Others have been wary of the House bill’s effort to shift some costs of the food stamp program to states, potentially a major issue for some red states that have high numbers of food aid recipients. The House bill saves $290 billion from the food aid, and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman said the Senate savings will be “probably be a little bit lower.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, interviewed on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” played up national security. “You’ve got to realize this is a national security issue,” he said, raising the worst-case scenarios of what could happen if the U.S. were involved in a war.“We don’t make medicine in this country anymore. We don’t make ships. We don’t have enough steel and aluminum to fight a battle, right?” he said.
Lutnick stuck to that national security framing, but White House trade adviser Peter Navarro focused more on the import taxes being leverage in the bigger economic puzzle.“The world cheats us. They’ve been cheating us for decades,” Navarro said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He cited practices such as dumping products at unfairly low prices, currency manipulation and barriers to U.S. auto and agricultural products entering foreign markets.Navarro insisted the tariffs would yield broader bilateral trade deals to address all those issues. But he also relied on a separate justification when discussing China: the illicit drug trade.
“China has killed over a million people with their fentanyl,” he said.Speaking before Trump’s Truth Social post disputing the notion of exemptions, Lutnick alluded to that coming policy. “They’re going to have a special focus-type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”
With the higher rates set to be collected beginning April 9, administration officials argued that other countries would rush to the negotiating table.
“I’ve heard that there are negotiations ongoing and that there are a number of offers,” Kevin Hassett, director of the White House Economic Council, told ABC. He claimed that “more than 50 countries (were) reaching out,” though he did not name any.As the train rumbles from the elevated tracks in the Bronx into the underground subway tunnels in Manhattan, Gabriela is on her phone. She texts with friends, listens to music and consults a subway app to count down the stops to her station in Brooklyn. The phone for her is a distraction limited to idle time, which has been strategically limited by Romero.
“My kids’ schedules will make your head spin,” Romero says as the family reconvenes Saturday night in their three-bedroom walkup in Bushwick. On school days, they’re up at 5:30 a.m. and out the door by 7. Romero drives the girls to their three schools scattered around Brooklyn, then takes the subway into Manhattan, where she teaches mass communications at the Fashion Institute of Technology.Grace, 11, is a sixth grade cheerleader active in Girl Scouts, along with Gionna, 13, who sings, does debate team and has daily rehearsals for her middle school theater production.
“I’m so booked my free time is to sleep,” says Gabriela, who tries to be in bed by 10:30 p.m.In New York City, it’s common for kids to get phones early in elementary school, but Romero waited until each daughter reached middle school and started taking public transportation home alone. Years ago, she sat them down to watch “The Social Dilemma,” a documentary that Gabriela says made her realize how tech companies manipulate their users.