Dark economic clouds loom over Trump and the GOP: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, we examine how President Donald Trump’s economic approach is putting members of his administration and Republicans in Congress on the defensive as the stock market continues to struggle. Plus, we have a new excerpt from Jonathan Allen’s forthcoming book on the 2024 campaign.

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— Adam Wollner

🚨Breaking news: Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer relented and said he wouldn’t block a Republican stopgap funding bill, arguing a government shutdown would give “more power” to Trump. Read more →

Trump’s economic troubles put Republicans on defense

By Jonathan Allen, Carol E. Lee and Sahil Kapur

President Donald Trump’s full-speed-ahead approach to making radical change has forced his allies to fight from a defensive posture — explaining his plans after they have been executed — and has raised alarms in his Republican Party that it could all end in a wreck. 

The concerns are particularly acute when it comes to the economy, with the stock market slumping and many economists projecting either slower growth or a coming recession. Those fears haven’t deterred Trump from continuing to impose tariffs on foes and friends — which figure to raise prices on U.S. consumers — and slash federal government jobs, grants and contracts. 

“There are worries,” said a person who has been involved in discussions about the economy with White House officials. Those effects on the markets and the economy are felt immediately, while policies aimed at spurring growth — including cutting taxes and regulations — will take much longer to implement, this person said.

The dark economic clouds are forcing Trump administration officials to explain why the president’s lofty economic promises on the campaign trail to “end inflation” and “Make America Affordable Again” on Day 1 haven’t come to fruition. 

“This was always part of the plan,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said recently on Fox News. “The president is so focused on — not the short term. … He truly wants to fix America.” 

What Hill Republicans are saying: Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he thinks Trump has some latitude to pursue trade wars but not at a long-term cost.

“Look, this isn’t the way I would do it,” Rounds said of the White House’s tack. “I think they want to try something different than from the previous administration. But they’ve got to show some success fairly quickly.” 

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Trump’s “dramatic tariffs” on Canada and Mexico “could be devastating to the economy,” including in his home state.

“There are stories coming out talking about cars costing $10,000 more. And, of course, we’re worried about bourbon. We want to sell our bourbon. The Canadians are going to block our bourbon,” Paul said. “Now that you add lumber costs to that and steel with tariffs, nobody at home is coming up to me and saying please put tariffs on.” 

Read more →

Stock market latest: The S&P 500 fell 1.4% Thursday, making its decline since its February all-time high greater than 10%. It has now fully erased all its post-November election gains and is back to levels last seen in September.

Trade war latest: After the European Union imposed a 50% tariff on American whiskey, Trump threatened to impose a 200% tariff on alcohol from the E.U.

What else to know from the Trump presidency today

• The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to narrow nationwide injunctions that blocked his plan to end automatic birthright citizenship.
• Thousands of probationary employees who were fired from federal agencies must be reinstated, a federal judge ruled.
• The White House has directed the U.S. military to develop plans to increase its presence in Panama to help achieve the goal of taking over the Panama Canal, ranging from working with local security forces to seizing the canal by force.
• The White House withdrew the nomination of former Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just before this confirmation hearing this morning.
• Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is planning to roll back a slew of environmental regulations, including those related to vehicle emissions standards and power plant pollution.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country was ready for a ceasefire, but suggested that Ukraine would need to accept further conditions before an agreement could be reached, adding that he may need to “have a phone call with Trump.”

‘No daylight, kid’: How Joe Biden handcuffed Kamala Harris

By Jonathan Allen

The following is adapted from the forthcoming book “FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, to be published April 1 by William Morrow. Copyright © 2025 by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers. It is available for pre-order here.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both understood the importance of being seen as the bigger change agent.

For Trump, that meant continuing to promise an antidote to the Joe Biden-Harris years. For Harris, there was more flexibility to define her brand of change. She could risk looking hypocritical by making clean breaks with Biden on policies she had supported as vice president, rejecting parts of their record to forge her own agenda. She could identify new issues to run on that avoided the pitfalls of turning her back on the Biden era. Or she could rely on voters to see her gender, her genes, and her “lived experience” — a middle-class upbringing, schools outside the Ivy League, and a career as a prosecutor — as symbols of change.

Biden and his loyalists took the first option off the table. He would say publicly that Harris should do what she must to win. But privately, including in conversations with her, he repeated an admonition: let there be no daylight between us. “No daylight” was the phrase he had used as a vice presidential candidate in 2008 to bind Republican nominee John McCain to an unpopular president, George W. Bush. 

Almost everywhere she went, Harris walked among former Biden aides who sought to defend his presidency. Her campaign was run by a former White House deputy chief of staff — whom she had just empowered to box out her own confidants — and a phalanx of department heads who had served Biden until the previous month.

The day before Harris’ first interview, a joint appearance with Tim Walz, she dived into the recurring question of whether and when she would let daylight shine between herself and Biden. Veteran Democratic communications strategist Stephanie Cutter launched into a proposed preamble — a list of all the items that made Harris proud of her work with Biden.

“Wait, wait, wait!” said Sean Clegg, a longtime Harris adviser who was regarded with suspicion by the Biden holdovers running the campaign. “Let’s not do this. Let’s not go down memory lane.” That was the last time he was invited to media prep. Cutter, another Harris confidant later joked, cut him out.

 Cutter did not have the authority to make out the lineup card for media prep sessions, two senior campaign officials told NBC News on the condition of anonymity. 

When Harris sat down with Walz and CNN’s Dana Bash the last week of August, the segment produced a little bit of news: Harris said she would name a Republican to serve in her Cabinet. She also said that she no longer supported a ban on fracking.

Her 2019 call to end the practice threatened to hurt her in Pennsylvania, even though she had adopted Biden’s no-ban policy as his vice presidential candidate in 2020. But the first portion of the one-on-two interview — the part more viewers were likely to watch — featured Harris reciting a laundry list of Biden’s policies. 

Sitting next to Walz in a chair that seemed to place her below him and heaping praise on Biden’s record, Harris did not look like a candidate seeking the highest office in the land. The whole scene reinforced the criticism that the vice president was either incapable, or afraid, of answering tough questions on her own. 

For the rest of the campaign, her team required that she be provided a chair that met certain specifications: “Leg height no less than 15 inches; floor to top of seat height no less than 18.9 inches; arms on chairs may not be very high, arms must fall at a natural height; chairs must be firm.” 

No matter how firm her chair, the question facing Harris was whether she could build a sturdy platform. 

Her rallies and convention speech had not answered the question of why she was running for president — or how her vision for the country would deliver for voters — other than having been next in line. She was running out of major moments to explain a vision to a broad audience. Her Sept. 10 debate with Trump would offer another opportunity — perhaps a last chance before voters cast early ballots — to establish that key part of her narrative.

But the day of the debate Biden called to give Harris an unusual kind of pep talk — and another reminder about the loyalty he demanded. No longer able to defend his own record, he expected Harris to protect his legacy. Whether she won or lost the election, he thought, she would only harm him by publicly distancing herself from him — especially during a debate that would be watched by millions of Americans. To the extent that she wanted to forge her own path, Biden had no interest in giving her room to do so. He needed just three words to convey how much all of that mattered to him. 

“No daylight, kid,” Biden said.

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Bridget Bowman.

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