Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: This week marks one hundred days of President Trump's second term.
Speaker 2: He'll celebrate the milestone on Tuesday at a rally in Michigan.
Speaker 1: Trump loves milestones. He loves anything that sort of has
Speaker 1: a top billing type of effect to it.
Speaker 2: Josh Wingrove covers the White House for Bloomberg. The co
Speaker 2: authored a piece this week looking back on the president's
Speaker 2: first one hundred days, and he says that the mood
Speaker 2: at the White House is jubilant.
Speaker 1: They think that they're killing it. I think right now
Speaker 1: they're happy with the flurry of executive orders. And I
Speaker 1: think it's important to understand that this administration of this
Speaker 1: landscape is like deferring to the President's avowed love of tariffs.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people try to figure
Speaker 1: out how to explain what's going on with this administration,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of it just spoils down to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump loves tariffs.
Speaker 2: On April second, which the President calls Liberation Day, a
Speaker 2: pronounced a list of reciprocal tariffs tariffs on dozens of countries,
Speaker 2: including on some of the US's closest trading partners. He's
Speaker 2: paused those tariff hikes temporarily, but their scale and scope
Speaker 2: has become a, if not the signature policy of his
Speaker 2: first one hundred days. He's also upbended the United States's
Speaker 2: approach to foreign policy, and he's given billionaire Elon Musk
Speaker 2: carte blanche to restructure the federal government. And he's cracked
Speaker 2: down on universities and law firms. The way the President
Speaker 2: has made a lot of these changes is through a
Speaker 2: flurry of executive orders.
Speaker 1: Trump has done more than one hundred orders. Some of
Speaker 1: them are significant, you know, like dismantling the Department of
Speaker 1: Education or really dramatically trying to expand the president's powers
Speaker 1: and immigration.
Speaker 2: Some are really minor, like rolling back a Biden era
Speaker 2: restriction on how much water can flow through showerheads.
Speaker 1: He one hundred percent signed an executive order on water pressure.
Speaker 1: He signed on one of the days that the tariff
Speaker 1: news was blowing up. And this has been a bugaboo
Speaker 1: of his free years.
Speaker 2: From minor to major, Trump has rolled out his executive
Speaker 2: orders with astonishing speed. Josh says that strategy has vulnerabilities
Speaker 2: and has left Trump's orders open to legal challenges, but
Speaker 2: he also says that speed has been one of the
Speaker 2: administration's most effective tools. It's created the effect of flooding
Speaker 2: the zone and allowed Trump to push the limits of
Speaker 2: his power.
Speaker 1: We are seeing this plan put into place by Trump
Speaker 1: allies over months and years, the dramatically reshape the country,
Speaker 1: the government, the presidency, or try to, you know, with
Speaker 1: the stroke of his sharpie signature.
Speaker 2: I'm David Gera and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today. On the show taking stock of the
Speaker 2: first one hundred days of President Trump's second term and
Speaker 2: his efforts to reshape the American presidency, Bloomberg's Josh Winrove says,
Speaker 2: one thing is certain. The first one hundred days of
Speaker 2: President Trump's second term have looked very different from his
Speaker 2: first term.
Speaker 1: It is almost night and day different from the first
Speaker 1: term to the second term in terms of how they
Speaker 1: hit the ground running. And for instance, no one really
Speaker 1: knew who was in charge. Now there's like a clear
Speaker 1: delineation of authority. There's much less infighting, there's much less
Speaker 1: sort of public sniping and leaking and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And of course they know the mechanics of government much
Speaker 1: better than they did. He was a group of outsiders
Speaker 1: in so many cases in twenty twenty five, it's staffed
Speaker 1: by people who not only in many cases worked with
Speaker 1: the president of his first term, but have spent months
Speaker 1: over the past few years preparing for when they get
Speaker 1: another kick at the can.
Speaker 2: Josh says planning for Trump's second term actually started soon
Speaker 2: after his first one ended, with some aids from his
Speaker 2: first term, creating initiatives like Project twenty twenty five to
Speaker 2: lay the groundwork for the policies the administration is now
Speaker 2: rolling out.
Speaker 1: And so they were able to hit the ground running
Speaker 1: in a very quick way, completely at odds with the
Speaker 1: first term, where they were sort of, you know, building
Speaker 1: the plane in mid air. Now again, a lot of
Speaker 1: questions I think remain for them. Can all these executive
Speaker 1: orders be codified? Will Republicans and Congress get together and
Speaker 1: pass the bill? And of course Trump pledged quick wins
Speaker 1: on things like foreign affairs, a deal in Ukraine to
Speaker 1: and the fighting there and in Russia's invasion, Those have
Speaker 1: of course proven elusive so far.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about some of the administration's top
Speaker 2: priorities during the first few months of this term, and
Speaker 2: let's start with the economy. Start with trade. How much
Speaker 2: has this rollout of these tariffs, of this trade policy
Speaker 2: gone according to plan.
Speaker 1: They have clearly adapted. They would say that that's part
Speaker 1: and parcel of the process here, you know. But for instance,
Speaker 1: some of the early tariff announcements were on China, Canada
Speaker 1: and Mexico. And on the Chinese tariffs they kept them,
Speaker 1: but the Canada ones were delayed, enacted, clawed back, and
Speaker 1: still to this day remained in effect separate from the
Speaker 1: tariff regime that surprised everyone you know on April second
Speaker 1: and sent markets into a tailspin. So there has definitely
Speaker 1: been adjustment. They've of course exempted some things like smartphones
Speaker 1: from some of their tariffs, but only because they plan
Speaker 1: on hit England with entirely separate tariff and by the way,
Speaker 1: one that is probably more legally sound and permanent and
Speaker 1: on stronger legal footing and could stand the test of
Speaker 1: time more easily. So yes, it has been chaotic. What's
Speaker 1: also a fact is that he has said repeatedly that
Speaker 1: he believes in tariffs, and it seems clear that some tariff,
Speaker 1: and a big one is going to stay in place
Speaker 1: one way or another. He told Time this month Time
Speaker 1: magazine that if in a year tariff's of twenty thirty
Speaker 1: or even fifty percent remain in place, he will consider
Speaker 1: that a quote total victory.
Speaker 2: What do you take away from the way he's reacted
Speaker 2: to feedback and pushback from some of his supporters. I
Speaker 2: think of the investor Bill Ackman. I think of the
Speaker 2: feedback that he's gotten in the markets when shortly after
Speaker 2: what he called Liberation Day, we saw red light flashing
Speaker 2: in the bond market. Is he reacting and what does
Speaker 2: that tell you just about his willingness to change or adjust.
Speaker 1: He's essentially shrugged it off. We should know. Elon Musk
Speaker 1: has been sending anti tariff messages as well, and has
Speaker 1: seemed to have fallen from the sort of top tier
Speaker 1: of President Trump's orbit just a little bit over the
Speaker 1: course of this. Trump believes that tariffs are an end,
Speaker 1: not just a means to an end, and that is
Speaker 1: at odds with even some of his hawkage sort of
Speaker 1: tariff friendly staff, like for instance, Secretary Besson, too are
Speaker 1: reporting is said. Secretary Besson favors using tariffs more as
Speaker 1: a tool to extract concessions, including reductions and other tariff levels,
Speaker 1: reductions of non tariff barriers, investments like hey, Volkswagen, build
Speaker 1: another plant in America rather than just having them for
Speaker 1: the sake of having them. By the way, David, as
Speaker 1: you know, there's a contradiction in so much of what
Speaker 1: Trump is doing. Right, He's talked about tariffs both as
Speaker 1: an on shoring thing and as a revenue tool. Those
Speaker 1: things are of course in conflict with one another to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, and so I think Trump is not,
Speaker 1: you know, beefing with the bill Ackmans of the world,
Speaker 1: or the Ken Griffins of the world, or the Elons
Speaker 1: of the world per se, who have signaled, to varying extent,
Speaker 1: some sort of unease with what is going on. And
Speaker 1: he is at least acknowledging the market reaction, talking about
Speaker 1: the yippie reaction that led to that April ninth, you know,
Speaker 1: clawback where he brought about five dozen countries from numbers
Speaker 1: above ten down to ten and then ratcheted up China.
Speaker 1: But on balance, the market seemed to react positively to that.
Speaker 1: So he's sort of shape shifting in real time and
Speaker 1: responding to it and not really getting into flame wars.
Speaker 1: But like he still is an avowed believer in.
Speaker 2: Tariffs, sticking with the economy. Let's talk about taxes, and
Speaker 2: you brought this up just a moment ago. The way
Speaker 2: that he looks at tariffs is as a means by
Speaker 2: which he could pay for extending tax cuts. What is
Speaker 2: the administration's current plan for doing that.
Speaker 1: The tariff and tax policy is moving as quickly as
Speaker 1: it could reasonably move. I mean, they are hoping for
Speaker 1: significant progress on that in the next few months. And
Speaker 1: what they will do is not only extend the expiring
Speaker 1: tax cuts, which by the way, need action. Right barring
Speaker 1: them doing something, they go away. These go the way
Speaker 1: taxes go up as opposed to them just trying to
Speaker 1: enact a proactive tax cut. But they do also want
Speaker 1: to enact proactive tax cuts on top of that, including
Speaker 1: his no tax on tips pledge. They've flirted with doing
Speaker 1: a higher tax rate on millionaires or the Trump has
Speaker 1: sort of sent mixed messages about that, seems to be
Speaker 1: more or less distancing himself from it, at least politically,
Speaker 1: so they're looking at ways to do this there. Republicans
Speaker 1: in Congress are also looking at tools to kind of
Speaker 1: game the math a little bit and make the tax
Speaker 1: cut extension not count as a CBO score. Even though
Speaker 1: of course it would count in terms of revenue, So
Speaker 1: all these things are in the mix. Trump sort of
Speaker 1: vision is that tax cuts else with tariffs, in particular
Speaker 1: tax cuts for domestic manufacturing potentially will drive a rebound,
Speaker 1: and that spending cuts led by Elon Musk and his
Speaker 1: DOGE efforts and additional revenues tariff revenues will either shrink
Speaker 1: the deficit or help facilitate those tax cuts.
Speaker 2: On that point, and this was a dramatic start to
Speaker 2: this term, the work of Elon Musk and his small
Speaker 2: team kind of going through various agencies and bureaus and
Speaker 2: making cuts and laying off workers. Is there any evidence
Speaker 2: to suggest that that's made any kind of a difference
Speaker 2: in terms of what the government spending. Has it been
Speaker 2: a cost saver? Broadly speaking, it's.
Speaker 1: Been a cost saver, But the indications are that it's
Speaker 1: much more modest than was initially pledged. Certainly compared to
Speaker 1: mister Musk's initial projection of two trillion in the annual
Speaker 1: savings on a federal budget of about seven trillion, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's going to come in way, way, way, way way
Speaker 1: below that. I mean they're talking about something like one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty billion memory serves right now, so they're
Speaker 1: going to save money but much less. And what we've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of reversals on is some of the
Speaker 1: staffing cuts save made. You know, they fire people and
Speaker 1: then have to bring them back, either because a court
Speaker 1: tells them to or because they realize that people were
Speaker 1: doing a job that they didn't want to do without.
Speaker 1: But it has produced some savings and it's brought with
Speaker 1: it a bit of a political impact, including potentially a
Speaker 1: political price. But Trump has so far has sort of
Speaker 1: been almost gleeful to be associated with it because he
Speaker 1: wants to be seen to be breaking down the status quo.
Speaker 2: Coming up an update on another policy priority for the
Speaker 2: White House, immigration and how that's part of a bigger
Speaker 2: fight over the limits of a president's power playing out
Speaker 2: in courtrooms across the country. A hallmark of the first
Speaker 2: one hundred days of President Trump's second term has been
Speaker 2: his effort to broadly reshape immigration policy. Over the last
Speaker 2: few months, he's repealed temporary protected status for Venezuelans, sent
Speaker 2: additional troops to the US Mexico border, and use the
Speaker 2: seventeen ninety eight Alien Enemy Act to speed up the
Speaker 2: deportation process. So I asked Bloomberg's Josh Wingrove how the
Speaker 2: implementation of these policies has gone so far.
Speaker 1: Trump consistently says that he thinks the election was substantially
Speaker 1: about the border, and so they wanted to come out
Speaker 1: swinging on border things. Along the border. He's had success
Speaker 1: in dramatically reducing border crossings. The numbers speak for themselves.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons for that. The tension and
Speaker 1: the potential constitutional crisis has come on their efforts within
Speaker 1: the country to sort of grab people and remove them,
Speaker 1: which is an imperfect process and of course has led
Speaker 1: to in at least a couple of cases, people being
Speaker 1: sent away to an El Salvadori in prison that a
Speaker 1: court has ordered the government to quote facilitate the return of,
Speaker 1: as well as some admitted errors of the government in
Speaker 1: its own deportations. Now, the politics of this are messy.
Speaker 1: Democrats do seem split on this issue, but the ones
Speaker 1: leaning into it, of course are saying that due process
Speaker 1: matters whether you're a documented citizen or not, and so
Speaker 1: to be able to sort of disappear anyone to an
Speaker 1: El Salvadori in prison overnight raises of course, all kinds
Speaker 1: of questions where you're headed. Though there's potentially a standoff
Speaker 1: with the Supreme Court. Trump has said he will listen
Speaker 1: to this Supreme Court, although in previous rulings, sort of
Speaker 1: eye of the beholder on whether you believe that the
Speaker 1: administration is hewing to the exact language of the Court's order.
Speaker 1: They of course argue that they are. But the immigration
Speaker 1: fight is proving more unpopular as time goes on. The
Speaker 1: low hanging fruit for Trump of closing the border, cracking
Speaker 1: down on gangs and criminals, all that is popular. What
Speaker 1: is less popular is sort of extra judicial dead of
Speaker 1: knight grabbing of people, documented people and sending them away.
Speaker 2: Josh, the courts are the crucible in which the president
Speaker 2: is fighting this fight over the limits of executive power.
Speaker 2: I'm curious, as you watch all of these many fights
Speaker 2: unfolding and courts across the country, what are the conflicts
Speaker 2: that you're paying the closest attention to that will tell
Speaker 2: you what the limits of that power, in fact are.
Speaker 1: It's probably the immigration cases. But I think the administration
Speaker 1: does view this as a fight over executive power, and
Speaker 1: in their mind they are arguing that it is their
Speaker 1: power to reshape the bureaucracy and the agencies and the
Speaker 1: departments that is being stymied either by the bureaucracy or
Speaker 1: by court orders on behalf of the bureaucracy. Of course,
Speaker 1: if they find themselves as they have, in sort of
Speaker 1: open conflict with a court order, that gets into a
Speaker 1: pretty cut and dry clash of the executive and judicial
Speaker 1: branches pretty quickly. But right now Trump is definitely, by
Speaker 1: definition testing and trying to remake what he and conservatives
Speaker 1: believe has been this sort of mandate creep of the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy that has made it impossible for presidents to get
Speaker 1: anything done expeditiously.
Speaker 2: Then, of course there's President Trump's approach to foreign policy.
Speaker 2: In addition to his America First trade policies, he scrapped
Speaker 2: USAID ending programs critical to promoting America's soft power overseas
Speaker 2: and changed how the US interacts with its allies on
Speaker 2: the world stage. Talking about how much the United States's
Speaker 2: role in the world has changed over the first hundred
Speaker 2: days of President Trump's second term, and I think there's
Speaker 2: probably no clearer example than how it has regarded and
Speaker 2: dealt with in Ala and Europe, with Ukraine, how much
Speaker 2: is that emblematic of the way the US now sees
Speaker 2: its traditional allies what we've seen in terms of how
Speaker 2: that relationship is deteriorated.
Speaker 1: President Trump is just very transactional on these things, and
Speaker 1: with you, he is surprised at G seven counterparts by
Speaker 1: coming in and saying, Russia is in a strong position.
Speaker 1: You know, We've got to end this war. Otherwise Russia's
Speaker 1: going to run rough shot all over Ukraine. The view
Speaker 1: of the virtually the rest of the G seven was
Speaker 1: that Putin was kind of on the ropes and that
Speaker 1: if you kept giving weapons to Ukraine that things might turn.
Speaker 1: But it is true that appetite for this conflict to
Speaker 1: continue is waning in many corners of the world, and
Speaker 1: so we'll see where it goes. But Trump is pulling
Speaker 1: back on what are traditional alliances, or at least alignments
Speaker 1: of American either military power or foreign policy, or interest
Speaker 1: abroad or soft power abroad. But the question is is,
Speaker 1: of course, is there a price for this, right like
Speaker 1: shutting down elements of the State Department will create lanes
Speaker 1: invariably in corners of the world for Russia and China
Speaker 1: to expand its influence. Shutting down USAID will curtail the
Speaker 1: ability of the US to demonstrate soft power around the world,
Speaker 1: and waging these teriff fights will of course upset not
Speaker 1: only other governments and countries that have traditionally been US allies,
Speaker 1: but the people in them. Trump wants to sell more
Speaker 1: US goods abroad. It is a fair question whether Europeans, Canadians,
Speaker 1: Japanese Australians are going to want to buy US goods
Speaker 1: when they feel their country is being batted around on
Speaker 1: the teriff fight. So you know, he has, I think
Speaker 1: a clear approach here. The response, I think is very unclear.
Speaker 1: And we don't know where the tariff stuff is going
Speaker 1: to settle. We don't know where the sort of boycott
Speaker 1: effective consumers abroad is going to settle. We don't know
Speaker 1: where the economy is going to settle. We don't know
Speaker 1: what Vladimir Putin will do with this deal that's been
Speaker 1: hanging on the table for weeks ish.
Speaker 2: One hundred days an arbitrary metric milestone. You've been talking
Speaker 2: to President Trump's allies and aids. How do they see
Speaker 2: it and what do they say about it? As a
Speaker 2: jumping off point for the next hundred days and two
Speaker 2: hundred days and the rest of his term.
Speaker 1: There is a reason why, whether it's one hundred or
Speaker 1: two hundred or fifty or whatever people tend to measure
Speaker 1: the early days of administration. It's because you lose steam
Speaker 1: and you try to do things, You try to get
Speaker 1: things through the Congress before the midterms, when, of course, historically,
Speaker 1: although not necessarily always, the governing party loses at least
Speaker 1: the House. And so Trump is raising the clock and
Speaker 1: that is why he's rushing things in one hundred days,
Speaker 1: and that's why they teed up over one hundred executive
Speaker 1: orders to roll out in those one hundred days. Going forward,
Speaker 1: in the next hundred days, I think we're going to
Speaker 1: focus a ton on trade. They're trying to get something
Speaker 1: done with China, and they have a series of other
Speaker 1: national security slash foreign policy discussions with Iran of course
Speaker 1: in Ukraine that they're trying to get some sort of
Speaker 1: resolution on. And so I think he's going to try
Speaker 1: to pivot his attention to that, and he will continue
Speaker 1: to face pressure about what all these tariffs are going
Speaker 1: to do to the American economy and the American markets
Speaker 1: and the American bond market, what have you, and he'll
Speaker 1: no doubt be under pressure to adjust as things go.
Speaker 1: But the dream of the administration is that they land
Speaker 1: a reconciliation bill, they get the tax cuts they wanted,
Speaker 1: the tariff stuff, settles in a place that markets can
Speaker 1: live with, and that they notch a bunch of wins
Speaker 1: on foreign policy. That is their dream. But of course
Speaker 1: there are warning signs flashing on literally all of those.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
Speaker 2: This episode is produced by David Fox and Julia Press,
Speaker 2: with support from Rachel Lewis Krisky. It was edited by
Speaker 2: Tracy Sanielson, Justin Sink, and Josh Wingrove. It was fact
Speaker 2: checked by Adriana Tapia and mixed and sound designed by
Speaker 2: Alex Sagia. Special thanks to Bloomberg's White House team. Our
Speaker 2: senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso.
Speaker 2: Our deputy executive producer is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer
Speaker 2: is Nicole Beemster Boor. Sage Bauman is Blomberg's head of Podcasts.
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