ERIC DEGGANS, HOST:
President Biden heads to Angola this week, and Congress returns to Capitol Hill after its Thanksgiving break, trading turkey for lame duck. Meanwhile, President-elect Trump has named nearly all of his top-ranking nominations and appointments, including a new name to head the FBI, Kash Patel. Here he is on a podcast by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in December 2023.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KASH PATEL: We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you. Whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out.
DEGGANS: NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Eric.
DEGGANS: So Patel is often described as a loyalist, but that might actually undersell his commitment to Trump. What more do we need to know about him?
LIASSON: That's right. He is totally devoted to Trump's goal, which Trump stated again and again on the campaign trail, which is to take revenge and retribution on his political enemies and the parts of the government that Trump feels targeted him unfairly. These are the so-called rule-of-law agencies - Department of Justice, FBI, Intelligence Community - who investigated Trump for a variety of things - mishandling classified documents, trying to overturn a free and fair election, working improperly with Russia in the 2016 election. And in his statement nominating Patel, Trump said that Patel would work to bring back fidelity, bravery and integrity to the FBI. I think the first word there is the most important one, fidelity, because loyalty is the coin of the realm for Trump. And Patel said recently that he would, on Day 1, shut down the FBI building and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state. And he's actually published a deep-state list of specific individuals he wants to fire. Now, we don't know yet what Republican senators will think about this nomination, but we do know that to get Patel confirmed, Trump would have to fire the current FBI director, Chris Wray, who Trump appointed but whose 10-year term doesn't end till 2027.
DEGGANS: Wow. Sounds like he's got a lot of stuff planned for Day 1. So Trump met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and spoke with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. And that's all about tariffs, right?
LIASSON: That's right. This is Trump's first big policy announcement. He says on Day 1 that he's going to put 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods coming into the United States and an extra 10% tariffs on Chinese goods. Tariffs are taxes put on imported goods. They are passed onto the American consumer. According to economists, if all these tariffs went into effect, it would raise consumer costs by about $2,000 a year. It would also blow up the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term, which eliminates tariffs between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
DEGGANS: So Trump said that Sheinbaum, quote, "agreed to stop migration through Mexico" after the tariff threat, but Sheinbaum has indicated that she did not, in fact, agree to that, but called it a, quote, "excellent conversation." So how much of all of this tariff talk is posturing and bluffing?
LIASSON: Well, that is the big question. Is this a negotiating tactic or the beginning of a real trade war? Sheinbaum says that if the tariffs go on, she'll put retaliating - retaliatory tariffs on American goods. You know, in the first term, Trump threatened tariffs on Mexico and Canada in 2019. But then he withdrew them after he negotiated some small changes in NAFTA, which was the North American Free Trade Agreement, and renamed it the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. Wall Street thinks he's bluffing. They've taken this in stride. Trump's nominee for the Treasury Department, Scott Bessent, said that tariffs are a negotiating tool. He says sometimes you have to escalate to deescalate. So that is the big question. Will he go through with this, or is this just a negotiating tactic?
DEGGANS: Well, that's NPR's Mara Liasson. Mara, thanks so much for joining us.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
