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Trump’s sharp turn for US policy faces slower road in Congress

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President Donald Trump is preparing to take his show on the road after a shock-and-awe flurry of executive actions that have flipped U.S. priorities on everything from climate policy to diversity and inclusion.

Yet while Trump’s long-planned fire and fury start to his second term is entirely something he’s controlled, the next steps for his plans to remake Washington will need the help of others. Republicans, who narrowly control the House and Senate, have yet to find agreement on how to move Trump’s ambitious plans through Congress.

Trump’s third day in office will be capped by an Oval Office interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, set to air Wednesday night during Asia market hours. Trump is also expected to meet today with a group of centrist House Republicans, according to a Semafor report

Trump met Tuesday with House and Senate Republican leaders to chart a path forward on his priorities, but those talks ended without a deal on how to advance Trump’s signature tax plan, as well as on other key policy priorities like immigration and energy. 

Senate Republicans would like to do a large bill on immigration and energy first to deliver a quick win for the president and then tackle tax reform in a second bill, whereas House Republicans would prefer to do one large bill that ties together all of Trump’s priorities to help ensure passage through Congress. 

Congressional Republicans have struggled with unity in recent years, especially in the House. It took 15 votes for Kevin McCarthy to become speaker in 2023, and he lasted just 10 months in the job before being ousted. GOP lawmakers eventually settled on Mike Johnson to take over, and he’s led an uneasy majority since then. Earlier this month, Johnson required Trump’s own last-minute intervention to flip a couple of votes in order to keep the top job.

Hannity, in a Tuesday evening program at the Capitol with House GOP leaders and lawmakers, repeatedly pressed them to get on board with Trump’s full agenda, urging unanimity while reminding repeatedly that no one member can get everything they want. 

Johnson told Hannity Tuesday that a bill to move Trump’s tax agenda, extending cuts from his first term and enacting promises made during his campaign, could be done by April and would be passed by the Memorial Day holiday near the end of May at the latest.

“We’ve had a lot of member briefings, but we’ve also been talking about this with President Trump,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters after his meeting with the president on Tuesday.

“When you look at what gives us the best path to success, to secure the border, lower energy costs, save the tax policies, stave off the tax increase — all of those things we want to do, what builds the best path?” Scalise added.”The one area we’re not in disagreement on is what will be in an overall package. We’re all talking about the same things.”

Yet for all the optimistic talk on passing Trump’s legislative agenda, there’s no agreement yet on how to do it. 

Complicating matters further, Republicans in recent years needed to rely on Democratic votes for even the most basic legislative must-dos, like funding the government or lifting the debt ceiling. House Republicans can only afford to lose one vote and still be able to pass bills without needing to go to Democrats for help. In the Senate, they can afford just three defections.

“We’re gonna get the job done, at the end of the day,” Representative Tom Emmer, the Minnesota Republican whose job as majority whip is to corral House GOP votes for the bills that will enact Trump’s agenda, told Hannity. “Failure is not an option.”

Fire funding

Meanwhile, preparations are underway for a trip to North Carolina and Los Angeles, the latter of which will give Trump a chance to spar on Democratic turf with the biggest political foil of his first days back in office, California Governor Gavin Newsom. 

Trump is slated to visit North Carolina Friday to see the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and then California to view the devastation wrought by wildfires in Los Angeles. Trump and Newsom have sparred repeatedly over the handling of fires in California, including over water usage, preparation, and the state’s response. 

In his inaugural address, Trump said fires have burned in Los Angeles “without even a token of defense.” Newsom shot back that Trump’s rhetoric was both “nonsense” and “insulting,” in a statement late Tuesday that interspersed those words with photos of firefighters tackling the blazes.

“I look forward to President Trump’s visit to Los Angeles and his mobilization of the full weight of the federal government to help our fellow Americans recover and rebuild.”

Newsom has also sparred with conservatives in Congress over whether federal aid to California should come without conditions — his insistence — or with conditions including requiring changes to water policy and fire mitigation strategies in the state, as Republicans including Johnson have suggested.

“We’re going to take care of Los Angeles,” Trump said to reporters on Tuesday at the White House. “I’m going to North Carolina, which has been abandoned by the Democrats. And I’m going to North Carolina, very importantly, first, I’ll be there on Friday.”

Trump will also go to Nevada, a swing-state he won in the 2024 presidential election, to “thank them” for their support. 

The trip will cap off a busy week for Trump, who advisers and allies say returned to power with a strong sense of the way he wanted to approach a second term. Trump is trying to demonstrate his effectiveness as a leader and draw a contrast with the former President Joe Biden, who typically did one or two public events each day in office. Many of Trump’s aides would like his legacy to rival that of the late President Ronald Reagan.

The Trump team always intended to move at a dizzying pace during its first two years in office, while Republicans control the White House, Senate and House. They say they are emboldened and confident after winning all seven swing states in the 2024 election and expanding the Republican Party to include greater numbers of young men, Black men and Hispanics. 

To reporters, Trump has said he may impose tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as soon as February 1. “We’re talking about a tariff of 10% on China, based on the fact that they’re sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada,” Trump told reporters Tuesday afternoon. 

Trump’s comments, made in White House events that turned into impromptu press conferences, scrambled currency markets. China’s onshore yuan dropped by the most in three weeks on his tariff threat reiteration. A day earlier, Trump’s 25% threat had sent the Canadian dollar to its weakest levels in nearly five years.

Even if Trump’s second-term is off to an impactful start, warning signs loom for his presidency. The nation’s stubborn inflation will be hard to tame, despite his recent order to federal agencies to study the issue of bringing down costs for consumers. 

Peace in the Middle East may prove fragile, despite the agreed-upon six week cease fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, while Russia continues to bombard Ukraine’s cities nightly, with little sign yet of public movement by Russia’s leadership toward the truce talks Trump says are essential.

Trump indicated he plans to speak soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and suggested Tuesday he could impose more sanctions on Russia if Putin doesn’t come to the table for talks on Ukraine. 

Putin told China’s leader Xi Jinping, during their 95-minute video call Tuesday, that he was ready for dialogue with the U.S. on Ukraine, Interfax reported, but that Trump’s representatives hadn’t yet contacted the Kremlin over possible talks. 

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IAASB tweaks standards on working with outside experts

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.

The proposed narrow-scope amendments involve minor changes to several IAASB standards:

  • ISA 620, Using the Work of an Auditor’s Expert;
  • ISRE 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements;
  • ISAE 3000 (Revised), Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information;
  • ISRS 4400 (Revised), Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements.

The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.

In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.  

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Tariffs will hit low-income Americans harder than richest, report says

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President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings. 

Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.

Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.

Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed. 

The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.

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At Schellman, AI reshapes a firm’s staffing needs

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Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition. 

Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time. 

“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said. 

One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load. 

“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai. 

Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies. 

“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.

However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area. 

“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai. 

As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales. 

“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai. 

While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves. 

“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”

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