AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump's self-imposed deadline for trade deals with dozens of countries came and went this past week with no new deals. Instead, he sent out a lot of tariff letters. The president is also facing a fresh challenge on his immigration policy. NPR's senior national political correspondent, Mara Liasson, is on the line with us for more. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So let's start with the tariffs. There were no new deals, a lot of letters. What strategy do you see at work here?
LIASSON: It's hard to see a coherent strategy here with these on-again, off-again tariffs. You know, people say Donald Trump is very transactional. It's also true that he's very personal. He put a 50% tariff on Brazil, even though the United States runs a trade surplus with Brazil. But Trump is upset with Brazil for what he calls a witch hunt, which is the prosecution of Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro, who, like Trump, tried to overturn an election that he lost. He encouraged his supporters to storm government buildings. Sounds kind of like January 6.
Trump also promised to make 90 trade deals in 90 days. So far, there have only been two deals or one deal in a framework, with the United Kingdom and Vietnam, and we still don't know the goal of the trade policy. Is it to address trade deficits? Then why put tariffs on countries where you run a surplus? Or is it to punish countries that do something you don't like?
What was really interesting is how Wall Street reacted to these new tariffs. They shrugged, maybe because they assumed that the new August 1 deadline will be broken like all the other deadlines. Even though this time, Trump says he really means it, and he says there will be no extensions.
RASCOE: OK, so no deals right now. Another thing that didn't materialize was a planned meeting between Iran and the U.S. in Oslo last week. They were supposed to negotiate a nuclear deal. Where do things stand on that?
LIASSON: Well, the Iran talks didn't happen, and we are yet to have a clear view of exactly what the U.S. and Israel accomplished when they bombed Iran's nuclear facilities. We know the facilities were damaged, but we don't know how much enriched uranium was destroyed or if Iran plans to make another rush for a nuclear weapon. So those are still big questions.
RASCOE: A Los Angeles federal judge on Friday issued an order to stop what she called the indiscriminate rounding up of individuals by Immigration Custom Enforcement agents or ICE agents. And on the same day, President Trump authorized ICE agents to protect themselves using whatever means, as these raids have turned violent. Is there public support for these raids?
LIASSON: We know there's new polling on immigration that shows that Trump's immigration policies are broadly unpopular. You know, voters wanted the southern border secured. They agreed with deporting people who are in the U.S. without legal status who have committed crimes. That's one of the reasons they voted for Trump. But they don't like the idea of deporting people who've been here for a long time, law-abiding, paying taxes, who pick their crops and mow their lawns and take care of their elderly parents. They don't like those people being deported.
And we saw that 79% of those polled by Gallup say immigration and immigrants are good for America. This is something very similar that happened with public opinion during Trump's first term. And we've seen Trump acknowledge that his immigration policies and enforcement cause problems inside his base with farms and hotels who rely on immigrant labor. He's floated the idea that he would give exemptions to them, but so far, the raids continue, and there have been no exemptions yet.
RASCOE: We should note that it was a year ago today that a gunman attempted to assassinate President Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
LIASSON: That's right, yet another assassination attempt. We also saw the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband last month, as well as the attempted assassination of another Minnesota lawmaker by the same shooter. Members of Congress say they're getting more and more death threats. And even though political violence has been present throughout American history, it does seem to be getting worse.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Thank you, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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