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--:-- Leila Fadel: Hey, hey, are you there? Yeah. What's happening? Nothing. How was, um, where'd you go? Greenland? I went to Turks and Caicos. Oh. It was fun. It was beautiful.
--:-- A Martinez: Was it really hard to work when I wasn't there? Did you miss me so much? I didn't. I decided not to work until you got back. This is my first day back.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Jordan's King Abdullah is in the U.S. to meet President Trump. But it may be a tense meeting. The king, like most of the world's leaders, has rejected Trump's calls for the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza to be displaced to Jordan and Egypt.
--:-- A Martinez: I'm Ian Martinez. That's Leila Fadel. And this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Leila Fadel: President Trump imposed new tariffs on imports of global metals. Economists say that's good for American steel and aluminum companies, but not so good for other industries.
--:-- A Martinez: You lose jobs in the manufacturing sector when you put together the higher cost of input and the retaliation, which is sure to come.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So what's the president's game plan? And the federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams may be dismissed. The Justice Department ordered prosecutors to drop the charges.
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--:-- Leila Fadel: Instead, get guidance from a licensed therapist online with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR for 10% off your first month.
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--:-- A Martinez: President Trump and Jordan's King Abdullah are meeting today at the White House. Jordan is one of the closest U.S. allies in the Middle East, but today's meeting is expected to be a little awkward, to say the least.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Trump has floated pushing Palestinians from Gaza into Jordan and Egypt. That's a plan rejected by both countries and the Palestinians.
--:-- A Martinez: To discuss what to expect today, NPR's Jane Araf joins us from Jordan's capital, Amman. Hi, Jane.
--:-- Jane Araf: Hi, Leila.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So what do you think the tone of this meeting will be after Trump has repeatedly said he wants the Palestinians out of Gaza and wants to own it.
--:-- Jane Araf: Yeah, I would expect tense, and that's probably an understatement. It's hard to put a good face on this.
--:-- Leila Fadel: That's because, as you noted, Jordan is a key ally, and without any consultation, according to Jordanians and White House officials, Trump floated that plan last week during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the U.S. to take over Gaza and forcibly pushed 2 million Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan.
--:-- Jane Araf: Monday night Trump doubled down threatening Jordan if it doesn't accept the plan. If they don't agree, I would conceivably withhold aid, yeah.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So Jordan is a small country with a large number of refugees and it relies on foreign aid. But this plan is one of those rare ones that has united citizens and the country's leaders in opposition to it.
--:-- Jane Araf: And what is the king likely to say?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Well, I spoke with Marwan Washer, the foreign foreign minister of Jordan, now with the Carnegie Endowment think tank. He says this is going to be one of the toughest meetings the king has faced.
--:-- Marwan Washer: The meeting is not going to be an easy one because there is no amount of pressure, in my view, that the United States can exert, that Jordan can accede to. This is an existential issue to Jordan.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And by that, he means that creating an alternative Palestinian homeland here means that Jordan would essentially cease to exist as a country in many ways. The majority of its citizens are already descendants of Palestinian refugees.
--:-- Marwan Washer: So this is something that Jordan doesn't believe it could or ever would agree to, no matter what the cost.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Now, as you point out, Jordan has rejected this plan, but what has the government officially said so far?
--:-- Jane Araf: Well, the Jordanian foreign minister, Aymanes Safadi, has quite clearly said that expulsion of Palestinians here would be a breach of its historic peace treaty with Israel and therefore seen as a declaration of war.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Now, despite that, Trump keeps insisting Jordan and Egypt will succumb to U.S. pressure, and the U.S. has leverage in the form of aid. Does Jordan have leverage?
--:-- Jane Araf: I asked Moesher, who's also a former senior official at the World Bank, about that.
--:-- Moesher: Jordan gets $1.5, $1.6 billion from the United States each year. Any loss of that assistance is going to produce economic difficulty for Jordan.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This is not to say also that cutting off aid to Jordan is not that easy. So he points out that Congress would be quite resistant to this because it's a friend. Many of Congress people are friends of Jordan.
--:-- Moesher: If the U.S. cut aid, would other countries step up? Well, there is one key friend, Saudi Arabia, and its rulers have made clear that they will not accept this plan. So in the end, that could be what stops it.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm Piers Janaroff in Amman. Thank you.
--:-- Jane Araf: Thank you.
--:-- Leila Fadel: President Donald Trump has announced more tariffs, this time on steel and aluminum. Signing the order for the tariffs last night, Trump emphasized the sweeping nature of his new taxes on imports.
--:-- A Martinez: It's 25 percent without exceptions or exemptions. And that's all countries, no matter where it comes from, all countries.
--:-- Leila Fadel: NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben is here to explain what's going on. Good morning, Danielle.
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: Good morning.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So what are these tariffs and how do they compare to what Trump imposed in his first term?
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: Well, American importers will now be paying a 25 percent tax on steel and aluminum. And that makes these tariffs a lot like some you might remember him imposing during his first term, except this time the aluminum rate is higher.
--:-- Leila Fadel: It was 10 percent back then. In doing this, the administration has stressed they're trying to use these tariffs to stick it to China, which is the world's biggest steel exporter.
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: Now, the U.S. doesn't actually get much steel or aluminum directly from China, but the White House argues that Chinese steel makes it into the U.S. by being sold through other countries.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So you point out that China doesn't export much steel or aluminum to the U.S. What countries do export all that steel and aluminum?
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: Well, the U.S. gets by far the most of its aluminum imports from Canada, according to data compiled by Reuters. And on steel, Canada is also first. And there are other allies on that list like Mexico and South Korea.
--:-- Leila Fadel: You might notice that in all those countries I mentioned, Canada and Mexico feature prominently. Trump had recently threatened tariffs on them and then paused them at the last minute.
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: Well, with this new announcement, he's putting tariffs on those two countries anyway, just not on all of their goods.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And that gets to one really important thing about these tariffs. There are no exceptions to these. And that's different from Trump's tariffs last time around.
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: It's also different from how Biden treated tariffs. Both of them had carve outs on tariffs for some allies, but not now.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I think the big question for so many Americans are what are these tariffs going to mean for the U.S. economy and for them?
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: Well, in the near term, this should be good for American steel and aluminum companies because tariffs raise the price of steel and aluminum and they protect against some foreign competition.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And markets seemed to think so yesterday. Shares of Alcoa, an American aluminum company, and U.S. steel were both up.
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: But that doesn't mean this is great for the rest of the economy. I talked to Gary Huffbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
--:-- Gary Huffbauer: You lose jobs in the manufacturing sector when you put together the higher cost of inputs and the retaliation, which is sure to come, like night follows day.
--:-- Leila Fadel: He's saying there that not only would prices be higher for steel and aluminum, but other countries are likely to hit back and tariff American exports, which will hurt these companies.
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: Now, the president has talked about imposing still more tariffs this week. What has he said?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Well, it's unclear, but he's dribbled out a bit of information. He has said he'll be announcing what he calls reciprocal tariffs.
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: The idea there seems to be that whatever tariff a foreign country has put on a U.S. good, he wants to impose it back in return.
--:-- Leila Fadel: He also said yesterday that he'll be considering tariffs on cars, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors. But it was unclear whether those are separate from the reciprocal tariffs.
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: And this is one constant feature of how Trump does tariff policy. There's often not an orderly rollout. We really just don't know what's coming until he says it.
--:-- Leila Fadel: NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben, thank you for your reporting.
--:-- Danielle Kurtzleben: Yeah, thank you.
--:-- Leila Fadel: President Trump's Justice Department is ordering prosecutors to drop the case against the Democratic mayor of the nation's largest city. New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted last year on corruption charges with a trial schedule for April.
--:-- A Martinez: He's also up for re-election this year. Adams has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Joining me now with the latest is Bridget Bergen. She's a senior politics reporter at member station WNYC in New York. Good morning, Bridget.
--:-- Bridget Bergen: Good morning.
--:-- Leila Fadel: OK, so for those who haven't been following this closely, just lay out the charges the mayor was facing.
--:-- Bridget Bergen: Yeah, he was charged in September in a five-count criminal indictment. Prosecutors allege that Adams accepted about $100,000 in luxury travel perks, as well as illegal foreign campaign contributions from people connected to the Turkish government in exchange for official acts from City Hall.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Adams, as you said, has pleaded not guilty to those charges and has been really pretty vocal about calling the case politically motivated without really any evidence.
--:-- Bridget Bergen: He says it was payback for speaking out against the Biden administration's handling of the migrant crisis. And since President Trump's election, he's been very careful not to criticize him. He visited him at Mar-a-Lago, attended the inauguration. Adams even held a meeting yesterday with heads of city agencies, according to sources at the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the administration.
--:-- Leila Fadel: They were also told not to publicly criticize President Trump.
--:-- Bridget Bergen: So why does the Justice Department say this case should be dropped?
--:-- Leila Fadel: So they sent a memo to federal prosecutors outlining two very specific reasons. First, it says the charges were filed too close to the mayor's re-election.
--:-- Bridget Bergen: And the second reason relates to the Trump administration's ongoing immigration enforcement actions.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The memo states that the pending prosecution has, quote, unduly restricted the mayor's ability to devote his full attention to illegal immigration and really his ability to support the Trump administration's efforts.
--:-- Bridget Bergen: The memo also seeks to have the mayor's security clearance restored and says that no further steps should be taken as it relates to the investigation, at least for now.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And what is the mayor saying?
--:-- Bridget Bergen: So there was a post on the social media platform X last night. It was from a Fox News reporter who actually caught up with the mayor who was out at a restaurant.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Adams has said he's speaking with his attorney, still looking at what's happening.
--:-- Bridget Bergen: Normally on Tuesdays, he holds a weekly off-topic press conference. But instead, he's scheduled to deliver an address today at noon that's going to stream online.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So at this point, does this all mean that Adams' legal troubles are over?
--:-- Bridget Bergen: Well, not quite yet, Layla. Now the acting U.S. attorney of the Southern District will need to decide whether to follow the direction in that memo, and the judge overseeing the case would need to decide on whether to sign off on dropping the charges.
--:-- Leila Fadel: You know, those actions could set off another set of repercussions in this office that's really known for taking on these high-profile corruption cases.
--:-- Bridget Bergen: We haven't heard from the Southern District yet. It's also worth noting that the memo explicitly says the charges will be dropped without prejudice, which means they could potentially be brought again.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The memo states the case should be reviewed after the general election in November.
--:-- Bridget Bergen: As WNYC senior politics reporter Bridget Bergen.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Thank you, Bridget.
--:-- Bridget Bergen: Thank you.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And that's a first for Tuesday, February 11th. I'm Laila Faldin. And I'm Amy Martinez.
--:-- A Martinez: Remember, you can listen to this podcast sponsor-free while financially supporting public media with Up First Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
--:-- Leila Fadel: That's P-L-U-S dot N-P-R dot org.
--:-- A Martinez: Today's episode of Up First was edited by Nishant Dahiya, Roberta Rampton, Gerry Holmes, Janaya Williams, and Alice Woelfle.
--:-- Leila Fadel: It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas.
--:-- A Martinez: We get engineering support from David Greenburg, and our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Join us again tomorrow.
--:-- A Martinez: This comes from NPR sponsor, Sierra. How businesses connect with customers defines their brand. Sierra is the platform for building better, more human customer experiences with AI. No stock answers, no Holt music, just real solutions fast. Visit sierra.ai to learn more.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming.
--:-- A Martinez: Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from the Nature Conservancy. Nature is common ground for everyone, and uniting to protect nature can help solve today's challenges and create a thriving tomorrow for future generations. Discover why at nature.org slash NPR.
