ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Whether or not he knew a trade to the Houston Texans was in the works, Stefon Diggs’ tenure with the Bills ended with a two-word question, summing up, perhaps, why the mercurial receiver’s commitment to Buffalo was frequently scrutinized.
“You sure?” Diggs posted on X on Tuesday night in response to someone suggesting he wasn’t essential to quarterback Josh Allen’s success. The Bills and everyone else are now about to find out how Allen fares without his favorite target after Buffalo agreed to trade Diggs to the Houston Texans on Wednesday.
As part of the deal, the Bills acquired the Texans’ second-round pick in the 2025 draft, which Houston acquired in a trade with Minnesota. Houston also acquired Buffalo’s sixth-round pick in this year’s draft, and a fifth-rounder in 2025.
The Texans add an established playmaker, who has topped 1,000 yards receiving in each of his past six seasons, to a receiver group already featuring Nico Collins and Tank Dell. Collins led Houston with 80 receptions for 1,297 yards and eight touchdowns last season. The Texans went worst to first in the AFC South under first-year coach DeMeco Ryans and AP Offensive Rookie of the Year C.J. Stroud.
For the Bills, Diggs’ departure has the potential of putting a major dent in the team’s chances to contend for a fifth straight AFC East title, something general manager Brandon Beane acknowledged.
“Are we better today? Probably not. It’s a work in progress. And we will continue to work on that,” Beane said, noting his roster is hardly finalized and the season doesn’t start for another five months.
“Let’s be patient and let us work through this,” he added “Was it easy? No. But if you make the best decision for the Bills moving forward, that’s what you do. And you trust that.”
Beane otherwise declined to go into detail into what prompted a move that breaks up an Allen-Diggs tandem that spent the past four seasons rewriting the team’s offensive records.
Buffalo has another big hole to fill at receiver after also losing starter Gabe Davis to free agency. Second-year receiver Khalil Shakir returns, while Buffalo added free agents Curtis Samuel and Mack Hollins.
The 30-year-old Diggs has nine years of NFL experience and topped 1,000 yards in each of his past six seasons. In his first season in Buffalo, he became the Bills’ first player to lead the league in both yards receiving (1,535) and catches (127). Overall, he has 1,178 catches for 9,995 yards and 67 touchdowns since being selected by the Vikings in the fifth round of the 2015 draft out of Maryland.
In an offseason where Beane focused on slashing a bloated payroll, by cutting key players to get under the salary cap, trading Diggs actually adds more than $3 million to Buffalo’s total this year. The benefit is the Bills do get out of paying Diggs his $18.5 million guaranteed salary in 2024 and will now have no salary cap charge for him in 2025.
Another issue involving Diggs were growing questions over whether he had worn out his welcome in Buffalo, similar to the concerns that were raised that led to the Vikings trading him to the Bills in March 2020.
Accomplished as Diggs was in leading Buffalo in receiving in each of his four seasons, his sideline outbursts and cryptic messages posted on social media had become a growing distraction.
Though voted a two-time captain, Diggs was unable to contain his frustrations. The most notable moment came following a 27-10 loss to Cincinnati in the divisional round of the playoffs in the 2022 season, when Diggs left the Bills locker room before coach Sean McDermott had a chance to address the team.
Though Diggs was coaxed back by teammate Duke Johnson, the receiver’s frustrations carried into the offseason. He raised further questions about his status by not attending the team’s offseason voluntary workout programs.
Confusion then arose when Diggs wasn’t present for the Bills’ first mandatory practice and McDermott said he was “concerned” about the player’s absence. A day later, McDermott corrected himself by saying Diggs was excused from practice, but was present at the facility to discuss lingering issues that stemmed from the previous season.
In November, Diggs reiterated his commitment to the Bills by saying he wanted to retire in Buffalo after his brother, Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs, posted messages on X, formally Twitter, urging Stefon to leave the team.
“They’ve never questioned me as a player, and as a man of what I bring to the table," Diggs said at the time, referring to his teammates. "So me being fully invested has never really been in question.”
Diggs had his shining moments. The most memorable was him immediately heading to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center to be with Damar Hamlin after the safety went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated on the field during a game against the Bengals in January 2022.
Too often, however, it was left to Diggs’ teammates coming to the receiver’s defense, as Von Miller did last year.
On Wednesday, Beane acknowledged Diggs’ competitive nature by saying “I wouldn’t want to change that for him,” before adding he took everything into account when making the trade.
“Certain things need to be kept in-house as far as how a decision was made or what all factors in specifically,” Beane said. “I think you just have to trust that this decision was made in the best interest of the Bills going forward.”
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FILE - AFC wide receiver, Buffalo Bills' Stefon Diggs (14) speaks before Pro Bowl practice at Camping World Stadium on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024 in Orlando, Fla. The Buffalo Bills are trading their top receiving threat, Stefon Diggs, to the Houston Texans in a deal that was agreed to on Wednesday, April 3, 2024, a person with knowledge of the discussions confirmed to The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Vera Nieuwenhuis, File)
FILE - Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stefon Diggs (14) runs after a catch during an NFL divisional round playoff football game, Sunday, Jan. 21, 2024 in Orchard Park, N.Y. The Buffalo Bills are trading their top receiving threat, Stefon Diggs, to the Houston Texans in a deal that was agreed to on Wednesday, April 3, 2024, a person with knowledge of the discussions confirmed to The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Matt Durisko, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump suggested to business leaders Thursday that his plans to increase tariffs on foreign imports would solve seemingly unrelated challenges such as the rising cost of child care in the U.S.
The GOP presidential nominee promised to lead what he called a “national economic renaissance” by increasing tariffs, slashing regulations to boost energy production and drastically cutting government spending as well as corporate taxes for companies that produce in the U.S.
Trump was asked at his appearance before the Economic Club of New York about his plans to drive down child care costs to help more women join the workforce.
“Child care is child care, it’s something you have to have in this country. You have to have it," he said. Then, he said his plans to tax imports from foreign nations at higher levels would “take care” of such problems.
“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,” he said.
Trump has embraced tariffs as he appeals to working-class voters who oppose free-trade deals and the outsourcing of factories and jobs. But in his speech Thursday and his economic plans as a whole, Trump has made a broader — to some, implausible — promise on tariffs: that they can raise trillions of dollars to fund his agenda without those costs being passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.
His campaign attacks Democratic nominee Kamala Harris ’ proposals to increase corporate tax rates by saying they would ultimately be borne by workers in the form of fewer jobs and lower incomes. Yet taxes on foreign imports would have a similar effect with businesses and consumers having to absorb those costs in the form of higher prices.
The United States had $3.8 trillion worth of imports last year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Trump in the past has talked about universal tariffs of at least 10%, if not higher, though he has not spelled out details about how these taxes would be implemented.
Kimberly Clausing, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has repeatedly warned in economic analyses about the likely damage to people’s finances from Trump’s tariffs. She noted that Trump wants tariffs to pay for everything, even though they can’t.
“I believe Trump has already spent this revenue, to pay for his tax cuts (which it doesn’t), or to perhaps end the income tax (which it cannot),” she said in an email. “It is unclear how there would be any revenues left over to fund child care.”
Child care is unaffordable for many Americans and financially precarious for many day care operators and their employees. Democrats in Congress have long argued the child care industry is in crisis and requires a drastic increase in federal aid — and some Republicans have joined them. Trump pointed to his tariff ideas as well as efforts he announced to reduce what he described as “waste and fraud.”
“I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I'm talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about,” he said.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance was also asked about proposals to lower day care costs earlier this week, and he suggested making it easier for families to keep the kids at home with a grandparent or another relative.
“Make it so that, maybe like grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more,” he said. “If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we are spending on day care.”
Vance also suggested training more people to work in day cares, and said some states required what he called “ridiculous certification that has nothing to do with taking care of kids."
In his speech, Trump said he would immediately issue “a national emergency declaration” to achieve a massive increase in the domestic energy supply and eliminate 10 current regulations for every new regulation the government adopts. He said Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has agreed to head a commission to perform a financial audit of the federal government that would save trillions of dollars.
“My plan will rapidly defeat inflation, quickly bring down prices and reignite explosive economic growth,” Trump claimed.
Trump has previously floated the idea of chopping the corporate tax rate to 15%, but on Thursday clarified that would be solely for companies that produce in the U.S. The corporate rate had been 35% when he became president in 2017, and he later signed a bill lowering it.
Harris calls for raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%. Her policy proposals this week have been geared toward promoting more entrepreneurship, a bet that making it easier to start new companies will increase middle-class prosperity.
On Thursday, Trump attacked Harris’ proposals on banning price gouging and accused her of embracing Marxism and communism.
“She wants four more years to enforce the radical left agenda that poses a fundamental threat to the prosperity of every American family and America itself,” he said.
He also vowed to end what he called Harris’ “anti-energy crusade,” promising that energy prices would be cut in half, although energy prices are often driven by international fluctuations. He said an emergency declaration would help with rapid approvals for new drilling projects, pipelines, refineries, power plants and reactors, where local opposition is generally fierce.
And he also said he would ask Congress to pass legislation to ban the spending of taxpayer money on people who have entered the country illegally. He specifically said he would bar them from obtaining mortgages in California, targeting a bill passed in that state last week. Throughout his campaign, Trump has railed against the economic impact of the influx of migrants that have entered the country in recent years and their strain on some government services.
The Harris campaign issued a memo accusing Trump of wanting to hurt the middle class, arguing his ideas would expand the national debt and shrink economic growth and job creation.
“He wants our economy to serve billionaires and big corporations,” the campaign said in a statement.
Their dueling economic proposals are likely to be central to the upcoming presidential debate on Tuesday. Harris arrived Thursday in downtown Pittsburgh to devote the next several days to preparing for the debate. She intentionally picked a key part of the battleground state of Pennsylvania to hone her ideas ahead of their showdown.
In June, the right-leaning Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s proposed tariffs would amount to a $524 billion yearly tax hike that would shrink the economy and cost the equivalent of 684,000 jobs. After Trump floated tariffs as high as 20% in August, the Harris campaign seized on an analysis suggesting that figure would raise a typical family’s expenses by almost $4,000 annually.
The money raised by tariffs would not be enough to offset the cost of his various income tax cuts, including a plan to whittle the corporate rate to 15% from 21%. The Penn Wharton Budget Model put the price tag on that at $5.8 trillion over 10 years.
Economists have warned about Trump’s plans to impose tariffs that he says would return manufacturing jobs to the U.S. Some have said such taxes on imports could worsen inflation, though he is vowing to cut down costs. Inflation peaked in 2022 at 9.1% but has since eased to 2.9% as of last month.
“Some might say it’s economic nationalism. I call it common sense. I call it America First,” he said on Thursday.
Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Boak reported from Pittsburgh. Associated Press writers Moriah Balingit and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at the Economic Club of New York, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump answers questions during a campaign event at the Economic Club of New York, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump responds to questions during a campaign event at the Economic Club of New York, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump answers questions during a campaign event at the Economic Club of New York, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign stop at the Throwback Brewery, in North Hampton, N.H., Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump participates in a town hall with FOX News host Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Harrisburg, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
