April 16 2025

Trump Administration Plans to Leverage Tariff Talks to Isolate China’s Economy

Boeing Caught in the Middle of Great Power Politics with China, Russia

Trump Threatens Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status in Escalating Feud over Policy Demands

Opinion: The Government SHOULD NOT Reduce Medicaid Spending

Mass IRS Resignations Threaten Tax Collection as 22,000 Employees Accept Trump’s Offer

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1. Trump Administration Plans to Leverage Tariff Talks to Isolate China’s Economy

The Trump administration plans to use ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure U.S. trading partners to limit their dealings with China, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. The idea is to extract commitments from U.S. trading partners to isolate China’s economy in exchange for reductions in trade and tariff barriers imposed by the White House. U.S. officials plan to use negotiations with more than 70 nations to ask them to disallow China to ship goods through their countries, prevent Chinese firms from locating in their territories to avoid U.S. tariffs, and not absorb China’s cheap industrial goods into their economies. Those measures are meant to put a dent in China’s already rickety economy and force Beijing to the negotiating table with less leverage ahead of potential talks between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The exact demands could vary widely by nation, given their degree of involvement with the Chinese economy.

I provide important historical context to trade war.

Source: WSJ

2. Boeing Caught in the Middle of Great Power Politics with China, Russia

A. China has ordered its airlines not to take any further deliveries of Boeing Co. jets as part of the tit-for-tat trade war that’s seen US President Donald Trump levy tariffs of as high as 145% on Chinese goods, according to people familiar with the matter. Beijing has also requested that Chinese carriers halt any purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from US companies, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing matters that are private.

B. Russia has asked the US to let it buy Boeing Co. aircraft using money from billions of dollars in frozen state assets once there’s a ceasefire in Ukraine, according to a person in Moscow familiar with the matter. While the request isn’t a condition of agreeing to a truce, Russia understands that frozen funds can’t be used to buy the jets without a ceasefire being in place, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing internal matters. A deal allowing the purchase of jets could form part of an easing of sanctions in the event there’s a halt to the fighting.
Source: Bloomberg

3. Trump Threatens Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status in Escalating Feud over Policy Demand

President Trump threatened Harvard University’s tax-exempt status on Tuesday after the school rebuffed his administration’s demands for a series of policy changes, a dramatic escalation in the feud between the president and the nation’s richest and oldest university. The threat came a day after the Trump administration halted more than $2 billion in federal funding for Harvard because the university rejected changes to its hiring and admissions practices and curriculum. Mr. Trump decided to ratchet up his pressure campaign after watching news coverage of Harvard’s resistance on Monday night, according to a person with knowledge of the president’s deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday morning. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”
Source: NYT

4. Opinion: The Government SHOULD NOT Reduce Medicaid Spending

Editor's Note: One of the goals of citizen journal is to educate citizens with knowledge they can use to participate in American civic life—to vote, attend public meetings, protest, pen op-eds, and fully exercise all rights granted by the First Amendment. Our goal is to serve as a starting point on your journey to forming your own opinions. We strive to be neither Right nor Left, but instead informative and accessible to all readers.

In keeping with this mission, we want to highlight a significant debate within the Republicans' new budget proposal, mentioned in item 4 of our April 11, 2025 edition. A substantial portion of the savings in this bill—which aims to reduce government spending by $2 trillion over a decade—comes from proposed cuts to Medicaid (means-tested government health insurance).

The following excerpt comes from the OPINION section of the New York Times, typically representing the voice of the establishment Democratic Party, and argues AGAINST reducing Medicaid. citizen journal is not advocating either FOR or AGAINST this position. This is a followup to yesterday’s argument FOR reducing Medicaid from the OPINION page of the WSJ.

Gutting Medicaid means attacking a program backed by a wide range of organizations — from the AARP to the American Hospital Association — that also enjoys broad public support. Even longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon recently warned: “A lot of MAGA’s on Medicaid,” adding, “just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.” The federal government spends around $600 billion a year on Medicaid. It reimburses states for at least 50 percent of program costs. (Rich states like New York and California typically get 50 percent, while some poor states, like West Virginia and Mississippi, get over 70 percent.) Significant cuts to this funding would send fiscal shock waves through state governments across the country as billions of dollars in federal funding stopped flowing, forcing states to decide where and how to cut their Medicaid programs — whether to eliminate coverage for some beneficiaries, reduce payments to physicians, deny home care to some seniors or raise state taxes to make up the difference. Medicaid expansion was at the heart of the Affordable Act — Obamacare — helping cut the percentage of America’s uninsured people roughly in half, to around 8 percent in 2023. Once considered a poor people’s program, Medicaid has proved itself a political juggernaut. Why? Start with the money. The Medicaid program spends about $900 billion a year in state and federal funds, paying for close to one-fifth of health care expenditures in the United States. The program is the primary payer for almost two-thirds of nursing home residents and funds just over 60 percent of long-term care. Hospitals have an obligation in many instances to provide care even when patients can’t pay. Significant Medicaid cuts would almost certainly leave hospitals to provide more uncompensated care. Many medical facilities, particularly in low-income and rural communities, could be at greater risk of closing. That’s among the reasons the hospital industry has supported Medicaid expansion and opposed cuts at the state and federal levels.
Source: NYT

5. Mass IRS Resignations Threaten Tax Collection as 22,000 Employees Accept Trump’s Offer

About 22,000 employees at the Internal Revenue Service have signed up for the Trump administration’s latest resignation offer, according to four people familiar with the matter, an exodus that could weaken the agency’s ability to collect taxes. The I.R.S. had about 100,000 employees before President Trump took office. Roughly 5,000 employees have resigned since January, and an additional 7,000 probationary employees were laid off, though those firings have been contested in court. If those layoffs take effect, the agency would be on track to lose about a third of its work force this year. Under the terms of the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer, employees who take the deal will be put on paid administrative leave through September and then leave their federal jobs. Some employees who took the offer could still opt out of resigning.
Source: NYT

April 16, 2018: Kendrick Lamar becomes the first rapper to win the Pulitzer Prize

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Sources

1. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/u-s-plans-to-use-tariff-negotiations-to-isolate-china-177d1528?mod=hp_lead_pos3
2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-15/china-tells-airlines-stop-taking-boeing-jets-as-trump-tariffs-expand-trade-war
3. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-16/russia-seeks-to-buy-boeing-jets-with-frozen-assets-after-ukraine-ceasefire
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/us/politics/trump-harvard-tax-status.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/opinion/medicaid-republicans.html?searchResultPosition=1
6. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/us/politics/irs-resignations-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare