Morning News Brief : NPR
SNELL:  Trump  really caught Congress off guard with all of this. Most of the Republicans I talked to  particularly in the Senate  said that this was kind of a ham-fisted and not very well-tailored approach to addressing the issues that  Trump  says  he  wants to address  which is that there are these cheap imports of steel and aluminum coming into the U.S. and making it difficult for the U.S. to sell its exports of aluminum and steel. So as Republicans have been responding  they say that they would have been happier with something that either had carve-outs for our trade partners  like the EU and Canada  or were more directed specifically at the countries they wanted to get to.
MARTIN: Although  I've got to say  why were they so surprised? I mean   Donald Trump  has been erratic  I think we can say  on DACA.  He  has flipped on guns. But in terms of trade  this is something that this man has been pretty consistent on  at least since the '80s.
SNELL: Sure. So the thing that they were surprised about is that  he  kind of went around the normal way of things. Which  again  shouldn't be surprising for this president. But  he  didn't go through the normal channels  and there really isn't an opportunity for Congress to soften the blow of this because it is more or less a unilateral decision by the White House.
INSKEEP: Took even  his  advisers by surprise in many cases. So I hate to pretend that we know what's coming up this week - 'cause we certainly didn't know what was coming up last week - but  lawmakers are expected to vote on a major rewrite of financial industry rules. What's going on here?
SNELL:  Trump  really caught Congress off guard with all of this. Most of the Republicans I talked to  particularly in the Senate  said that this was kind of a ham-fisted and not very well-tailored approach to addressing the issues that  Trump  says  he  wants to address  which is that there are these cheap imports of steel and aluminum coming into the U.S. and making it difficult for the U.S. to sell its exports of aluminum and steel. So as Republicans have been responding  they say that they would have been happier with something that either had carve-outs for our trade partners  like the EU and Canada  or were more directed specifically at the countries they wanted to get to.
MARTIN: Although  I've got to say  why were they so surprised? I mean    [TGT] has been erratic  I think we can say  on DACA.   [TGT]   has flipped on guns. But in terms of trade  this is something that  [TGT]  has been pretty consistent on  at least since the '80s.
SNELL: Sure. So the thing that they were surprised about is that  he  kind of went around the normal way of things. Which  again  shouldn't be surprising for this president. But  he  didn't go through the normal channels  and there really isn't an opportunity for Congress to soften the blow of this because it is more or less a unilateral decision by the White House.
INSKEEP: Took even  his  advisers by surprise in many cases. So I hate to pretend that we know what's coming up this week - 'cause we certainly didn't know what was coming up last week - but  lawmakers are expected to vote on a major rewrite of financial industry rules. What's going on here?