SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
And we turn now to Ron Elving, NPR senior Washington editor and correspondent. Ron, thanks for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: Donald Trump campaigned on that pledge. That said, other than President Trump, who thinks these big, new tariffs are a good idea?
ELVING: By and large, it would be people who share Trump's sense of grievance about world trade and global affairs. People who believe the United States has been getting "ripped off," to quote the president, they tend to also believe that tariffs will help even the score. Now, Trump says tariffs will be our External Revenue Service, collecting money from other countries instead of taxing Americans like the Internal Revenue Service we all know, and that must sound pretty good to a lot of folks, judging by the election results.
Of course, as we just heard from Scott - Horsley - economists see tariffs quite differently. They tend to see an outmoded and counterproductive blunderbuss of a weapon that often winds up wounding the user as much as the target. The classic example being the tariffs the U.S. imposed in the early 1930s. Historians tell us those tariffs actually deepened and lengthened the Great Depression.
SIMON: Ron, what was the political effect of the tariffs that President Trump put in place during his first administration?
ELVING: You'd have to say it was mixed and rather limited, really. Those tariffs served their purpose in the short run in targeted areas, but they did not measurably improve Trump's standing for reelection in 2020 or, for that matter, when he came back in 2024, the tariffs were not the salient issue either time. There were just too many other issues, and the blame for the inflation of the past few years had long since gone elsewhere.
SIMON: Of course, tariffs are just one of a host of executive actions and orders from the Trump White House this week. Which ones stand out to you?
ELVING: To me, the chief executive moment of the week was Trump's news conference Thursday morning about the midair collision over Ronald Reagan National Airport, diverting attention from that tragedy to make attack on diversity hiring when we still don't know who or what was responsible for that crash. Trump said he was using common sense. And that's a phrase he's been using a lot lately. I think people are beginning to get a sense of what that common sense means to him. As for the executive orders, it's quite a competition. I'd have to go with the now-rescinded order to freeze federal spending. That order said all grants had to be frisked for Marxism or race and gender diversity or approval of certain sexual orientation.
That language was striking, as well as confusing. Federal judges stepped in. The freeze is off for now, but the underlying orders, the judgments from the Trump administration, remain in effect. Of course, the courts had already paused an earlier order against birthright citizenship, but perhaps the most notable aspect of the overall attitude of these orders is the peremptory nature of it. There was a sense Trump was testing the boundaries and trying all the locks on the Constitutional house at once.
SIMON: I do recall that President Obama was criticized for relying on executive orders. He said at the time that he had uncooperative Republican majorities in the House and Senate. President Trump doesn't have to contend with that problem, does he?
ELVING: Not at the moment, although the margins in both chambers are historically slim. All presidents have used executive orders, at least at times, and often at critical times. It's fast. It creates an impression of action and change and effectiveness, but only for a time and only if the various orders survive court challenges and other forms of pushback. When you go around Congress for short-term success, you risk a reckoning that can have longer-lasting effects.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving. Thanks so much for being with us on this very important week. Well, I guess they all are, but thanks so much, Ron.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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