On the Lookout for More Targeted Tariffs: BGOV Starting Line

Next Week’s New Tariff Possibility

Preparing for the week ahead: We’re on the lookout for the “major tariff on pharmaceuticals” threatened by President Donald Trump. As for timing, Trump said a few days ago that the medicine tariffs would be announced “very shortly.”

His goal is to get more made-in-America medicine, though in the short term the concept raises a lot of questions. Would US consumers pay more as the increased costs get passed down to the end user? What about their insurers? And if companies onshore their production of prescription drugs, how long would it take to see those jobs and what would that mean for prices?

Eli Lilly, Merck, as well as Johnson & Johnson have all said they have plans to spend billions on US plants, and Switzerland-based Novartis AG just announced plans to enlarge its US footprint by investing $23 billion over the next five years.

That’s all happening against the backdrop of a 90-day pause on some of the new tariffs, creating a stock market blip rather than a clear trend. The S&P 500 Index ended yesterday down 3.5% as traders examined the portion of new tariffs that remain in place, and the White House clarified that import taxes on goods from China are going to be 145%. Read More

China retaliated today, hiking duties on all US goods to 125% starting tomorrow, while also calling the Trump administration’s actions a “joke” and saying it no longer considers them worth matching. Read More

Some background on the tariff state of play:

Deadline to Spill the Tea on Diversity

The Trump administration has given 20 large law firms until Tuesday to provide information on their own diversity initiatives and those of their clients.

Chris Opfer and Tatyana Monnay report that the attorneys plan partial compliance with that demand — answering questions about their own operations while maintaining the confidentiality of the companies they work for.

Once the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gets those responses, anticipate the start of a legal tug of war.

“It’s core to our profession to not disclose things about your clients or communications with your clients,” said Joshua Roffman, a Washington lawyer who advises companies on diversity initiatives. “You don’t even want to open the door a little bit to that.”

Typically, the EEOC has investigated discrimination complaints by workers against their employers. The recent demands to law firms are an extension of an extraordinary attack on the legal industry. The White House has issued executive orders targeting firms and extracted deals from others for $340 million in services for Trump-aligned causes. Read More

Another deadline approaching fast: Federal agencies have been given until Monday to submit proposals to reduce their real estate footprints.

That’s also is being discussed in Congress, where majority Republicans see the connection between durable reductions in the size of government and the number of buildings available for federal offices.

What’s Next on Budget, Taxes

Congress is gone until the week of April 28 after Speaker Mike Johnson pulled it off. He convinced fellow House Republicans to sign off on the Senate’s budget plan.

Lillianna Byington and Maeve Sheehey look ahead to the part of the recess some members of Congress haven’t been finding enjoyable: interacting with their angry and/or anxious constituents. Read More

From our budget team, Ken Tran explains what to expect when Congress returns:

Johnson (R-La.) has set an ambitious timeline to turn the new blueprint into the “one big beautiful bill” combining cuts and tax breaks that Trump said he wants. Johnson’s goal is to be done by Memorial Day.
A number to know is $1.5 trillion. That’s the amount of spending reductions that House leaders assured the rank-and-file they’re committed to pursuing. A group of House budget hawks sees that as a minimum, not a pie-in-the-sky aspiration. Some senators, meanwhile, say they want to make sure their constituents aren’t hurt.
Health care for the poor will be a particular flash point. The House’s instructions in the budget resolution direct the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in savings. That figure means the panel would have to cut Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Three Senate Republicans — Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Susan Collins (Maine), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) — voted to strike that instruction. Read More

And Jonathan Tamari reports on another dynamic to anticipate: more forceful messaging from House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.).

Early this year, he faced internal questions about the effectiveness of his approach to handling the dramatic changes being imposed by the GOP. Now his inner pugilist is surfacing. “This is not liberation day,” he said, mocking Trump’s sweeping tariffs. “It’s recession day.” Read More

A recap on all the action before members left for a two-week recess is in BGOV’s Congress Tracker.

See Also:

Before You Go

The latest from the intersection of government actions and what you eat:

And a final few things to know as Washington’s workday begins:

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— With assistance from Lillianna Byington, Maeve Sheehey, and Ken Tran.

To contact the reporters on this story: Katherine Rizzo in Washington at krizzo@bgov.com; Herb Jackson in Washington at hjackson@bloombergindustry.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giuseppe Macri at gmacri@bgov.com; Herb Jackson at hjackson@bloombergindustry.com

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