Thursday, May 8 | By Jonathan Easley |
© Carl Court/Pool Photo via AP |
Trump secures trade deal, challenges emerge
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PRESIDENT TRUMP ON THURSDAY announced the first trade deal since enacting his "Liberation Day" tariffs that have roiled economies at home and abroad. The details are still being finalized, but Trump and his team unveiled the broad contours of a deal with the United Kingdom that will open up billions of dollars in market access in Britain, the sixth largest economy in the world and the U.S.'s fourth largest trading partner. The deal will also reduce non-tariff barriers and fast-track American goods through the customs process. "There won't be any red tape," Trump said. "Things will move very quickly both ways." Trump made the announcement in the Oval Office surrounded by Vice President Vance, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and senior members of his trade and agricultural teams. He dialed up British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and put him on the speaker phone in front of the cameras. "This is a really fantastic, historic day," Starmer said. "This is going to boost trade between and across our countries," he added. "It's going to not only protect jobs, but create jobs, opening market access." The deal will increase U.S. access to the U.K. markets, primarily for beef, ethanol and other agricultural products. The U.S. will make it easier for the U.K. to import luxury vehicles. The reciprocal tariff rate of 10 percent on products coming into the U.S. from the U.K. will remain in place. Lutnick also said a separate deal is in place for the U.K. to purchase $10 billion worth of Boeing airplanes. It's a broad agreement with limited details at the moment, The Associated Press reports. |
On the same day the U.S. and U.K. struck a trade deal, the European Union outlined its $95 billion retaliatory response to Trump's tariffs on items such as alcohol, fish, aircraft, automobiles and machinery. "We'll be dealing with them," Trump said. "We are dealing with them currently." Later, Trump's trade adviser Peter Navarro said: "Any country which retaliates against the United States, which is simply trying to get fairness, is making a grave mistake. For them to publish stuff like that, I don't think it's in the interest or the spirit of negotiations that are going to be as affective as they otherwise would." Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are traveling to Switzerland on Thursday to begin negotiations with their Chinese counterparts. "I think they want to make a deal very badly," Trump said. Also on Thursday, Toyota announced that tariffs would cost them more than $1 billion over two months. |
TRUMP RACHETS UP FEUD WITH THE FED |
Trump on Thursday continued his pressure campaign against Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell after the central bank once again declined to lower interest rates over fears of inflation due to tariffs. On social media, Trump called Powell a "fool." In the Oval Office, Trump said talking to Powell is "like talking to a wall." National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett told Fox News' Laura Ingraham that Powell's moves are political, rather than economic, and meant to sabotage the Trump administration. "To have the Fed out there jawboning against the president's policies, you know, they didn't do that when Joe Biden was printing money and spending it and creating 20 percent inflation," Hassett said. "And so, it just makes me wonder about, like, what's wrong with their models or what's wrong with their politics?" |
💡Perspectives: • The Atlantic: The impossible plight of pro-tariff Democrats. • The Hill: Trump's apprenticeship plan boost the economy. • The New Republic: How the U.S. lost the rare Earth materials race to China. • The Wall Street Journal: Trump's worst idea since tariffs. • The Nation: The culture war furies behind Trump's film-tariff plan. |
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American cardinal elected pope |
Cardinal Robert Prevost, a 69-year old Chicagoan, became the first American pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church following a two-day conclave. Prevost, who has taken the name Pope Leo XIV, was a missionary who spent time in Peru and served as the head of the Vatican's office of bishops. The announcement came in front of a crowd of thousands gathered in St. Peter's Square after white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel just after 6 p.m. local time.
President Trump celebrated the first American pope, who had previously criticized the administration on social media. "It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope," Trump posted on Truth Social. "What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!"
Here's everything you need to know about the new pope. |
GOP struggles to pull together Trump's agenda bill |
House Republican efforts to pass President Trump's agenda bill have been complicated over key policy hang-ups that threaten to delay passage or derail it altogether. The Hill's Congressional team writes: "House Republicans are falling further apart in negotiations on a reconciliation package that represents President Trump's first-year legislative agenda, with just weeks to go before their self-imposed deadline." Among the many internecine feuds dividing the GOP on Capitol Hill at the moment: Fiscal conservatives won't support a budget reconciliation bill that adds to the deficit, but moderates won't touch big drivers of the federal budget, such as Medicaid. In the past, obstinate lawmakers have gotten on board with what they view as imperfect legislation by "cajoling centrists to take politically painful votes with hopes that they would help realize a more right-leaning final product," according to The Hill's Mychael Schnell. That won't fly this time around, moderate lawmakers say. "There is a specific appetite amongst 20-plus Republican members to vote only on something that is real and that could actually become law rather than this more conservative thing that can't get the vote," Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) says some controversial proposals cutting Medicaid won't be in the final bill, but he might consider "per capita caps" on Medicaid in states that expanded the program in recent years. Meanwhile, Republicans appear to be at an impasse on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap. Blue state Republicans are promising to sink any bill that doesn't raise the cap. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is capitalizing on the dissent, saying that if Republicans are serious about helping taxpayers in high-tax states, they'll do nothing and let the cap expire at the end of the year, as scheduled. "If nothing happens — if there is nothing done with respect to the state and local tax deduction cap by the end of the year — you know what happens? It goes away," Jeffries said. "So anything that Republicans are doing that relates to a cap actually will increase taxes on the American people, not lower taxes." Senate Republicans are watching with alarm. "Sooner or later we have to pass the same thing, and I'm worried that this is potentially a train wreck," one Republican senator told The Hill's Alexander Bolton. "We can't really get on the same page." |
© Kenny Holston/The New York Times via AP |
Roundup: Biden denies reports of mental decline
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Former President Biden denied media reports about his mental decline and former first lady Jill Biden said she never tried to hide him from scrutiny during a joint interview Thursday on ABC's "The View." The Bidens appeared together as new books raise questions about Biden's fitness to serve and allegations that those around him sought to shield him from scrutiny to hide his decline. "They are wrong, there is nothing to sustain that," Biden said. The former president said that he only dropped out of the race after his disastrous debate performance "because I didn't want to have a divided Democratic Party." The former first lady said she didn't create a "cocoon" around him. "I mean, you saw him in the Oval Office," she said. "You saw him making speeches. He wasn't hiding somewhere. I didn't have him, you know, sequestered in some place." During the interview, the Bidens pushed back on new reporting on multiple fronts, including that had Biden insisted to former Vice President Kamala Harris that there be "no daylight" between them after she took up the nomination. Biden said Harris lost the election because Republicans ran a racist and sexist campaign that damaged her. "I wasn't surprised because they went the route of the sexist route … I've never seen quite as successful and consistent campaign undercutting the notion that a woman couldn't lead the country and a woman of mixed race, and they played that to a fairly well," he said. Politico reports that Biden hired a veteran Democratic operative to defend his reputation against the slew of books being published this year that question his mental acuity, decision making and whether those around him sought to keep him out of public view. • About 75 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested at Columbia University after forcing their way into a school library and injuring two public safety officers. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration is "reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals." The Trump administration has already sought to freeze hundreds of millions in federal funding at Columbia over prior protests and allegations of antisemitism. The Department of Justice is charging a 20-year-old with hate crimes after he allegedly assaulted Jewish people at a Columbia University earlier this year. |
💡Perspectives: • City Journal: 'Elite' universities are losing the future. • USA Today: Biden made a mess of student loans. Trump is fixing it. • Washington Monthly: The courts push back. • The Hill: If you can't win in court, threaten the judge. • The Hill: Europe is asleep at the wheel on Ukraine. |
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