By MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — To President Donald Trump, “tariff” is more than “the most beautiful word in the dictionary,” something he says often.

Tariffs, in Trump’s view, are also a cure for a number of the nation’s ills and the tool to reach new heights.

Most economists see taxes paid on imports as capable of addressing unfair trade practices, but they’re skeptical of the quasi-miraculous properties that Trump claims they possess.

As the Republican president has touched off a trade war with America’s trading partners, he has offered an array of reasons to justify the steep tariffs he’s imposing or considering on goods coming from Mexico, Canada, China and beyond, despite warnings from experts that adding taxes to imported goods leads to higher prices for U.S. businesses and consumers.

A look at Trump’s assortment of justifications for the tariffs he’s imposing:

To balance trade and spur U.S. manufacturing

Trump, in his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, said his threats of tariffs had spurred more U.S. manufacturing in the auto industry.

“Plants are opening up all over the place,” Trump said.

In comments directed at manufacturers, the president added: “If you don’t make your product in America, however, under the Trump administration, you will pay a tariff and in some cases a rather large one.”

Trump, however, is granting a one-month exemption on his stiff new tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada for U.S. automakers, as worries persist that the newly launched trade war could crush domestic manufacturing. The pause comes after Trump spoke with leaders of the Big 3 automakers, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, on Wednesday, the White House press secretary said.

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To stop illegal immigration and human trafficking

Stopping illegal immigration has been one of Trump’s top priorities, and he’s used it as part of the rationale behind steep tariffs he’s imposing on America’s border nations, Canada and Mexico.

Trump last month gave both countries a temporary reprieve from his tariff threats after they took steps to appease his concerns about border security, including Canada’s move to list Mexican cartels as terrorist groups and Mexico’s announcement it would send 10,000 troops from its National Guard to its northern border.

On Sunday, Trump posted on his social media network: “ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSINGS LAST MONTH WERE THE LOWEST EVER RECORDED. THANK YOU!!!”

The next day, Trump announced he was imposing the tariffs anyway and said there was “no room left” for those countries to avoid the taxes.

To stop the flow of fentanyl

Trump has also cited the illicit flow of fentanyl into America as a reason for his tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, though a much smaller amount comes across America’s northern border than its southern border.

U.S. customs agents seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border during the last fiscal year, compared with 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border.

Trump, in a post on his Truth social media network on Wednesday, said that when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked what could be done about the tariffs, “I told him that many people have died from Fentanyl that came through the Borders of Canada and Mexico, and nothing has convinced me that it has stopped.”

President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Trump’s order imposing tariffs on China says that country’s government provides a “safe haven” for criminal organizations to “launder the revenues from the production, shipment, and sale of illicit synthetic opioids.”

To balance the budget

Last month, when Trump spoke at an investment summit in Miami, he said tariffs will help balance the federal budget.

“We’re trying to balance the budget immediately, and because of the tariff income, which is really go- — it’s — it’s already turned out to be amazing, actually,” Trump said. “It’s really meant more for bringing countries and companies into our country, but it’s — the numbers are rather staggering, because we’re the big piggy bank that everybody wants to be.”

To impose ‘fairness’

“I’ve decided for purposes of fairness that I will charge a reciprocal tariff,” Trump said last month as he signed a proclamation laying out his plan for reciprocal tariffs. “It’s fair to all. No other country can complain.”

To retaliate against other countries

In his address to Congress, Trump explained his push for reciprocal tariffs on all countries, which he said will start April 2, as a tit for tat.

“Whatever they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them. That’s reciprocal back and forth,” Trump said. “Whatever they tax us, we will tax them.”

To bolster national security

Trump signed executive orders in February and March instructing the Commerce Department to consider whether tariffs on imported copper, lumber and timber were needed to protect national security.

The order Trump signed in February said copper plays a vital role in U.S. defense, infrastructure and emerging technologies, and it ordered Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to investigate “actions to mitigate such threats, including potential tariffs.”

Wooden products are used by the construction industry and the military, and they depend upon a strong lumber industry in the U.S. to meet those needs, according to the order Trump signed in March.

To make child care more affordable

Last year, as Trump campaigned again for the presidency, he frequently proselytized his tariff plans and in one appearance suggested tariffs could help solve rising child care costs.

In response to a question about how he’d tackle child care costs so more women could join the workforce, Trump brought up his plan to hike taxes on imports and said, “We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s — relatively speaking — not very expensive, compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.”

To make America rich

Trump has several times said the revenue collected from tariffs will make the country wealthy.

In his speech to Congress, Trump said: “Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again.”

To protect the soul of the country

Also during his Tuesday address before Congress, Trump spotlighted an Alabama steelworker who attended the speech.

“Stories like Jeff’s remind us that tariffs are not just about protecting American jobs,” Trump said. “They’re about protecting the soul of our country.”

Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.

Felicia Reilly’s final wish was for a full police funeral “with the honor of loyalty of her family in blue,” her family wrote to St. Paul’s police chief shortly before she died.

Reilly had to retire as a St. Paul police officer after she was brutally assaulted in 2010 when she responded to a 911 call. Reilly sustained a brain injury and suffered debilitating headaches and pain, and ultimately lost the ability to walk. She died at home on Saturday at age 67 with her husband, Matt Reilly, by her side.

Felicia Reilly in February 2010. (Courtesy of the Reilly family)

“Felicia has spent the last 15 years in terrible pain,” Matt Reilly said. “She told me with tears in her eyes this pain never stops.”

Hundreds of officers are expected to attend Reilly’s funeral in St. Paul on Monday. A line-of-duty death funeral “is appropriate given how she was assaulted and what led to her tragic death,” St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry wrote in an email to department employees Tuesday.

The family says the public is also invited to Reilly’s funeral.

“Mom was all about the people,” said one of her daughters, Theresa Paulson.

Mayor Melvin Carter said Reilly’s “service and sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

“After suffering life-changing injuries in the line of duty 15 years ago, her resilience and dedication continue to inspire us all,” he said in a statement.

She’d been in ‘peak physical condition’

Reilly entered the St. Paul Police Department academy in 1996 as a 39-year-old married mother of five. She had wanted to be an officer, but went to school for nursing before later pursuing a degree in law enforcement.

She’d been “in peak physical condition,” said Matthew Reilly II, Felicia’s oldest son. “Standing 5’4” and at one point described as a muscular cherub by the Pioneer Press, Mom took her physical fitness seriously. While she preferred to de-escalate and talk through issues, for a police officer this is not always an option, and because some of the suspects she encountered would underestimate her, she knew she had to be prepared to hold her own.”

Felicia Reilly is shown in a January 1997 photo surrounded by her children, from left, Ben, 14, Matt, 17, Zachary, 7, Marianne, 13, and Theresa, 14. Reilly was among 40 new officers who graduated from the St. Paul Police Academy on Jan. 9, 1997. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

She was a hard-working officer “who never believed in being bored,” said Paulson, who was previously a 911 dispatcher and used to dispatch for her mother and other officers. During middle-of-the-night shifts, when Reilly wasn’t responding to calls, Paulson would ask, “What are you up to, Mom?”

“She said, ‘I’m baby-sitting a stop sign to make sure it doesn’t move,’” joked Paulson, referring to Reilly enforcing traffic rules.

During Reilly’s dinner breaks, she’d eat leftovers from home in her squad car, calling it her “mobile office.”

“They were putting four young adult children through college and still had a teenager at home,” so they needed to be frugal, Paulson said.

She was protecting elderly couple

In March 2010, Reilly responded to a 911 hang-up call at Thomas Jerard Swenson’s parents’ home. His parents told Reilly he was trying to hurt them and they were afraid, Paulson wrote in the letter to Henry requesting a police funeral on behalf of her mother and her family.

Swenson came out of the home and she went to detain him, but “he swung at her” with “such force to knock her to the ground” and then kicked her in the back of the head several times, wrote Paulson, who is now an attorney.

Reilly “went through her entire tool belt,” Paulson said, describing how her mother used her expandable baton to strike Swenson, Tased him to no effect and pulled her handgun. He ran and “she made the split-second decision not to shoot him in the back because my mom is honest and has integrity, and that’s what she wanted to be known for — always making the right choice.”

She “fought harder and longer than most would,” son Matthew Reilly said.

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If Reilly had waited for backup to arrive, “she would not have been protecting the elderly couple and would have been accused of cowardice — a label that would never be used to describe my mother,” Paulson wrote.

A jury found Swenson guilty of first-degree assault and he was sentenced to 8½ years in prison. While the prosecution was making the point in court about how severely injured the assault left Reilly, the city was questioning whether she qualified for workers’ compensation, said Matt Reilly in 2016. He retired from his job as a St. Louis Park police investigator to take care of his wife.

She settled her workers’ comp claim with the city when they were on the brink of bankruptcy over her medical bills, Matt Reilly said previously.

She worried she’d been forgotten

Former St. Paul police officer Felicia Reilly laughs as she is given a gift by Assistant Chief Kathy Wuorinen during a ceremony recognizing and honoring Reilly for her years of service at the St. Paul Police Federation office in St. Paul on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

Reilly’s brain injury caused “a progressive degradation of her health and motor function,” son Matthew Reilly said.

Her daily headaches averaged a level seven on a pain scale of 10. None of the treatments she received fully made her headaches go away.

She was a clarinet player, but could no longer play because the sound hurt her head and her brain injury caused double vision in both eyes. She mostly stayed home, other than going to church and the grocery store.

On her worst days, she “used to say she wished she hadn’t survived the assault because if you die on duty, you are treated like a hero, but if you are simply hurt too bad to continue working, you are treated like an embarrassment, best left forgotten or used as a cautionary tale,” said son Matthew Reilly.

Reilly was worried she’d been forgotten, but the outpouring of support from the city and the community since her death has made it clear that wasn’t the case, her son said. They planned to have her funeral at a smaller venue and have since moved it to a larger space.

No new charges

Chief Henry wrote in the department email this week: “Unfortunately, we can’t go back and prevent this tragedy. We have also learned that there is no way for us to amend and upgrade the charges the person responsible for the attack on Felicia was already convicted of.

“What we can do is honor her and the sacrifice she made, in the line of duty, for our city and all of us,” he continued. “Many of you didn’t even work here in 2010 when this vicious assault took place, but we are all here now which gives us the opportunity to show our respect and appreciation for her and her family’s struggle.”

Because Swenson was convicted of first-degree assault and the double jeopardy clause in the U.S. Constitution says no person can be tried twice for the same crime, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office said it cannot pursue additional charges against him.

Reilly’s family can apply to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety to request that her death is formally recognized as occurring in the line of duty, which DPS then reviews to determine if it meets guidelines the Legislature has defined in state law, according to a DPS spokesman.

‘Fought to live’

Before Reilly was assaulted, she loved sewing and making clothes for her kids and grandkids. She used to go camping and fishing.

Felicia and Matt Reilly were married for 47 years. “There was never a better mom, friend or wife in the world,” he said.

When she could still communicate, she told her husband “that one of her saddest facts was that only one grandchild knew her before she got hurt,” Matt Reilly said.

Her traumatic brain injury progressed and “took a terrible turn for the worst” in September 2023, which led to numerous hospitalizations, according to her husband.

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“She fought to live because she wanted to live,” Paulson said.

But with the “tremendous unrelenting pain” she was experiencing, they “knew it was time” and she started home hospice care, Matt Reilly said.

“Most of all she loved and loves Jesus,” Matt Reilly wrote shortly before she died. When he’d see her wincing or in distress, he’d put on worship music and she’d “lay still with a peaceful look on her face.”

Funeral for Felicia Reilly

Visitation will begin 9 a.m. Monday at Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church, 1669 Arcade St. in St. Paul, with the funeral service at 11 a.m.

Interment will be at Roselawn Cemetery in Roseville.

Six months after a devastating fire interrupted its original opening plans, Vietnamese restaurant Khue’s Kitchen is set to open today in South St. Anthony Park.

Chef Eric Pham has been operating the restaurant as a pop-up for several years, including a 14-month stint as the resident kitchen concept at Bar Brava in Minneapolis, and he was planning to open its first brick-and-mortar location last August in the former Ngon Bistro. But two weeks before opening day, the building was destroyed in an overnight fire.

Pham regrouped and, with a tip from chef Gavin Kaysen — under whom Pham had previously cooked at Spoon and Stable — Khue’s Kitchen has set up shop permanently at MidCity Kitchen, a shared commercial kitchen and event space in St. Paul.

“There’s been an incredible community behind me and supporting me,” Pham said. “The pop-ups, for me, can only last so long. There’s always been, and will always be, an underlying feeling that I need to do a restaurant.”

MidCity Kitchen will remain a shared-use commissary, but Pham said most tenants work in the mornings and don’t really use the dining room, leaving plenty of time and space for a dinnertime restaurant like Khue’s Kitchen.

And Pham is no stranger to the Twin Cities restaurant scene: His family runs Quang, a staple Vietnamese restaurant on Eat Street in Minneapolis. His grandmother launched the restaurant more than 30 years ago, and his mother, Khue Pham — after whom Khue’s Kitchen is named — is a chef there.

But Eric Pham did not grow up in the kitchen at Quang. Khue Pham and her siblings, most of whom were born in Vietnam and fled after the Vietnam War, wanted their children to pursue higher education and professional careers outside the restaurant. The kids could help with prep and run the cash register at Quang, but Eric Pham said his mother had forbidden him from working in the kitchen or pursuing a job in restaurants.

And initially, Eric Pham’s decision to leave accounting school and become a chef put a major strain on his and his mother’s relationship, he said.

Chefs Eric Pham, left, and his mother Khue Pham speak at a pop-up event for Eric Pham’s new restaurant Khue’s Kitchen in 2024. Khue Pham and her siblings run Minneapolis Vietnamese staple Quang. (Courtesy of Eric Pham)

“Emotions were very high, and I wasn’t talking to my mom a year ago,” he said. “Now she’s seen that I can be successful and manage it, and she’s more supportive now than ever. But the moment I dropped out of college, she said, was the worst day of her life.”

Since then, though, the restaurant’s namesake has been central in helping her son refine his recipes and menus, Eric Pham said. The menu at Khue’s Kitchen is a mix of popular dishes from the pop-ups — including the super-popular fried chicken sandwich — and dishes that were harder to pull off in those impromptu settings, like roast pork with a fish sauce vinaigrette. Eric Pham is also planning a number of hearty vegetable-forward and vegetarian dishes.

As a Vietnamese-American, Eric Pham said his relationship with Vietnamese culture is different from that of his parents who were born there, and the food reflects both cultures. His mom often finds American food to be too greasy, he said, and when he was figuring out a Vietnamese twist on a fried chicken sandwich, he told her he’d only put it on the menu if she personally enjoyed it.

“Without my mom, I would not be cooking,” he said. “This is me championing their upbringing through my hands. These are some dishes that my mom, my grandma created and served us — and you’re going to get some American things that weren’t (traditional) but I think taste really good.”

Khue’s Kitchen: open 4:30 to 9:30 p.m., Wednesdays through Saturdays at MidCity Kitchen; 693 Raymond Ave. Online at khueskitchen.com and on Instagram at @khueskitchen.

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