Trump Changes Tone On Tariffs, Russia And Ukraine, Education Executive Orders
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President Trump softens his stance when it comes to tariffs on China. 145% is very high, and it won't be that high. It's not going to be that high. Will his change in tone amount to a change in policy? I'm Amy Martinez, that's Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.

The Trump administration is pressuring Ukraine to accept a U.S.-backed peace deal, but a proposal to accept Russia's control of Crimea was a non-starter for the Ukrainian president. So President Trump attacked him on social media. Will the White House stay committed to the peace process? And President Trump signed a sweeping list of executive actions targeting higher education and K-12 schools. They're meant to root out DEI and end foreign funding for college programs. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day. ♪

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President Trump is singing a slightly different tune when it comes to tariffs on China. Here he is speaking with reporters at the White House yesterday. We are going to have a fair deal with China. It's going to be fair. The president's high tariffs have sparked a trade war between the world's two largest economies. And while it's not clear Trump is actually changing policy yet, he isn't.

is changing his tone. To help us sort this out, we're joined now by NPR White House correspondent Asma Khalid. Asma, good morning. Good morning. So what at this point is the White House saying about tariffs on China?

Well, this week we've heard the president and some of his top economic advisors acknowledge that the high tariff rates are not a sustainable long-term dynamic. And, you know, just to remind folks where we are at this point, Beijing has a 125% tariff on American goods. This was, of course, in response to a 145% tariff rate that the Trump administration put on Chinese goods. On Tuesday, the president told reporters that that rate is going to come down substantially.

145% is very high, and it won't be that high. It's not going to be that high. It got up to there. We were talking about fentanyl where, you know, various elements built it up to 145. No, it won't be anywhere near that high.

No, he did not give an actual number. And frankly, even if the tariff rate comes down by double digits, you're still looking at rates that are unprecedented in our lifetime. Does this really seem like a shift after all this kind of tit for tat, back and forth escalation around this? Yeah, I mean, it is. And there's really two main reasons for the shift. This tariff rate, you know, if they remain in place, they would virtually bring trade between China and the U.S. to a halt.

But this is also fundamentally, Michelle, about the stock market and the economic uncertainty that Trump's tariffs have created. You know, Trump initially acknowledged that there could be some sort of short-term economic pain, but that it would be worth it. And now you hear his team boasting that they're striking deals, that they're in conversation with some 90 countries. The Treasury Secretary was also out there this week trying to

quiet market jitters. And on a somewhat related note, the president also tried to alleviate fears that he himself had stoked last week when he suggested that he would get rid of Fed Chair Jerome Powell. No, I have no intention of firing him. I would like to see him be a little more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates.

But ultimately, Michelle, I mean, much of the economic focus has been on tariffs. And specifically, when it comes to China, the president has been softening his tough posturing. He said this week he's not going to play hardball with China's President Xi Jinping. OK, so let's talk more about China. Is this just a change in rhetoric or do we see an actual change in policy?

I mean, we're not seeing any change in policy yet, despite the optimism that President Trump is projecting. China is, of course, one of the U.S.'s biggest trading partners. Anna Ashton was with the U.S.-China Business Council for years. And so yesterday I called her up. I wanted to get guidance on this all. And I asked her, you know, what is the off ramp here? And she did not sound optimistic.

I don't think that the combination of constant threats and then wild swings in terms of how committed the White House is to those threats is likely to bring Xi Jinping to the table to negotiate a real truce. The president told reporters this week that if his administration cannot reach a deal with China, they'll just set a number unilaterally, by which he means they will set a tariff rate on their own.

That is NPR's Asma Khalid. Thanks, Asma. Good to speak with you. Sirens and the crackle of Ukraine's air defenses filled the skies of Kiev last night as Russia launched another wave of attacks. ♪

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky cut short his official trip to South Africa to return home to Kyiv. Meanwhile, the White House is expressing displeasure with Ukraine. President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance are pressuring and pushing Zelensky to accept a U.S.-backed peace deal or risk, in Trump's words, losing the country to Russia. We wanted to get a view on how these developments are seen in Russia, so we're joined by NPR's Charles Mainz from Moscow. Charles, good morning.

Morning. So once again, we've seen President Trump really lay into Ukraine and Zelensky in particular saying he is blocking a peace deal. So tell us more about this. And how is it being seen in Moscow?

Well, I think it's important to point out the White House has yet to publicly offer specifics on this peace plan, but it's clear it heavily favors Russia on paper. J.D. Vann said this deal would lock in the current front lines or something close to it. But the latest dust up with Ukraine involves Zelensky's refusal to acknowledge the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia took from Ukraine in 2014, as now formally part of Russia. This is apparently a component of this U.S. peace deal and the nonstarter for Ukraine.

You know, as to Russia's reaction, the Kremlin only said it welcomed American negotiation efforts, which, by the way, pick up again this week when White House envoy Steve Witkoff heads to Moscow. You know, one of the criticisms of Trump's approach to negotiations is that it does appear so one-sided. Trump seems to be asking a lot of Ukraine and so little of Russia. Why is that?

Well, Trump seems to say he wants peace now, and he clearly sees leverage over Kyiv as the quickest way to get there. I recently met with Sergei Plurtaev. He's the founder of a political and security platform, Vatfor, in Russia. And he argues Trump isn't offering Moscow concessions, rather acknowledging the facts on the ground. Let's listen. Yeah.

So here, Polovtaev says this is what Russia secured to battle, what it gained by force, not anything Trump, quote, gave us. And Polovtaev, I think, reflects a common view here in Russia that there's not a whole lot Trump can do to change the current battlefield dynamics unless Trump is willing to get more involved in Ukraine. And based on everything he's done and said, that looks very, very unlikely. Yeah.

And the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said the U.S. would walk away from peace talks if they don't see progress. Would Russia want that? Not entirely, because in Moscow's eyes, Trump can deliver some things quicker through diplomacy than Moscow can achieve militarily, which is why I think you see Putin offering proposals like this recent Easter Day ceasefire or possible direct talks with Ukraine to stop attacks on civilians.

You know, is that real progress? Probably most would say no. But Russia's continuous attacks and also it's shown almost no flexibility in the actual negotiations towards ending the war. Plus, it does seem that Trump has ceded to most of Russia's demands, including a ban on NATO membership for Ukraine. So why isn't Moscow jumping at that offer? Because they want more, you know, including a change of leadership in Kiev, perhaps with U.S. backing. So Moscow is happy to amplify White House frustrations with Zelenskyy.

You know, Putin's other approach here has been to expand negotiations. You know, he's inflexible on Ukraine, but extremely flexible when it comes to other deals with the U.S., whether that's investment opportunities, prisoner exchanges, even helping with negotiations with Iran. So Putin is making himself very useful to Trump and making it very hard to walk away. You know, think of it as Putin's own version of the art of the deal. How about that? That is NPR's Charles Means. Charles, thank you. Thank you, Michelle.

As the administration pushes Ukraine for a deal, President Trump has signed a sweeping list of executive actions targeting higher education and K-12 schools. They include proposals to eliminate DEI programs at colleges and new discipline guidance for public schools. NPR's Alyssa Nadrani is with us now with more details. Good morning, Alyssa. Good morning. So what do these executive actions do?

Well, let me tell you about two of the higher education orders. So the first deals with college accreditation and directs the Secretary of Education to, quote, overhaul the system. Now, accreditation is the process colleges are required to go through to receive federal financial aid. It's aimed at ensuring that a program meets an acceptable level of quality. And Trump has referred to accreditation on the campaign trail as his, quote, secret weapon in his effort to combat what he considers fraud.

ideological bias in higher education. Here's White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf. The basic idea is to force accreditation to be focused on the merit and the actual results that these universities are providing, as opposed to how woke these universities have gotten. And what's the second?

Well, it relates to colleges disclosing foreign gifts. So it essentially says that federal grants for universities could be revoked if schools do not complete full and timely disclosure of foreign funding. Now, federal law already requires schools to disclose gifts or contracts worth a quarter of a million dollars or more from foreign entities.

The new order doesn't provide specific thresholds or new rules, but it instead asserts that universities provide, quote, the American people with greater access to general information about foreign funding. So, Alyssa, you've been following this showdown between the administration and selective colleges like Harvard. How does this action fit into that?

Yeah, so in a briefing announcing the order, Scharf actually called out Harvard specifically. We believe that certain universities, including, for example, Harvard, have routinely violated this law and this law has not been effectively enforced. So Harvard didn't return a request for comment, but the order essentially gives the administration the ability to cut off federal funds from schools that don't disclose the money they receive from foreign entities. So even

You take these two together, and the administration is trying to create ways to hold colleges accountable for ideological overreach and to increase intellectual diversity on campus. What they consider ideological overreach. Exactly. So that's higher ed. What about K-12?

Basically, Trump requested new federal guidance on school discipline. The measure calls for revoking previous policies by Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama aimed at reducing racial disparities in, for example, suspensions and expulsions. And the new guidance would prohibit using, quote, racially preferential discipline policies. So once again, centering the administration's view of DEI, what about the other orders?

So the other executive actions focus on things like bolstering workforce training, improving artificial intelligence in schools, and launching a new White House initiative on historically Black colleges and universities. The collection of orders aim to cement Trump's conservative agenda when it comes to education in America, rolling back policies from the Biden administration, and put

putting in place additional levers that they can pull when colleges don't follow the policy agendas they have set forth. That is NPR's Alyssa Nadwern. Alyssa, thank you. You bet. And that's Up First for Thursday, April 24th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Ian Martinez. Thanks for listening to Up First. You can find more in-depth coverage of the stories we've talked about today and a lot more on NPR's Morning Edition. That's the radio show that Michelle Martin, Leila Fadal, Steve Inskeep, and I host. You

can find Morning Edition on your local NPR station. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Ryland Barton, Steve Drummond, Jenea Williams, and Arzu Rezvani. It was produced by Ziad Budge, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Zach Coleman and our technical director is Carly Strange. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.

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