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Morning Brief: Vance Negotiates India Trade Deal, Rubio Cuts State Dept & Easter Egg Prices
The White House is making early progress on trade deals with India — hoping to ease economic tensions stemming from Trump’s tariffs. Marco Rubio announces a major overhaul of the State Department. And, tech stocks rebound as egg prices drop — what’s the latest on the U.S. economy?
It’s Wednesday, April 23, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
India And The U.S. Move Toward Trade Deal
(Photo by Anton Petrus via Getty Images)
Topline: The United States and India are reportedly nearing a trade deal. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump met with top CEOs to address their concerns about the trade war.
Shortly after unveiling his “Liberation Day” tariffs, Trump offered a 90-day pause on his proposed tariff hikes to most of America’s trading partners, with the notable exception of China. A baseline rate of 10% is currently being applied to most imports in the meantime. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the administration is set to meet with nearly three dozen countries this week to negotiate more favorable terms.
Vice President JD Vance visited India for four days and met with top government officials, including Prime Minister Modi. Last year, trade between the two countries was nearly $130 billion. U.S. imports from India exceeded exports by about $45 billion last year, which is significant since Trump has made it clear that reducing the trade deficit is a key goal of his tariff policy. Negotiations appear to be going well, but if Trump and Modi don’t make a deal, the tariff rate on Indian goods could jump to 26%.
“President Trump and Prime Minister Modi announced in February that our countries aim to more than double our bilateral trade to $500 billion by the end of the decade,” Vance said on Tuesday. “Both of our governments are hard at work on a trade agreement built on shared priorities like creating new jobs, building durable supply chains, and achieving prosperity for our workers. In our meeting yesterday, Prime Minister Modi and I made very good progress on all of those points, and we were especially excited to formally announce that America and India have officially finalized the terms of reference for the trade negotiation.”
In general, the Trump administration appears to be dialing back its earlier, maximalist stance on tariffs. On Monday, the CEOs of Walmart, Target, and Home Depot met with the president to air concerns about trade and tariffs. CNBC also reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with top investors on Tuesday about trade with China. Bessent reportedly said that he expects “there will be a de-escalation” in the “very near future.” He added that “no one thinks the current status quo is sustainable.”
Rubio Proposes Sweeping Cuts To State Department
(Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Topline: Secretary of State Marco Rubio just announced a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. State Department, aiming to streamline operations and align diplomacy with the Trump administration’s “America First” agenda. The plan includes significant staff cuts and the closure of numerous offices.
Rubio is not being shy in billing this as an aggressive reform plan. In a department-wide email, he called the State Department “bloated” and “beholden to radical political ideology.” Because of this, he aims to reduce the agency’s U.S.-based staff by 15% and reduce the number of offices from 734 to 602.
“Secretary Rubio is announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan that will bring the department into the 21st century,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told the press on Tuesday. “Redundant offices will be removed, and nonstatutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist.”
There’s also one addition in this plan — Rubio proposes a new Bureau of Emerging Threats that will focus on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
None of these proposed cuts have gone into effect just yet — Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau said an internal working group will develop “thoughtful plans” by July 1. But some of these changes may require congressional approval. A preliminary budget proposal from the White House Office of Management and Budget that bolsters Rubio’s plan by cutting the State Department’s funding by 50% isn’t likely to pass Congress.
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which Rubio has criticized for promoting “left-wing agendas” in countries like Poland and Hungary, is currently on the chopping block, as is the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which allegedly funneled taxpayer dollars to NGOs that facilitated mass migration, including at the U.S. southern border. Rubio said in a new State Department Substack that these bureaus have been misused to push policies that are misaligned with national priorities. He says that for the sake of efficiency, the goal is to refocus diplomacy on “great power competition” and consolidate region-specific functions into regional bureaus.
Some analysts are saying this is going to alienate career diplomats, and Democrats are saying these moves will diminish U.S. influence abroad. But apparently, some are breathing sighs of relief because they were expecting even deeper cuts after a draft executive order circulated last weekend. That document proposed slashing entire bureaus like African Affairs and closing embassies across sub-Saharan Africa. But Rubio says that was “fake news.”
Economic Update – Eggcellent News
(Photo by Grace Carry via Getty Images)
Topline: Consumers could soon see relief on egg prices while markets attempt to calibrate for Trump’s trade policies.
Markets have been remarkably volatile amid uncertainty over ongoing trade negotiations — the DOW plummeted on Monday, but spiked again on Tuesday. The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that the global economy could be hit hard by tariffs and slashed its forecast for U.S. growth to 1.8% this year, down from the 2.8% it had predicted in January, but it acknowledged the tariff situation is unpredictable due to the Trump administration using them as a negotiating tactic.
Meanwhile, Americans can expect some relief on everyday expenses. Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan spoke to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins about the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to lower the price of eggs.
“A couple months ago, we rolled out our big five point egg plan,” Rollins said. “At the time the eggs were, I think, the highest they’ve been, perhaps since President Trump left office. I know under Joe Biden, they increased 237%. While the cost of groceries has skyrocketed, nothing has skyrocketed more than eggs … since [Trump took office], the cost of wholesale eggs has gone down 58%.”
Rollins also told us that part of Trump’s plan with tariffs is to correct the agricultural trade deficit that widened under Biden. “There’s now a $50 billion agriculture trade deficit … that was zero four years ago. So that means that all of that product — sorghum, wheat, corn, beef that we were moving out and Trump won, somehow that market disappeared and we’ve got to get it back.”
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