SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick envisions a new American workforce trained at community colleges, made up of technicians.
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HOWARD LUTNICK: These are trade craft. It's time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future. You know, this is the new model, where you work in these kind of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.
SIMON: That's Secretary Lutnick on CNBC Tuesday. Will American workers jump on board? NPR senior contributor Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thanks for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: As we just heard from our colleague Scott Horsley, automakers can't increase production here in the U.S. fast enough to avoid layoffs in just the kind of factories the secretary is talking about. Voters don't like increasing prices. Will they have much patience for the immediate effects of what the Trump administration says is a long-range plan for the U.S. economy?
ELVING: Patience is not a word voters like to hear, not when the potential downsides are inflation and recession. Plans may need to be long-range, but problems tend to pop up right away. That's why they say no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy. So some elements of the Trump White House may be thinking fundamental change, while others are preoccupied with what's in the media right now or what narrative is out there that needs to be counterprogrammed. And as for Lutnick's multigenerational job description, right now, the whole world is struggling to react to the new tariff regime in the U.S. So a lot of people may not be thinking about where their grandchildren will work, and that's assuming their grandchildren would want to do what their parents and grandparents did.
SIMON: President Trump released a budget yesterday. We have the usual reminder that budgets released by the White House are not - often not what Congress winds up passing. What stood out to you in this budget?
ELVING: It's hard to get past the gargantuan budget cuts targeted at health and education, safety net programs, science, research, the environment. The amounts are staggering, especially when you consider the same legislation would ultimately boost spending for defense and homeland security and reduce taxes on the wealthiest Americans by hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
SIMON: Does President Trump have the votes to make these cuts and boost into law?
ELVING: The margins in both chambers are historically slim, Scott. And we are hearing objections from some Republicans. They're worried - if not about the policy, then at least about the optics of cutting programs their own people depend on, especially at the same time you're cutting taxes on high incomes. In the House, you hear similar objections to the ones we're hearing from the Senate from Republicans in swing districts, but you're also hearing from the hardcore budget hawks who want Trump to go further. They want deep long-term cuts and now, while the political climate still feels like last fall. And they are afraid another budget cycle will go by and they'll have missed the chance for that fundamental change in what the government does.
SIMON: And some prominent personnel changes in the administration this week. There were a lot of them during the first Trump term. How do you assess these latest ones?
ELVING: We're nowhere near the tempo of musical chairs we had in the first term so - at least so far, at least. Trump has been reluctant to abandon the wounded among his appointees. He stood by all his cabinet nominees after Matt Gaetz dropped out for attorney general. But now Mike Waltz is out as national security adviser and he's been reassigned to be United Nations ambassador. That was a slot that had been open and been so for a while. It might be a better job for him, but it's hard to separate this from the fiasco surrounding that Signal chat room story last month. And now there's more talk of further shakeups in the national security team likely in the weeks ahead, and some might count Elon Musk in the category of abandoned. Trump did not fire him, of course, but Musk has decided to spend more time with his businesses and less time trying to downsize the federal workforce.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving. Thanks so much for being with us, as always.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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