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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Friday, April 11th. I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that would like to congratulate Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, on her very exciting ideas for AI and education, or as she would call it, A1. 

[clip of Linda McMahon] I heard this morning, I wish I could remember the source, but that there is a school system that’s gonna start um making sure that first graders or even pre-Ks have A1 teaching you know every year starting you know that far down in the grades. And that’s just a that’s a wonderful thing. Kids are sponges. They just absorb everything. And so it wasn’t all that long ago that it’s we’re gonna have internet in our schools. Woop. Now, okay, let’s do see A1 and how and how can that be helpful? 

Jane Coaston: Now, I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I am kind of hungry. [music break] On today’s show, egg prices are still up, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio warns international students about getting their visas revoked if they cause a ruckus. But let’s start with the aftermath of Liberation Day, because we’re still knee deep in it. If you’re not feeling better after President Donald Trump paused the biggest so-called reciprocal tariffs on 75 countries on Wednesday, you’re not alone. The stock market is just as confused as you are. Here’s CBS News. 

[clip of unnamed CBS News host] Markets tumbling out of the gate today, they have yet to recover after one of the most historic days of gains in recent history. The bounce back followed President Trump announcing a pause in reciprocal tariffs on most of the US’s trade partners while once again raising the levies on China. Yesterday, the president said he was increasing tariffs on Beijing to 125%. 

Jane Coaston: Why the anxiety? Because, let’s be real here, none of us, not one single person, has any idea what Trump is going to do next on tariffs. Case in point, the 90-day pause on massive tariffs on some of our biggest trading partners. During Trump’s cabinet meeting on Thursday, a journalist asked, could we see an extension of that pause? Per Trump, the answer is maybe? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I mean if we can’t make the deal that we want to make or we have to make or that’s you know good for both parties, it’s got to be good for both parties and then we’d go back to where we were. 

[clip of unnamed journalist] You’d go back to the numbers that you announced last week. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Yeah. I think so. 

[clip of unnamed journalist] You wouldn’t extend the pause?

[clip of President Donald Trump] Yeah, uh we’ll have to see what happens at that time. 

Jane Coaston: You know, the art of the deal is when you just mix shit up on the fly. I’m beginning to understand Trump’s many bankruptcies. But while all of that has been roiling the markets and Americans’ economic lives, the House GOP did get something done. They adopted a budget that could result in massive cuts to the social safety net, including Medicaid. In fact, House Republicans were able to get the budget adopted because they promised hardliners like Texas Republican Representative Chip Roy that there would be more than a trillion dollars in cuts to, quote, “mandatory spending.” Programs like Medicaid and Medicare. But according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, don’t worry, they’ll just be putting in work requirements to go after gamers or something. 

[clip of House Speaker Mike Johnson] No one has talked about cutting one benefit in Medicaid to anyone who’s duly owed. What we’ve talked about is returning work requirements. So for example, you don’t have able-bodied young men on a program that’s designed for single mothers and the elderly and disabled. They’re draining resources from people who are actually do that. So if you if you clean that up and shore it up, you save a lot of money and you return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day. 

Jane Coaston: Tough news for Trump’s biggest online fans who seem to spend most of their time tweeting about how women having jobs makes them sad. Anyway, here’s a reminder. Roughly a fifth of Americans are on Medicaid and might not even know it because Medicaid programs might have different names in different states. Take Medi-Cal in California, for example. So to talk more about the tariff debacle and the House GOP’s budget, I spoke with California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna. Representative Khanna, welcome to What a Day. 

Ro Khanna: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: So the Trump administration wants to paint his retreat from most of the reciprocal tariffs that aren’t reciprocal as really the art of the deal. As if this was the plan all along. I do not buy that. Do you? 

Ro Khanna: Well what deal did he get? Look, I say to people there’s only one thing we’ve learned now that can check Donald Trump’s unconstitutional power, the United States bond markets. And the reality is he saw the yields on bonds going to 4.5, 4.6 percent, the world selling off U.S. treasuries. And more than the markets, that spooked him. But you’re seeing today the markets equally uncertain and losing about half of what they gained yesterday and the reason for that is people are waking up and realizing, wow, there’s still 10% tariffs on every country. There’s still a trade war with China. And just because he pulled back from total self-destruction doesn’t mean that he has fixed his policy errors. 

Jane Coaston: House Democrats were trying to revoke Trump’s national emergency authority to impose tariffs, and it looked like it would have some Republican support. What are you hearing from Republicans in the House about this? 

Ro Khanna: Behind the scenes this is the first time they’ve been uh flabbergasted by what the president has done I mean there is the cardinal sin in america is destroying wealth, destroying money, destroying livelihoods and that’s what Trump uh is doing and so you’ve had some courageous uh or common sense republicans in swing districts like Don Bacon who’s actually introduced legislation that I’m on uh to take back congress’ power over tariffs uh I I think this is the one place you may see Republicans breaking from Trump. You’ve seen a few already and over the next month, depending on how the economy and markets do and bond yields do, you may see more. 

Jane Coaston: You represent Silicon Valley and tech companies are being hit pretty hard by these tariffs. Reuters reported Thursday that Apple chartered cargo flights to get 600 tons of iPhones out of India before the tariffs hit. I’ve been a little confused by the Silicon Valley reaction to all of this. What are you hearing from people in the industry right now? 

Ro Khanna: Well I’ll share with you a private text, I won’t say who it was from, he said, well, we voted for Trump over Vice President Harris because we uh and he used some profanity both of them but we thought at least under Trump we we would make money and now we’re realizing that’s not the case and I said back well I said how how are those IPO’s looking and how are the mergers and acquisitions looking because you were so critical of President Biden and Lina Khan and the administration for uh having antitrust enforcement how is it looking now? So I think you have at least in silicon valley some beginning of buyer’s remorse of what this administration is doing. 

Jane Coaston: We are not out of the woods of economic catastrophe yet. A lot of the tariffs are paused, but tariffs against China are going up and Trump says they’re now at 145%. You sit on the House Select Committee on China. Is this a reasonable strategy to combat China’s growing global influence? 

Ro Khanna: Not the way he’s gone about it first of all they’re still ten percent tarriffs on every single country in the world and I think uh we need to remind people of that that he just took away the reciprocal tarriffs but he’s got a blanket ten percent tariff means almost every good that we import is ten percent more. Your cars uh your groceries uh your construction costs for homes uh and construction costs for factories. Secondly, he’s gone after the China with a blanket policy. I mean, it’s one thing to do what President Biden did, protect steel, protect aluminum, have strategic tariffs on industries that make sense and have a tough negotiation. But he is just doing a trade war with China. And that’s, I think, what’s been destabilizing as opposed to smart policy. And the important thing is he’s also not combining it with any federal investment. There’s no financing to bring chips back. There’s no financing for steel. There’s no financing in the workforce. There’s know government procurement. And tariffs alone aren’t what’s gonna build America’s industrial base. 

Jane Coaston: What would a trade war with China really mean for the U.S. and for Americans? Because it feels like that’s maybe where we’re heading. 

Ro Khanna: Well, it depends how bad it gets. You can’t just reverse 40 years of policy in one day, what he calls liberation day, or you’re going to destroy companies. I mean, if you’re a factory here and you have sourced parts from China, you can say, okay, let’s try to bring those supply chains back. But if on day one you say you can’t get those parts, what’s going to happen to the factory here? And I guess the question is, usually Trump is the master at political spin. But you know what you haven’t seen? Any people, any business leaders standing with him saying, we’re investing in new factories in America because of Donald Trump’s tariffs. You know why? Because they’re not doing it. 

Jane Coaston: So I want to talk about what happened Thursday morning. House Republicans approved a budget framework to enact Trump’s agenda. Two Republicans joined Democrats in voting no, but it seems like Republicans have made their weird coalition work in ways they haven’t been able to do in recent years. Where does that leave Democrats? 

Ro Khanna: Well, let’s be clear what they’re voting for. They’re voting up to $1.5 trillion dollars of cuts in Medicaid and social services, like food stamps, like funding for kids’ schools and working class neighborhoods, like student loans. They’re voted for those cuts to finance a $4 trillion tax break to the wealthiest Americans, where 83% of it is gonna go to the top 1% of Americans. And you have a lot of people uneasy with that because they understand that you can’t take away people’s health care to fund tax breaks for the very wealthy but they’re going down this uh this road and by the way they’re adding massively to the deficits uh… and so we’ll see if they actually do in reconciliation vote for this uh but it would be a political disaster for them. 

Jane Coaston: But I think that, to some degree, Democrats had kind of been banking on Republicans not being able to get their tiny majority and their very messy coalition of people who don’t like each other to work together. And so far, that’s not happening. So what can Democrats do? 

Ro Khanna: Well, we were banking on that because, as Democrats, we don’t want these Medicaid cuts. 

Jane Coaston: Right, no. 

Ro Khanna: We don’t care about the politics of it for 2026. We want to make sure that people aren’t being taken, their health care isn’t being taken away. And I think the thing to do is to organize in these red districts. I did, as you may know, three of these town halls in Bakersfield, Anaheim, Norco, one thousand people are showing up and members of Congress will respond to that and so what we need to do is continue to organize in these districts so that the representatives have a choice they can either lose their seat next time around uh or and be loyal to uh to Trump and Musk uh where they can stand with the people in their district. Some of these districts two-thirds of the folks are on medicaid and so when people say what can you do what can I do what find a red district near you that is close and and help uh knock on doors, call people, do social media in those districts. 

Jane Coaston: Representative Khanna, thank you so much for your time. 

Ro Khanna: Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five star review on Apple podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines.

[clip of Marco Rubio] If you come to this country as a student, we expect you to go to class and study and get a degree. If you’ve come here to like vandalize a library, take over a campus and do all kinds of crazy things, you know, we’re gonna get rid of these people. And we’re going to continue to do it. So when we identify lunatics like these, we take away their student visa. No one’s entitled to a student visa. 

Jane Coaston: That’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a cabinet meeting on Thursday. He’s telling our very bored-looking president why the administration’s revoking hundreds of student visas. Rubio says the press covers student visas, quote, “like they’re some sort of birthright.” 

[clip of Marco Rubio] A student visa is like me inviting you into my home. If you come into my home and put all kinds of crap on my couch, I’m going to kick you out of my house. And and so, you know, that’s what we’re doing with our country thanks to the president. 

Jane Coaston: Well, I guess I’m the press, and I happen to not be so chill about student visas being pulled. Especially by this administration. So here’s where we are. Last month, Rubio said the State Department had revoked more than 300 visas. Reasons varied from accusations of supporting terrorist organizations to old misdemeanors. Which means Rubio’s been busy and he’s still at it. On Wednesday, the federal government submitted a memo over the case of Mahmoud Khalil. He’s a Columbia University activist detained by immigration officials over his role in pro-Palestinian campus protests last year. The Associated Press obtained the memo. The administration argues it could deport Khalil based on his beliefs. Rubio does not accuse Khalil of any crime, but wrote that Khalil’s presence in the U.S. undermines, quote, “U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States.” Khalil is a legal permanent resident, by the way. His attorneys say the memo proves the administration is targeting their clients’ free speech rights. The filing comes ahead of a hearing over whether Khalil can continue being detained during immigration proceedings. That’s set for today. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Eggs. So when I got in, the press went absolutely crazy the first week. They said, eggs have quadrupled in price. I said, I just got here. Tell me about it. And Brooke Rollins and our team did a great job and eggs are down now 79% and they’re all over the place. 

Jane Coaston: It wouldn’t be a Trump press conference without a Trump mischaracterization, right? For this Monday press conference, it was eggs. He’s saying egg prices are down, but the very same week, Thursday to be precise, his own Bureau of Labor Statistics said that eggs hit a record high, $6.23 per dozen. Still, he couldn’t stop beating the egg theme. Here he is at a cabinet meeting Thursday. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] And eggs are down. 

[clip of unnamed speaker] Eggs are down. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Big, right? Big.

[clip of unnamed speaker] Yes. Yes sir. Wholesale prices. Retail will come. Easter is the Super Bowl for eggs. So you know there may be a little fluctuation, but no, we feel really good about it. Thank you.

[clip of President Donald Trump] That’s what I hear. Thank you. 

[clip of unnamed speaker] Thank you. 

Jane Coaston: Maybe you’re thinking, I know we all live in echo chambers, but how can he directly contradict the facts? I mean, easily it’s Donald Trump. But to give Trump a smidgen of credit, you may have heard a cabinet member clarify that prices were down for wholesalers, just not for the rest of us at grocery stores. Maybe this is because Trump can’t remember the last time he bought eggs at the store and doesn’t know the difference. The Social Security Administration seems to be rolling back plans to restrict phone services. You may remember when the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, strolled into SSA headquarters to tackle fraud. SSA then announced folks would have to go online or visit in person to file for benefits or change banking information. Need to call instead? Nope. We’re talking about seniors and some folks with disabilities, so the plan hit some backlash, of course. SSA delayed and then rolled back some of that. Multiple outlets say they’ve seen a memo that indicates the plan has almost been entirely reversed. So, phones are mostly okay for now. In the memo, Acting Deputy Commissioner Doris Diaz wrote that the agency, quote, “assessed cases of widespread fraud and teleclaims and found minimal instances.” According to the memo the SSA is suggesting implementing anti-fraud technology for telephone claims. Which leads us to ask, why didn’t they just do that in the first place? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] And Dana’s an incredible guy and we spoke to President Putin about it and they made a deal they released the young ballerina and she is now out and that was good so we appreciate that. 

Jane Coaston: This is President Trump giving credit to Dana White, the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and that ballerina released is Ksenia Karelina. You might remember her as the Russian-American convicted of treason in Russia last year. She’d been sentenced to 12 years in prison for making a $52 donation to a charity aiding Ukraine. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Karelina was headed home to the U.S. Thursday after being wrongfully detained for over a year. Officials in the U.S. had called her case quote absolutely ludicrous because it was absolutely ludacris. In return, Russia’s main security agency said the US released a man accused of smuggling sensitive US electronics to Russia. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing, as we’ve been talking about on the show, as of Wednesday when Trump announced a 90-day delay in the implementation of his bat shit tariffs, the situation is looking slightly less terrifying, at least for now, but it’s still ongoing. Maybe you’ve been getting emails from every small business you’ve ever bought something from, telling you that their prices are gonna go up or that they’re still trying to figure out their sourcing or something else that sounds anxiety-inducing. I know I have, from some of my favorite cooking supply places. I love to bake and cook because how the hell else am I supposed to get through the next four years? But the spices I use in my cooking are being tariffed too. In order to see how small businesses are preparing to handle these tariffs, even as Trump keeps them in limbo as to what those tariffs will be and when they’ll go into effect, I spoke with Ori Zohar, co-founder and co-CEO of spice company Burlap & Barrel. Ori Zohar, welcome to What a Day. 

Ori Zohar: Thanks so much for having me here. 

Jane Coaston: So let’s start with the basics. You bring nearly all of your spices in from overseas where they’re grown by local farmers you partner with. What are some of the biggest ways these tarriffs are going to hit your business? 

Ori Zohar: So there is no meaningful domestic spice industry to protect. We bring in some domestic chilies and we have a father-daughter salt team in upstate New York, but really the biggest thing is that spices don’t grow in America. There’s no cinnamon industry or cumin industry. And so these tariffs are gonna charge us a tax on things that we have no alternate domestic source for. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, I seem to remember that the 18th and 19th century were riven with wars, fought over this very issue because of the lack of domestic spice production in, you know, the UK, Europe and America. So I, I’m not surprised, but which of your spices would be hit hardest by these tariffs? 

Ori Zohar: So Vietnam is one of our biggest source. We have a number of farmers at work there, including our best-selling Royal Cinnamon, which is this really spicy sweet Vietnamese cinnamon, our Robusta black pepper. We bring in garlic powder and shallot powder and onion powder and star anise and all these other spices, but Vietnam just has a beautiful climate for growing really the world’s best spices. And that with the threat of maybe a 46% reciprocal tariff, maybe more, definitely keeps me up at night. 

Jane Coaston: And speaking of Vietnam, how are you dealing with all the uncertainty? Because like like your cinnamon, which comes from Vietnam, as you mentioned, it was facing a 46 percent tariff under Trump’s original plan. And then Trump went, I decide something else. Now, it’s 10 percent while he negotiates a new deal. You don’t know what that new deal will even look like, if it will ever happen. So in a few months, maybe the tariffs go back up to 46 percent. Maybe they stay at 10 percent. Maybe they end up somewhere in the middle. Maybe they go away entirely. How do you even plan around that? 

Ori Zohar: You don’t. I think most companies in our position, we’re trying to figure out what’s going to go on in the holidays, November and December right now, and we don’t even know what’s going to happen in the rest of April. And so we’re taking it day by day. We’re trying to avoid knee-jerk reactions that will kind of mess things up. And we’re looking at any other place that we can possibly save money that doesn’t involve passing costs onto our partner farmers. We are a social enterprise. That’s not how we work. Or increasing prices on U.S. consumers, which I think is what’s gonna happen across all the other foods where there is no domestic alternative for. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, I think many of the people listening may have gotten e-mails from companies talking about how their prices may have to rise. You wrote a really interesting Instagram post about how Burlap and Barrel plans to respond to the tariffs. As you mentioned, you’re not going to change what you pay your farmers and you’re not going raise your prices. How are you going to accomplish that? 

Ori Zohar: So we’re a single origin spice company that sources from farmers in 30 countries. We can’t just uproot all this in the same way that like cinnamon trees can’t be uprooted that have been growing there for centuries and and harvested for generations. We’re trying to get really crafty about it. We’re tryna see just how much we can kind of play around with our invoices from the origin countries and all that. But really we’re tryna find ways to cut costs that won’t impact the customer experience. Maybe we ship a little bit slower. Maybe we save a little of money on our packaging. Maybe we were also putting a bunch of our fun, innovative projects on hold. We had a crazy dried kimchi that we did a couple of years ago that we lost money on every single jar that we sold. Not the best business case, but we’re gonna put some of the fun innovation projects on hold now. We really wanted to do an advent calendar this year um that was gonna get printed in China and shipped over here. And so that’s that’s off the table now. So we’re being more conservative. 

Jane Coaston: Ori, thank you so much for speaking with me. 

Ori Zohar: Yeah, great to chat with you too. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Ori Zohar, co-founder and co-CEO of Burlap and Barrel. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, remember to email us about how you and your family and your business are handling the tariff terror, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how, you can email us at whataday@crooked.com to tell us how you and yours are handling figuring out where to source your business’s materials or what to do about your dad’s retirement plans, like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and we want to hear from you. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. 

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