US tariffs on Canada, Mexico paused; China hits back with tariffs of its own | The Excerpt
On Tuesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Expected tariffs on Canada and Mexico have been paused, while new tariffs on China go ahead. China has responded with its own tariffs. Paste BN White House Correspondent Joey Garrison takes a look at the future of foreign aid after President Donald Trump moves to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. President Donald Trump makes DOGE head Elon Musk a 'special government employee.' Plus, Democrats attack Musk's Treasury Department takeover. President Trump orders the creation of a U.S. sovereign wealth fund with the potential to purchase TikTok. Paste BN Reporter Andrea Riquier breaks down a report that found climate risk will take a trillion-dollar bite out of America's real estate. Rat populations are growing in some cities and climate change is a major factor.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Tuesday, February 4th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, the latest on tariff tensions plus how the Trump Administration is moving to dismantle the US Agency for International Development, and how climate risk is impacting American real estate.
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President Donald Trump announced yesterday that proposed US tariffs on Canadian goods have been paused for 30 days, citing efforts by Canadian leaders to secure the border. The announcement came after an afternoon call between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. Trump had threatened 25% tariffs on Canadian goods beginning this week.
As for the neighbors south of the border, Mexico and the US have reached a one-month agreement to avoid new tariffs. The 25% tariffs on Mexico were set to go into effect today, despite an existing free trade agreement between the two countries, that was not up for renegotiation until 2026. Trump signed the agreement during his first term. Mexico president Claudia Sheinbaum said her country would send 10,000 National Guard troops to its northern border while President Donald Trump agreed to work to slow the flow of American weapons south of the border. The two leaders reached the agreement in a phone call yesterday.
Meanwhile, when it comes to China, there's a different story. The country said earlier today that it would impose fresh tariffs on US imports, in retaliation to new US duties that came into effect on Chinese goods. China's finance ministry said that starting February 10th, that's next week, it would impose levies of 15% for US coal and 10% for crude oil, farm equipment and some vehicles. That announcement came just minutes after an additional 10% tariff across all Chinese imports into the US came into effect overnight.
The Trump Administration worked yesterday to dismantle the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, putting hundreds of employees on leave and terminating contracts. The move sparked a strong response from Democratic lawmakers and even set off protests while the White House projected savings of $128 million.
For more on what this actually means for foreign aid going forward, I spoke with Paste BN, White House correspondent, Joey Garrison.
Joey, hello sir, thanks for carving out some time as always.
Joey Garrison:
Hey, thanks for having me on.
Taylor Wilson:
Joey, let's just start here. I think folks have heard this term USAID a lot in recent days without maybe fully understanding what's going on, so before we get to what happened yesterday, I mean, what exactly is the US Agency for International Development, or USAID?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, USAID was originally created by President John F. Kennedy through executive order in 1961 as sort of the entity that oversees US foreign aid to other nations. That could include a number of different efforts in countries from Africa to Europe to elsewhere, essentially how our aid from this nation goes around the world. It was later codified by law, by Congress in 1998. For several decades now, this has been a key entity as part of US foreign policy in directing this aid across the world.
Taylor Wilson:
Joey, what exactly happened then yesterday as it pertains to USAID and the Trump Administration?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, overnight, Sunday going into Monday, Elon Musk, who of course has been brought on by the Trump Administration to lead this Department of Government Efficiency, he started discussing on X, the social media platform he owns, about efforts to essentially shut down USAID. He has been really detailing what he says are egregious spending and says it needs to be rolled back, essentially shut down. This comes as Musk has been leading this effort to really dismantle the federal government to roll back the federal workforce to take aim of what they call a reckless spending and federal bureaucracy.
Now, USAID has come under scrutiny from Trump and folks like Musk because they see it kind of having a liberal bent, both in its composition and in terms of various policies that they've carried out across the world, and so it's really come under fire early on by the Trump Administration. Musk starts really publicly talking about shutting it down, and then as USAID workers came to their Washington headquarters here on Monday morning, they were alerted that the office would be closed.
It turns out, as we went on throughout the day on Monday, they were more than 600 USAID employees who who've been put on administrative leave. Another 791 personal service contracts for various contractors were terminated, and really this effort got underway to essentially shut it down and to put it into the hands of the State Department. A Secretary of State, Marco Rubio said he's now the acting director of USAID. He's pointed somebody else to see out the day-to-day responsibilities.
He claims that USAID will still function in some capacity within the State Department, but it's going to be more aligned to what he says are US interests. Rubio talked to reporters, said USAID has a history of ignoring what it's been told by the administration and deciding that it's somehow a global charity that distributes funds across the world. Later, Rubio in a letter to Congress, said he's ordered a review and reorganization of USAID's activities, and again, clarified that the State Department would consult with Congress moving forward to reorganize and absorb parts of the agency.
Taylor Wilson:
I know Democrats spoke out in the wake of some of these moves, Joey, what did we hear from them, and just kind of what are critics saying writ large?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, I mean there's quite a bit of pushback from Democratic lawmakers as you can imagine. They argue that this is a power grab by Trump and Musk, and that Trump lacks the executive authority to roll back and to fold an agency that was created by Congress. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut called it a constitutional crisis at our hands.
I think this is going to be emblematic of a lot of power struggles we're going to see from Trump 2.0 here, in which he is trying to exert a very expansive, large view of presidential authority. Democrats said that they are going to fight this tooth and nail to keep USAID intact, but it's unclear kind what the next steps are. I could see this ultimately going to court, or there's going to be next steps from this if the Trump Administration continues to carry out on what it's promising here.
Taylor Wilson:
Paste BN, White House correspondent, Joey Garrison with some great insight for us as always. Thank you so much, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
All right, thanks for having me on.
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Taylor Wilson:
President Donald Trump previously tapped Elon Musk to lead his Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, but the billionaire was not technically a federal employee. That changed yesterday, hours after Musk announced a plan to shutter USAID on X, the social media platform he own, a White House official told Paste BN he was officially joining the federal government. The official said Trump made Musk a special government employee.
The designation allows Musk to work for the federal government with or without compensation for a limited amount of time. He also received a government email and an office. The administration officials said Musk would not receive a paycheck. Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers and government watchdog groups are pledging to fight back against Elon Musk's takeover of the Federal Government's payment system, which they say may be the biggest privacy and security breach in American history. Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has been tasked with finding ways to cut spending and regulations.
Reports emerged over the weekend that Musk's DOGE operatives were at the Treasury Department going through the payment systems and that they had effectively ousted the top civil servant at Treasury, David Lebryk after he refused to grant access to Musk's emissaries. The payment system traditionally managed by career civil servants and non-political staff handles trillions of dollars annually, including social security and Medicare benefits and tax credits.
Democratic senator, Ron Wyden said in an exclusive interview with Paste BN, "What is clear now is that unqualified and unaccountable people have seized control of the flow of taxpayer funds and a trove of very sensitive data, and they're seizing the tools they need for a coup." Wyden said, the breach poses an extraordinary and unprecedented threat to US national security, given the nature of the information contained in the Treasury system that is now in the hands of Musk staffers. For his part, Musk said on his social media platform X on Sunday, that career Treasury officials are breaking the law by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress. You can read more about some of these tensions with a link in today's show notes.
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President Trump signed an executive order yesterday to create the nation's first sovereign wealth fund, which could be used to purchase TikTok. Joining Trump in the Oval Office, Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent said the fund will be operational within the next year. Though Trump did not explicitly indicate what the fund will be used for, he cited purchasing TikTok as one example. A sovereign wealth fund is a government-owned fund that includes investments in foreign assets. In the case of TikTok, the newly ordered fund could be used to purchase the US assets of TikTok from the platform's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, if they are interested in selling.
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Climate risk will take a trillion-dollar bite out of America's real estate. That's according to a new report, Property Prices in Peril, from the climate analytics firm, First Street, I caught up with Paste BN reporter, Andrea Riquier to learn more. Andrea, welcome back to the show.
Andrea Riquier:
Hi Taylor, thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for hopping on. What exactly did this report find? I found this curious, what are these different geographical areas that it outlined?
Andrea Riquier:
This company called First Street, they like to break the United States into several different buckets. They do talk about places that have become so risky because of climate risk, that people are actually starting to leave. Then they talk about places that they call climate resilient, which just like it sounds like, places that are going to have far less risk into the future. But then they have some really interesting areas, risky growth. Think of Texas for example, where we know that there are a lot of risks, from climate change, excessive heat, conversely not being prepared for deep freezes, which we've seen over the past couple of years.
A lot of Texas is exposed to the coast and so on. Risky growth areas refer to areas that still continue to attract newcomers because they offer something. In most cases it's like a strong job market. This final area that they talk about in the report are tipping points, which are sort of interesting because they're areas that are sort of halfway between being risky growth, but also climate abandonment areas where people are maybe starting to assess how much risk they face, as well as just how high, for example, their insurance costs are becoming.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, you talk about riskier areas, we've seen constant flooding and hurricanes in Florida and parts of the Southeast, we saw these fires in Southern California. Are some locations better for the future than others when it comes to climate risk? Were there any specific locations that this study pointed to?
Andrea Riquier:
They wanted to avoid talking about climate havens because, you just talked about the Gulf Coast and the East Coast, but as we saw just six months ago, Asheville North Carolina was at one point considered a climate haven and that was really devastated by a hurricane. There are clearly areas that have less risks, like parts of the Midwest, parts of sort of the Rust Belt, believe it or not. Again, we come back to what we were just talking about in terms of hyperlocal. There were some pretty bad floods in Vermont just a couple of years ago.
Even if you think that you've sort of figured out some areas that are overall less risky, because for example, they aren't prone to wildfires, they aren't along the coast where a hurricane could strike, you still have to be careful of, is it on higher ground if it's near a body of water, for example. The other thing is that parts of the Midwest, parts of the Rust Belt are still somewhat more economically depressed than other parts of the country, so is it worth sacrificing a good job market, good culture, ties to family and friends just in order to have less climate risk? I think that that is a very personal question.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, in terms of what we're actually seeing, you touched on this a bit, Andrea, but when it comes to solutions, I guess it's not as simple as just moving to Wisconsin or Minnesota necessarily. What do experts say on this going forward?
Andrea Riquier:
The folks in First Street, they don't want to forecast climate havens. The thing that I should stress about this report is that it looks out 30 years. Okay? When we talk about millions of people moving and trillions of dollars of lost real estate value, we're talking over a 30-year period. The reason that these risky growth areas are sort of so compelling is because, again, people are just going to continue to move into parts of Texas, some parts of Florida where there are still plentiful jobs. They're moving because other people are moving. They're moving because people are building there, where there's open space to build, unlike in parts of the Northeast.
Out of all the buckets, all the categories that First Street has separated the country into, there are more risky growth neighborhoods than any of the others, so there's going to be more moving in the wrong direction, for lack of a better word, over many years to come, I think, before things start to change. 30 years, a lot can happen and a lot can change. I think that this is an important report, but it's also important to keep that context in mind.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. It was an interesting report. Folks can go find out Andrea's full analysis and piece with a link in today's show notes. Andrea Riquier is a reporter with Paste BN. Thank you, Andrea.
Andrea Riquier:
Thanks, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
Another impact of climate change that you also might not like, growing rat populations. Rat populations are rising in cities including Washington DC, according to a study out Friday, that includes data from 16 cities around the world. Primary, among the reasons found for the growing problem, warmer average temperatures due to climate change. After Washington, the next four cities with the fastest growth rates include San Francisco, Toronto, New York City and Amsterdam.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.