ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump has decided to give U.S. automakers a break on those steep tariffs on imports of goods from Canada and Mexico that went into effect this week but only until April 2. It's the latest in a series of whiplash moves on tariffs. NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson has been keeping track of the back and forth, and she's at the White House. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi there.
SHAPIRO: It was only yesterday that these 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico took effect, and today, things have changed. What happened?
LIASSON: There's a carve-out now. The Big Three automakers - GM, Ford and Stellantis, who have been hit hard because their supply chains are so integrated between the three countries - U.S., Mexico and Canada. To make a car, the parts travel back and forth over the borders many times. So they appealed for a break, and they got one, along with all the other U.S. car companies. And here's how White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt explained it.
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KAROLINE LEAVITT: We spoke with the Big Three auto dealers. We are going to give a one-month exemption on any autos coming through USMCA. Reciprocal tariffs will still go into effect on April 2. But at the request of the companies associated with USMCA, the president is giving them an exemption for one month so they are not at an economic disadvantage.
LIASSON: So USMCA is the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. That's a trade deal, a free-trade deal that Donald Trump himself negotiated in his first term to replace NAFTA. So up until now, there have been no tariffs on any products between the U.S., Mexico and Canada, and now the U.S. car companies are going to get a reprieve from Trump's new tariffs until April.
SHAPIRO: A month isn't a long time. What...
LIASSON: No.
SHAPIRO: ...Happens after the month is up?
LIASSON: So April 2 is the date that Trump says he will put in place what he calls reciprocal tariffs. We don't quite know what they'll be. We don't know what their tariff rates will be or the products, but they'll be on products coming from all over the world. The general idea is that the U.S. will retaliate against countries that have tariffs on U.S. goods. Trump describes this as, they tariff us, we'll tariff them, as if he wants to create a level playing field, although the tariffs on Canada and Mexico were not about that. They were about fentanyl and immigration. But at that point, April 2, we assume there would be tariffs on foreign car imports from all over the world. Here's how Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, on Fox News today, described what happened.
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HOWARD LUTNICK: What they said was, look, we're domestic American automakers, and if you put a 25% tariff on us, and you don't put it on the Germans and you don't put it on the Koreans and you don't put it on the Japanese, you're helping everybody but us. So come on. Can you help us?
LIASSON: And it turns out, the president could help them, and he did, at least, temporarily. So those tariffs on Canada and Mexico were put in place using emergency powers to try to curb illegal immigration and stop the flow of fentanyl. So Trump can put these tariffs on and hand out exemptions from them to corporations that lobby him because this is a power that the president has under the emergency powers. Tariffs are his go-to economic tool. They're very well-suited to his kind of broad unchecked view of the powers of the executive branch. He doesn't need court approval or congressional approval. This is something he can do by himself.
SHAPIRO: What's the overall goal of these tariffs?
LIASSON: Well, that's a good question. There have been so many goals that Trump has talked about, it's hard to parse them all. As I said, for Canada and Mexico, it was to stop illegal immigration and fentanyl. For - at other points, he says it's about jobs. Here's Lutnick again from that Fox News interview, channeling the president.
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LUTNICK: Why are our Michigan jobs in Canada? Why are our Michigan jobs in Canada? And that's what the president's going to address. He's going to say, come on back. Come on back. We're going to build Michigan. We're going to build Ohio.
LIASSON: That - so the answer is, the reason why they're in Canada is because it's hard to go back to being a completely self-sufficient economy that doesn't rely on trade with your neighbors after they've spent years transforming their businesses and becoming completely integrated into a free trade bloc.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Thank you.
LIASSON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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