Unpacking some of Donald Trump’s first executive orders
President Donald Trump promised to sign in around 100 executive orders on day one of his second term in office. While the list of executive orders signed by Trump continues to grow, the announcement of new tariffs was notably absent.
Marc Goldwein is senior vice president and senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan organization with bipartisan roots. He joined “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio to discuss what was — and what wasn’t — included in some of Trump’s early executive decisions and orders.
David Brancaccio: Voters spoke early and often about their anger over inflation. President Trump addressed inflation yesterday, by — what is it — directing every piece of the federal government to deal with it? I look for details and didn’t see details. What about you?
Marc Goldwein: No, I mean — so look — I wouldn’t say he addressed inflation, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t say what he did was particularly strange, right? So a lot of the executive orders you’re going to see early on are sort of orders to start thinking about how to make orders. And that’s what this inflation one is. Does it solve inflation? Does it even reduce inflation? No, but might that get somebody in some agency to think a little bit more hard about not worsening price increases or bringing them down? Perhaps it could. Either way, it’s mainly sort of a statement of the administration’s priorities more than an actual change in policy.
Brancaccio: Now on federal government workers, the president’s getting strict on remote work for federal workers — but a hiring freeze, including at the Internal Revenue Service, something you will have noted in the work you do?
Goldwein: Yeah, look, it’s supposed to be temporary while they “figure things out.” Overall, a hiring freeze is an opportunity to save the government money. Maybe it’s not the most efficient one, but it allows you to have a smaller workforce. The interesting thing is, one agency that’s supposed to be really ramping up its hiring is the IRS. And the reason is that they were given special funding to expand their tax enforcement, and if we don’t let them ramp up their funding, that’s lost tax revenue. This policy would actually worsen the deficit, assuming this freeze is allowed to stay in place.
Brancaccio: And, a lot to digest here, but from your first and second read through, are you surprised by what’s not in here?
Goldwein: Well, we heard there’s gonna be tariffs on day one. I didn’t see tariff policy. What I did see is some announcements about what tariff policy might happen, and I think he talked about a tariff on China related to TikTok, but we didn’t see announcements about the tariffs themselves. And that was really what President Trump ran on. The other thing — and this doesn’t surprise me, but it might surprise some listeners or some people that have been listening to the campaign stump — there wasn’t a reversal that I saw of the electric vehicle rule or of some of the other bigger, costly Biden executive actions. And the main reason for that is a lot of these actions actually go through the rule-making process, and so they do take time to unravel. You can’t necessarily just snap your fingers and do it on day one or day two.