Jennifer Mattson, Contributing Writer at Fast Company, discusses the impact of Trump's first weekend in office and what's to come from the administration.
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00:00President Trump cleaning out government watchdogs, arresting and deporting thousands of illegal immigrants,
00:05and nearly triggering a trade war with Colombia.
00:09All that over the weekend while you were sleeping.
00:13Fast Company's Jennifer Matson here with the impact and what's to come.
00:17And there is an awful lot to come if we can judge by the last couple of days.
00:21Jennifer, good to see you. Let's start with what appears to be an illegal purging of Inspectors General on Friday night.
00:28These are the very people tasked with waste, fraud and abuse.
00:33Three of the things President Trump promised to clean up.
00:37What can you tell us?
00:39Well, I think what we're seeing in this administration is something a little bit different than we saw in its first term.
00:45He's going very aggressively on these executive orders.
00:49I think this first week is a win for Trump.
00:52But I think it remains to be seen because there are some roadblocks ahead.
00:56What are those roadblocks?
00:59I think for Trump, he's going to have to contend with both the courts and Congress.
01:04Let's start with Congress. Congress.
01:07So the Republicans swept both the House and the Senate.
01:10But they have a very small minority in the House, only 218 seats, and also in the Senate,
01:17which means Trump, to get his legislative agenda in, he's going to really need all of those votes.
01:23And then when we look at the courts, both the federal courts and the Supreme Court,
01:28which he put three people on the bench, we're really, I think Trump is hoping that they're going to vote in his favor.
01:34But I think he's going to be surprised to see he's not going to get all the wins he wants.
01:38Yeah. And in reference to the sweeping out of the Inspectors General,
01:43he's required to give 30 days notice to Congress and also substantive rationale why he might fire them.
01:51Neither of those things were provided to Congress. Will they do anything about this?
01:56Not clear. It was interesting that Mitch McConnell voted against a recent cabinet pick.
02:01It makes you wonder if he will actually actually lead the opposition.
02:05So let's talk about the tariffs. Mexico and Canada.
02:09Everyone eyeing our two biggest trading partners, three biggest, I guess, with China.
02:14And then all of a sudden, a trade war was essentially started with Colombia over the weekend.
02:19What happened? What can we learn from that?
02:22Well, I think the tariffs are going to be a big issue for for Trump.
02:26I think that what this really comes down to, if Trump is successful as the economy, can he keep prices down?
02:32Can he keep inflation down? And I think for the most part,
02:35Wall Street has ignored the tariffs because we haven't seen these China 10 percent tariffs,
02:4125 percent for Mexico and China, for Mexico and Canada coming February 1st.
02:46But what we did see this weekend was a preview of how Trump is going to use these tariffs politically,
02:52which is if you don't accept the immigrants coming into Colombia,
02:57he basically said we are going to slap a 25 percent tariff on you.
03:02What has happened is Colombia has relented and it looks like a win for Trump.
03:07However, you don't want to see Trump playing this kind of hardball with our economy.
03:13I think if these tariffs do come through, if he uses them and he uses them too much,
03:19we are going to see prices rise in the United States and that's not good for Wall Street.
03:23And that's not good for the American consumer.
03:26And it's completely counter to what millions of Americans voted for,
03:30which was a promise to lower prices that he has reiterated several times.
03:34What does the administration plan to do to bring prices down
03:38and why this particular focus suddenly on the price of eggs?
03:43Well, I did a piece on the price of eggs and it's pretty interesting.
03:46It's not something that you would think would be kind of a litmus test for this economy,
03:51but it really has become that. I think if you look at grocery prices,
03:55they've just skyrocketed. And if you look at the price of eggs, it's up 38 percent.
04:00I think that's not a good sign for Trump.
04:03So Trump ran on the fact that he was going to bring these prices down
04:06and he basically blamed the Biden administration for that and also Kamala Harris.
04:13So now he's in charge. Is he going to be able to bring these prices down?
04:18I think that's the big question. Yeah,
04:21and it really will be interesting to see what happens with China.
04:24Essentially every device that we buy could become vastly more expensive,
04:29most notably iPhones. So there was also a focus on DEI.
04:34What has the president done in that regard and what's to come?
04:38Those are two issues that are really important.
04:40I think when we look at tariffs from China,
04:43let's say those 10 percent tariffs go in effect February 1st.
04:47What we see is that that affects the big tech faction that has come up,
04:53that has come under Trump's wing. What we see in the second administration,
04:57I'm like the first is you have two factions.
04:59You've got big tech that have their real interest in in lowering
05:03or having no tariffs. And then you have the MAGA base,
05:06which are very pro tariffs, very pro protectionism.
05:10And what you're going to see in this second administration is these two factions have very different agendas
05:15and they're going to start to come apart. Now,
05:17if we see infighting between the two,
05:20I think what's going to happen is Trump is not going to be able to push through his agenda at the speed that he'd like to.
05:26Really gum up the work. So there's a coming Fed meeting
05:29and potentially yet another clash that between Jerome Powell and the president.
05:34What do we expect out of that Fed meeting?
05:37And what do you think the president will have to say about it?
05:40I think the president has talked tough in terms of Powell even before he came in saying that he could fire him.
05:47Powell was very clear that he could not.
05:50I think he I think over the weekend.
05:52We also heard comments from Trump saying that he wants some cuts.
05:57I don't think that we're going to see major cuts at least in the coming weeks or months.
06:02But I think what we do see is a political battle between the two of them.
06:08And we've seen that before there have been past presidents that would like to see interest rates come down,
06:14but never really put their thumb on the scale.
06:17What does it say about the president's understanding of how we got here in terms of inflation?
06:24I think inflation is a big, big question.
06:27And so far, it's too early to tell how inflation is going to go.
06:30But if Trump is unable to keep inflation down, if he is unable to keep these prices down,
06:37what I think what we're going to see is we're going to see within two years midterm elections come up.
06:43So historically, a second term president, what they see is they see in that second term, two years in midterm elections.
06:52And that's when the American consumer and public can vote out the Republican Party, which is the ruling party.
07:01So usually what happens in a second term is the ruling party, which is the Republican Party.
07:06They're they lose either the House or the Senate.
07:09And that would be very, very bad for Trump, especially when he just has barely enough votes right now to push through his agenda in the House and the Senate.
07:19So I think he has to be careful.
07:21I think I think we aren't going to see cuts because of inflation.
07:26And I think that there is going to be a political battle of wills between Powell and Trump.
07:31And we're just starting to see the beginning of that.
07:34Now, we've long heard about a shadow Fed president that would attempt to pressure Jerome Powell.
07:39And finally, this is a huge week for cabinet hearings.
07:43Tulsi Gabbard, DNI, RFK at HHS and really a lot of focus on Kash Patel, who could run the FBI.
07:52Will it be smooth sailing? Which of any of these will have the biggest trouble getting through?
07:58You know, I think with the thing with Trump is that he is a survivor.
08:02He survives two assassination attempts and a slew of litigation.
08:09This president is in a very good position at this point.
08:13And so far, we've seen the Republicans pretty much lockstep and pass a lot of these cabinet appointees.
08:20I think as the weeks and the months come in, we are going to see more dissent.
08:26But right now, I think most of these are smooth sailing.
08:30We'll see how it goes.
08:32I'll tell you what, if Kash Patel gets through, we can just dismiss the notion of any Republican opposition.
08:39That is a man who has published his enemies list in a novel, certainly will be a subject to come on this hearing.
08:46Fast Company's Jennifer Mattson. Appreciate your insights today.
08:49Thanks so much.
08:50Thanks so much for having me.