| President Donald Trump spent four days in the Middle East this week, visiting three countries that his company has major business deals with, trailed by American billionaires, and promising vague investments in the United States — some of which analysts warn could turn the Middle East into a power broker at the expense of America’s competitiveness. Here’s what else happened this week under Trump. Trump backs down from 145 percent Chinese tariffs But at 30 percent, tariffs on Chinese imports are still pretty high, and they threaten to keep trade between the worlds two largest economies sluggish, not to mention 10 percent tariffs on the rest of the world. Many analysts thought China won this standoff with Trump — since they gave nothing in return. And some American businesses said they needed even more relief. “It’s like they tried to feed us a rotten egg sandwich and hope we’re happy to drink spoiled milk instead,” business owner Jay Foreman told The Washington Post’s David J. Lynch and Abha Bhattarai. Trump has declined multiple times to rule out a recession from his tariffs — but he has also tended to peel off the sky-high ones when the economy threatens to implode. This time, Trump backed off the all-out trade war after his advisers warned it would hurt “Trump’s people,” The Post reported. That could still be the case. Some online shoppers are getting hit with new tariff fees, and Walmart warned this week it will start to raise prices because of tariffs. “If Walmart says they’re struggling [on price],” Arun Sundaram, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, told The Post’s Hannah Ziegler, “then you know everyone else is going to struggle a little bit more.” Republicans move forward with cuts to Medicaid |  | | Concerned about changes to their Medicaid, dozens of protesters interrupted a House committee hearing this week on Republicans' legislation and were escorted out by security. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) | | Republicans advanced a bill this week that could make the biggest cuts to Medicaid in the program’s history and could add more than $2.5 trillion to the national debt. Republicans contend they’re cutting waste and fraud from Medicaid to pay for Trump’s unrelated tax cuts, but a government estimate finds that, in addition to being expensive, their plan could cost millions of low-income Americans and Americans with disabilities their health insurance. “The really huge changes and cuts, the transformational cuts, the armageddon-level cuts that were being discussed have not happened,” said Drew Altman, president of the nonpartisan health policy organization KFF. “But the cuts that remain are huge.” Republicans are also trying to cut federal assistance for food and climate projects that benefit many Republican districts. Democrats forced Republicans into a 26-hour, sleepless, marathon vote series this week. But Republicans hold a majority in the House, and they’re aiming to move the legislation quickly. Republicans hope to vote on it by Memorial Day, which would move it along to the Senate and, ultimately, to Trump’s desk. It could be one of Trump’s few major pieces of legislation to pass in his second term. Trump begins resettling White South Africans |  | | White South Africans arrived in the U.S. this week. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst) | | This week, about 50 White refugees from South Africa became some of the only refugees in the world the Trump administration allowed into the country. (Refugee resettlement is a process that immigrant experts tell me the president has wide latitude over but that at least one judge recently said subverted Congress’s will). These resettlements are about a law in South Africa that attempts to address racial inequalities from that country’s longtime apartheid rule. But no land has been repatriated, and Trump has baselessly accused the government of killing farmers to defend his decision. The Trump administration also said it won’t attend an unrelated global summit in South Africa, the Group of 20 summit, in protest. The Episcopal Church said it wouldn’t help resettle them, with its head bishop pointing to vetted refugees waiting in camps around the world — some who “worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said — who now aren’t allowed in. Trump appeared to nod to the controversy this has created and opened the door ever so slightly to allowing more refugees in: “Well, I think if I see people in distress, I don’t care what color, what they look like, what anything — their size, their height, their eyes. I don’t care,” Trump told reporters. “… But the fact is that we’re about saving lives, and we’re going to do that. So we’ve made a home, and will make a home for other people that isn’t treated badly, no matter what their color.” | |
