on Tuesday. Then, Elon Musk announced that his DOGE was shutting down USAID as part of his initiative to slash government spending. This episode: White House correspondents Tamara Keith and Franco Ordoñez and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.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

Support for NPR and the following message come from Bowlin Branch. Change your sleep with Bowlin Branch's airy blankets, cloud-like duvets, and breathable sheets. Feel the difference with 15% off your first order at bowlinbranch.com with code NPR. Exclusion Supply, Seaside for details. Hi, my name is Gavin and I recently made the long drive to move from Michigan to Phoenix, Arizona to escape the snow. This podcast was recorded at 1243 p. 43 PM on Monday, February 3rd. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I look forward to warm weather and sunshine in this new chapter in my life. Okay. Here's the show.

Yeah, I didn't know if that was just vacation or if that's like permanent, but sounds permanent. It sounds permanent and it sounds mighty appealing right now. I'm freezing in the studio. It was cold this morning. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamara Keith, I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez, I also cover the White House.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Elon Musk says that his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is in the process of shutting down USAID, that is the US Agency for International Development. To be clear, in shutting down, which we're in the process of doing, shutting down USAID, the reason for that, as opposed to simply trying to do some minor housecleaning, is that as we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. And so at the point at which you don't really have, if you've got an apple that's got a

worm in it, maybe you can take the worm out. But if you've got actually just a ball of worms, it's hopeless. And USID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple, you've just got to basically get rid of the whole thing. And that was Elon Musk speaking on X in a spaces chat. Domenico, let's start with this thing we're talking about, USAID. What is it? What does it do? Well, USAID has a $50 billion budget. It basically delivers more than half of the US foreign assistance worldwide. It was created in 1961, both by an act of Congress, the Foreign Assistance Act, and a subsequent executive order by John F. Kennedy Jr., then president, to unite various aid

programs and assistance basically under one flag. It has missions in over 100 countries. It is directly appropriated by Congress through various line items that we've seen over the years. And the idea of it is essentially to advance US national security interests and economic prosperity, showing American generosity, promoting self-reliance and resiliency of other countries. Essentially in developing countries, they want to quote, lift lives, build communities, and establish self-sufficiency. So a lot of things in the essentially humanitarian soft power way that the United States post World War One and World War Two tried to help develop other countries, build alliances, and to fight against then

was the Soviet Union. And I have to ask another really basic question, and Franco, if you can try to take a swing at it, I'd appreciate it, but Doge, what is it, and how is it operating, and how is this guy on Twitter Space is able to shut down a government program created by Congress? Yeah, it dates back to like the Trump campaign. Back during the campaign, Elon Musk made all these promises that if Trump was elected, that he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget.

And this is kind of the vehicle to do that type of work. He's kind of come back off of some of those ambitious numbers. I mean, it was created to do this type of work. I mean, it is set up to do cost cutting, to find ways to cut the federal budget. But really what it is also about is kind of extending President Trump's executive powers.

And to the point of that, President Trump gave Doge a degree of power by creating it, essentially, in an executive order officially, saying that anybody within Doge has, quote, full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems, essentially renaming a different agency, the US Digital Services, and essentially handing that over to presumably Elon Musk. But it's a pretty shadowy group in the sense that we don't know exactly how they're running things, what they're going after. Danielle Pletka We don't know if they're government employees,

whether they have been through a proper vetting or security clearance, though we should say that there was another executive order that said that the White House counsel could just give security clearance to anyone. Right. You know, it's interesting though, they're going after USAID, and I find it notable because number one, USAID is less than 1% of the federal budget. You know, the bigger things within the US budget are entitlements and defense spending. The Trump administration has basically said they're not going to even touch those things.

If you don't do that, you're not really able to make much of a dent in the federal budget. I also think it's interesting because what USAID does and wants to do from a worldview perspective does run counter to the sort of America first idea that Trump has is very transactional policy. Because just reading from the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 that established it, it essentially said that Congress declares that a principal objective of US foreign policy is to support people in developing countries in their efforts to acquire the knowledge and resources essential to development, to build the economic, political, and social

institutions, which will improve the quality of their lives. That definitively runs very counter to how Trump views what US foreign policy should be. Frank, I want to talk about congressional reaction to this. It was a little bit slow to get going over the weekend, but now today you have Democratic members of Congress out in front of the USAID building. I think they have really, the Democrats have been kind of feeling their way through all of this. You know, I think there are a lot of questions about whether Doge has this kind of authority and what kind of authority it has I can tell you for certain that Democratic members of Congress say it does not have the authority to shut down USAID

Nor do they say that Trump has the authority to shut down USAID on his own that you can't just bypass Congress and shut down a federal agency The law does seem pretty clear on this, so I do anticipate that you're gonna have a big fight ahead on this front. At the same time, you know, there has been some questions about what Trump is specifically trying to do or how he's trying to shut, quote, shut down USAID. He hasn't cited any statute or authority that allows the president to kind of skip Congress and shut down the agency.

And just a little while ago, we learned that Marco Rubio at least is saying that he will be the acting director. So something is going to live on in what fashion and how, or at least temporarily, we're going to find out. Frank, I feel like we've said this a lot, but we are probably going to say it again. This appears to be yet another test of the legal and constitutional limits of President Trump's executive power. Yeah, no question about it. Trump had made very clear during the campaign that he wanted to kind of extend executive powers. And this, as you

say, is really the latest example of doing that. It really is kind of a test case for that. They're really going all out in trying to, you know, either shut it down or take over in very capacity. I mean, essentially to remake the federal government and really, really push the limits of Trump's executive power. All right, well, we are gonna take a quick break and we will have more in just a minute.

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Those still seem to be on for now, but this is certainly one of those days where we are glad we have a timestamp. Franco, this is such a moving target. Yeah, it really is. And Trump was boasting earlier today that he is going to be having another conversation with the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. So a lot obviously can change whether they happen now or whether they happen in a month from now. Those would have a dramatic impact on the economies of those countries and economists say

would have a dramatic impact on the US economy if they were to continue. I think Trump has shown that this is often a tool that he uses to bend other nations or other leaders to his will. He has done that many times and his team said this over the weekend and a lot of statements that they were putting out about these tariffs saying that the US government needs to use the leverage of the United States on other countries in national interests. And he criticized previous administrations for not using US leverage or the US economy as a way to help US interests. He called access to the American economy a privilege.

But here's the thing I don't really understand. I'm not sure what he wants. I think what he is doing and I think what he has shown to do is he is, like so many other issues, he has kept it very vague. That allows for different levels of goalposts to see what, you know, depending on what he can actually achieve. And he wants to reach a deal but he never says what is the specific deal. It is very nebulous, like here is addressing the border, cutting down on immigration, addressing fentanyl. But how and what are the measures?

What are the things that you have to reach to meet that goal? He leaves that very open. And therefore, he can, you know, kind of determine what it is when the time comes, and he can determine whether this is a victory. You know, this is a thing that Trump has done differently than other presidents because he has really kind of targeted a lot of allies to say that the United States isn't getting a fair shake in their relationship. It's not dissimilar to kind of the broader worldview of shutting down a lot of humanitarian

aid that the United States gives out because Trump views that as, what do I get in return? What does the United States get in return without having like a longer view of, you know, what an alliance means in case what developing countries to have more democracies means to help the United States more broadly writ large and having better feelings for the country. That's not the kind of thing that Trump's worldview is built around. He's a businessman who is used to real estate deals in other countries and in the United States where it's very much how much can I leverage you to negotiate down to the best deal for me. And to that point, I was talking with the Republican strategists just last week about

this being Trump's MO from way back when, even before he was a politician, he pointed to Mar-a-Lago and how Trump was able to get Mar-a-Lago. He actually low bid the offer, or at least offered a bid that was lower than what the owners wanted. When they turned it down, he bought some nearby property and threatened to basically block the beach view. As a Republican strategist put it to me, those were the tariffs that he put down and said,

if you don't do what I want, this is going to hurt you. So he uses leverage and this is how he uses leverage. But let me just suggest on, when you're talking about the US economy and you're talking about tariffs, every mainstream economist in the country will tell you that putting tariffs in place with these countries will affect American consumers. It will make the products that Americans count on more expensive.

Well, to an extent maybe, but I don't think he buys that. I think that you heard that from his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessant, when he testified during his Senate hearing and was asked about the potential of prices going up. And he said that he disagrees, that they won't go up, that tariffs are a good thing for the country, that they'll leverage other countries to rectify unfair trade practices, and that increased oil exploration will bring prices down. That's the theory of the case that they have. Most experts disagree with that and say that tariffs are paid by the consumers, not by the other country that you're putting these tariffs on. And that is amazing to me as somebody who covers politics, because prices, you could

argue, were the reason that Donald Trump won the White House. And I've been struck within these first two weeks that Trump has actually said on two different occasions that prices, amazingly, are not his top priority, that it's immigration that's his top priority. He's essentially said, you know, I've talked about how the price of apples doubled during the campaign, but after you say that, what are you going to do? And he even last night on the tarmac after returning to the Washington, D.C. area from being in Florida,

he conceded that prices could go up. He also said in a Truth Social post earlier in the day, he says, this will be the golden age of America. Will there be some pain? Yes, maybe, and maybe not, but we will make America great again, and it will be worth the price that must be paid. So Domenico, are there potential political consequences here?

I mean there's huge risk in that because if you're going to create an own goal for yourself you don't want to create too many own goals no matter how good your team is because it's kind of hard to come back from that kind of a deficit. You know I mean the fact is though Trump you know may be lucky in the sense that he already inherited a strong US economy that was headed in the right direction. I mean, we have to think of what we talk about inflation. Inflation peaked at around 9.1% in 2022. That has since come down dramatically to about 2.9% as of December of 2024.

So it's already headed in the right direction. The economy, I guess they're thinking is that they can absorb some of that. But at the same time, there's a reason why he's pushing off the tariffs to Mexico for another month, because the U S does import a significant number of goods, not just avocados, uh, from, uh, Mexico. And that certainly would increase people's grocery prices. If we saw those, I think the one point that I would just like to add is that Trump has shown that he is not afraid to do carve outs and he has done carve outs for key

U.S. industries, for key industries that are you know whether for companies that he is close to or that he has concerns about in the past. Now I do think a lot of this has to do with the show he can't talk about all these carve-outs too much or he loses some of the leverage that he is trying to press on these other nations. I think he does know, and I've talked with diplomats in these other countries as well, that he knows that these are weaker economies,

that they have their own domestic politics that they have to deal with. And it is a lot harder for them to deal with these tariffs than it would be for the United States. So I think it is a bit of a gamble that he's betting that even if they do it, it won't last that long and he will still be able to use the leverage to get what he wants.

I do agree that if this were a long sustained massive tariffs, it would have big impacts on the US. But rarely has that been the case. And I think we have seen that over and over again. And I think we're seeing that again today with Mexico backing off. That it is first for leverage, it is first a negotiating tool

and not necessarily expecting it to be something that has long lasted. Yeah, all right, well, we going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

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