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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies.

In his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised sweeping

changes, high tariffs, big tax cuts, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and deep

spending cuts guided by his friends Elon Musk and Vivek Ramoswamy. If anyone thought Trump

might pause after his win, take a few weeks to consider his

cabinet choices, and plot a phase-in of his policy moves, they were mistaken.

Trump quickly announced a host of high-level appointments, some quite controversial.

And then three days before Thanksgiving, he declared that on day one of his administration,

he'd imposed 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada to remain in effect

until they cracked down on illegal immigration and drug trafficking into the U.S.

That prompted a visit to Mara Lago from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

and a phone call with Mexican President

Claudia Scheinbaum. Trump also chose an economic policy team, including Treasury Secretary

nominee Scott Besant, a Wall Street veteran who's not only supported Democrats in the past,

but as recently as 2015 was Chief Investment Officer for George Soros, a figure widely reviled by

conservatives. For a look at what all this means in the second Trump administration, we turned

to David Wessel, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and

director of its Hutchins Center on fiscal and monetary policy. Wessel spent three decades at the Wall Street

...