Congress' tug-of-war for tariff authority

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Marketplace

News, Business

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, we’re answering questions from our listeners about everything going on in this economy (we know, it’s a lot). Like, whatever happened to that bipartisan bill that would pass authority over tariffs back to Congress? We’ll get into the status of the legislation and how states are jumping into the fight. Plus, we’ll discuss the legality of the Trump administration’s funding freezes and how foreign trade zones are helping some companies avoid sky-high tariffs.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

“Congress gave presidents power over tariffs. They could aways take it back” from CNN Politics

“12 States Sue Trump Over His Tariffs” by The New York Times

“Trump says he has 'no intention' of firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell” from AP News

“If Trump wants rate cuts, he would likely need to replace the Fed's full board along with Powell” by CNBC

“How Congress — and not the president — controls how taxpayer money is spent” from Marketplace

“Trump tariffs lead to surge of companies parking imports in tax-free 'foreign trade zones’” from CNBC

“How Foreign Trade Zones In The U.S. Came Into Existence” by NPR

Got a question or comment for the hosts? Email [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's in a Taylor Swift PhD thesis somewhere.
0:04.2	Somewhere.
0:04.5	Somewhere.
0:05.2	I do wonder how many PhD theses have been written about her.
0:07.4	Charlton, save me.
0:10.0	Thank you.
0:14.6	Hey, everybody, I'm Kyle Rizdahl.
0:16.0	Welcome back to Make Me Smart.
0:17.2	Where we make today makes sense.
0:19.4	I'm Kimberly Adams.
0:20.5	Thank you for joining us on this Thursday, April 24th.
0:23.6	Today we're answering questions from you, our wonderful listeners, about what is going on in this
0:29.1	economy.
0:29.5	There's something going on in this economy?
0:31.0	I'm just kidding.
0:32.1	Keep sending the questions.
0:33.3	We know you've got lots of them.
0:35.2	Make me smart at Marketplace.org.
0:36.7	voicemail is 508. You be smart. Charlton, here we go.
0:40.3	Hi, Kyn, Kimberly. My name is Joe from Hamburg, New York.
0:44.7	Pre-tariff pause, Congress is working on a bipartisan bill to clawback control of tariffs.
0:50.5	Do you know, is that still in the works or as Congress continued to be pretty much useless?
	...

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