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U.S. Markets Set to Open After Worst Day of 2025; Markets on Edge After Trump Says He Won't Rule Out a Recession; Interview with Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL): House Expected to Vote on Bill to Avert Government Shutdown. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 11, 2025 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:00:00]

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Greenlandic voters there and Greenland is really one of the most dynamic regions right now in the world because of course it's very high up in the Arctic there's a lot of ice up there but that ice is melting very quickly and underneath that ice is a lot of natural resources oil gas and of course rare earths as well. May be one of the reasons why President Trump has been talking about it so much but also of course security as well as Russia certainly appears a lot closer when you don't have that ice shield between the Western Hemisphere and Russia.

And so therefore there are geopolitical implications in this election. Nevertheless mostly Greenlanders and certainly all the parties in Parliament are saying while they want independence they don't want to become part of the U.S. -- Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Fred Pleitgen great to see you Fred thank you so much.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All eyes on the markets this morning after yesterday's tumble wiped out all gains made since Donald Trump became president. Fears of recession and Trump's trade wars are causing market chaos as the president refuses to rule out recession and now economists are upping the odds that it could happen.

A crucial meeting to try and stop the bloodshed in Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio telling Ukraine it must cede territory for the war to end giving Russia a big win but can Ukraine accept this element of a deal.

And Southwest Airlines making a big change to its baggage rule. You know that free checked luggage you like a lot. That's gone. We have the details.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan, John Berman is out today. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BOLDUAN: All right new this morning, we are keeping a close eye on market futures. There they are all right now as a three-week sell-off hit a whole new level of intensity yesterday over the president's words and actions, you can sum it up. U.S. stocks plunged Monday with the Dow falling nearly 900 points. Its worst day of the year. A source of this uncertainty, President Trump's continued trade war and what he just said also about the possibility of a recession this year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you expecting a recession this year?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we're doing is very big. We're bringing wealth back to America. That's a big thing. and there are always periods of -- it takes a little time.

BOLDUAN: Period of transition. We'll continue to see what exactly that means. The futures right now, as we should see, they are up. CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House starting us off this hour. What are you hearing from the White House on this today? What they're, I don't know, expecting or preparing for?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, what was so interesting yesterday, Kate, was that we didn't hear from the president at all. It was a very rare day where you actually didn't hear public commentary from the president. He has largely spoke publicly every day since being in office thus far. So it's notable that that came really when we saw the stock markets and Wall Street have the worst day of the year yesterday. But we will hear from him today. He's going to be speaking to the business roundtable at 5:00 p.m. Of course, I think the world will be watching.

And really I think, the world is looking for some more reassurance. The global markets are looking for more reassurance particularly as we continue to hear that uncertainty really from the president's own mouth. I'd argue that, you know, the markets and the economy wasn't a fragile state before the president had made those comments but really we saw the stock market react, you know, very quickly and plunging very quickly this week following those comments that the president made about not ruling out a recession.

Now behind closed doors we have heard the White House tried to defend some of this in a statement yesterday. A White House spokesperson had essentially said that the White House was crediting Trump's policies with spurring investment in the United States. They also pointed to the president's first term to show that perhaps you know you really should stick with Donald Trump on this and see some growth moving forward.

And that's what we're hearing as well from other officials. I spoke with Kevin Hassett briefly yesterday here at the White House, one of Donald Trump's top economic advisors, he was saying that sure we are seeing some uncertainty and, you know, perhaps some volatility in the markets because of the president's tariff policies but that that should have ultimately be offset by some of the other things that he is doing including tax policy and whatnot. So that is what they're saying behind closed doors.

I think also watch very closely what Karoline Leavitt the White House Press Secretary says at her 1:00 p.m. briefing. I know that reporters just like us here at CNN are going to be pressing her very closely on those comments that the president made and the specific reaction to what we're seeing happen in the stock market.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely, it's the beginning of a very big day. it's good to see you, Alayna.

[08:05:00]

BOLDUAN: Thank you so much for looking at futures right there. It's going to be really -- let me walk over to Matt Egan. He's been standing standing by looking at futures and it's going to be really interesting to see what happens when markets open next hour.

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Yes. Yes, it was a brutal day. Unfortunately, we're looking at kind of a weak rebound this morning.

At least that's what the futures are signaling a 160 point gain in the futures given the fact that the Dow lost almost 900 points yesterday. This means clawing back just a small fraction of the losses from yesterday. And look, it is stunning how fast this happened. The market went from all time highs to a recession scare in the span of three weeks.

Yesterday was the worst day for the Nasdaq in two and a half years. The fear gauge surged the Dow down 1,900 points so far in March. And I think this is just another reminder of how fragile confidence is. Right. Investors have lost some confidence in the health of the economy and they've arguably lost some confidence in policymaking out of Washington.

Edgar Denny, he's a market veteran. He told me the stock market is losing confidence in the Trump 2.0 policies. And we've seen the S&P 500 lose $4.5 trillion in market value since the election.

I mean, we -- remember you could see it here. The market went basically straight up after the election. And that was because investors were pricing in basically all of the positives.

BOLDUAN: You know, basically straight down.

EGAN: And right, the tax cuts, the deregulation and investors were kind of ignoring the risks that we knew were all along. And the president always said he was going to aggressively use tariffs. And I think investors were sort of caught off guard by how the early weeks of this administration have really focused on tariffs and not as much on those --

BOLDUAN: How aggressive, aggressive really is --

EGAN: How aggressive, but also how chaotic.

BOLDUAN: Yes, that's one thing. When you when when tariffs are your policy, you put them in place and you keep them. And the back and forth has been exactly what we've been saying.

What are companies saying? How are they reacting to this?

EGAN: Well, we just heard another warning from a major company. Delta Airlines last night came out, slashed its earnings outlook. And what's interesting is the company said that they are basically blaming weaker demand that's being caused by crumbling consumer and corporate confidence. And they cite an increased macro uncertainty. This stock plunged last night about 15 percent. It's actually clawed back some of those losses, but still it's down another five percent.

Another airline, Southwest Airlines, just this morning came out, slashed its outlook as well. Blamed a number of factors, including the wildfires in California. But what really stood out to me was Southwest blamed again weaker demand caused by uncertainty. Also, they cited less government travel, which seems to be an allusion to the federal spending cuts.

Yes, that's the first time I've heard that from one of the airlines. But I think this just shows how the loss of confidence can really translate to an actual impact in the real economy and for the bottom line of companies.

BOLDUAN: It bears out right now more evidence of exactly what you've been saying and smart minds have been saying, which is uncertainty is the worst thing. And that's just like on all fronts added up together. Delta's freaking out. Southwest freaking out. Customers are freaking out. The market's freaking out like that.

EGAN: Yes. What I'm wondering about, though, Kate, is whether any of this causes the president to reconsider some of his tariff plans. Because remember, tomorrow, 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum set to go into effect.

Does the market freak out? Caused the president to push that back. We'll see.

BOLDUAN: He doesn't watch the markets. Remember.

EGAN: I forgot.

BOLDUAN: Yes, you need to remember that. But we'll see what he says today. That will be important. You are right -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right, thank you, Kate.

Joining me now is Colby Smith, Federal Reserve correspondent for "The New York Times." Thank you so much for being here on what has been a rocky ride.

Is the market responding exactly how you would expect it to respond with all of the things that we know, with the president saying that he couldn't rule out a recession and talking about trade wars and talking about inflation and all these different things? Is this how you would expect the market to respond?

COLBY SMITH, FEDERAL RESERVE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, it's certainly an extreme reaction. But I also think that there is real concern here about the outlook for the economy. And that's a big shift.

I mean, going into this year and ahead of Trump's return to the White House, there was a lot of optimism about what his policies were going to bring, whether it was tax cuts, whether it was deregulatory measures, things like that. And now what we're seeing here is that a lot of that, those positive tailwinds perhaps that people were expecting, those are getting overshadowed by a lot of the uncertainty that we're seeing here with trade policy and investors.

They're not liking the uncertainty. They're not liking the whiplash. And for economists, it's also become very worrisome, too, about the outlook.

SIDNER: Canada's incoming prime minister said, you know what, you can keep your watery beer. I mean, they are furious in Canada, our natural ally and neighbor. Mexico also responding very negatively.

[08:10:00]

Trump has been promising some pain. I think he called it a little bit of pain and some disruptions before, as he puts it, America is going to get richer than it was ever before.

Is there anything historically that shows us that this is actually going to happen? Because he's promising wealth while saying you're going to suffer a little bit in the beginning.

SMITH: So that's the real fear here. We don't know, you know, how much pain really is going to come from trade policies like this or policy U-turns, as we've seen. And once a recession gets going or a growth slowdown gets going, it's very hard to know when it stops.

And we've seen this with unemployment, for instance. When unemployment starts to rise, it's very often the case that it's a it's a step upward in unemployment. That's quite drastic. It's not something that happens gradually.

So the fear here is that we're opening kind of Pandora's box in terms of rattling a relatively strong economy at this point with with a lot of, you know, this policy uncertainty and the side effects of that are really unknown. And I think that's why investors and economists are really on edge at this point.

SIDNER: Is this a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy? I mean, a lot of people look at the markets and they go, how did one day and one comment cause this to tumble? There's a lot of emotion behind this.

And once it starts, as you said, how do you get it back? So we're sort of seeing a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy here.

SMITH: Yes, and you see this with the sentiment figures. I mean, and it builds on one another. We saw this from the, you know, the Delta earnings. We heard on that call that they're worried about consumer sentiment eventually feeding into lower spending. If people are nervous about the outlook, you're not going to go and

book travel. You're not going to, you know, do anything that really stretches the budget in any way, shape or form. If you're worried, on the one hand, about a slowing economy and on the other hand, about rising prices. Inflation is still a problem here. And that's something that we can't forget.

So the fact that these growth concerns are coming alongside remaining concerns about price pressures, it just means that the consumers are really under pressure. And in that kind of environment, you're not necessarily going to see businesses hiring, investing, doing all of these things that keep business activity humming.

And I think you can very easily see how this snowballs into something bigger than it is right now.

SIDNER: We will have to wait and see, but there is definitely a lot of concern. And the uncertainty is driving the markets down generally. We will see when the opening bell, what happens today.

Colby Smith, thank you so much. That was great. Appreciate it -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, Vice President J.D. Vance heading to Capitol Hill this morning to try and rally support among House Republicans to pass a funding bill before Friday's shutdown deadline. And they have zero margin for error. We'll take you there.

And five years ago today, five years, COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic. A look today at the lasting impact of that pandemic and that virus.

And a new roadblock for the Menendez brothers, the new Los Angeles County D.A. pushing to keep them in prison and calling their self- defense claims lies.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: Happening very soon on Capitol Hill. Vice President J.D. Vance expected to arrive for a meeting with House Republicans. They could vote today on their plan to try to avert a government shutdown.

But the clock is ticking and there are just three days until the Friday deadline. And it seems they won't be able to rely on Democrats to help get it across the finish line.

Joining me now is Congressman Brad Schneider. He is a Democrat from Illinois. From the great state of Illinois. Thank you so much for being here this morning. Lots of work to be done there on Capitol Hill.

Let's start with this. Speaker Johnson said that House Republicans will pass a funding bill. And that it's, quote, going to be up to Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats to do the right thing. And I don't think they're going to shut the government down.

He is blaming the Democrats already, even though they have power over the House and the Senate. But is he right? Will Democrats vote alongside the Republicans?

REP. BRAD SCHNEIDER (D-IL): Well, Sara, it's good to be with you. And you're 100 percent right. Democrats don't have the power to shut the government down or keep it open. The Republicans have the House. They have the Senate. They have the presidency.

And they have a plan that they're going to force down the throats of the Democrats. But they don't need any Democratic votes to achieve it. They haven't reached out to us to have any discussions.

We should have passed this funding bill last year. We should have passed it in December. Mike Johnson pushed it to March 14th. And now they want to push it to the end of the year. This is just a surrender of the responsibilities of Congress to President Trump.

We should be doing our job. We should be at the table talking. And that's why Patty Murray and Rosa DeLauro offered a 30-day extension to continue to work to pass a funding bill that reflects the priorities of the American people.

SIDNER: Are you planning on voting for this version of the stopgap bill?

SCHNEIDER: No, I'm not voting for this. This is a bill, as I said, it abandons Congress's responsibility to set our priorities. It lets down our veterans. It lets down seniors and students. It's our first responders.

This is cutting where we shouldn't be cutting. It's not making decisions. It's not doing the responsibilities Congress was elected to do. And so this is Mike Johnson surrendering to Donald Trump.

SIDNER: I want to ask you about this because there is a schism here. You have Tim Kaine and yourself. Tim Kaine, whose district is filled with federal workers who would be deeply impacted by this and have also been certainly impacted by DOGE.

[08:20:00]

But he's saying hell no to the bill.

But you also have Senator John Fetterman who says he will never vote for a government shutdown. If you don't stick together, what power do the Democrats have?

SCHNEIDER: Let me be clear. We don't want a government shutdown. What I'm saying is that Congress, House and Senate have a responsibility to pass funding bills. And we should be doing that. Republicans are trying to forego that, kick the can, not just down the road but out of the stadium. And we need to do our job.

And we don't have to -- it's not a choice between funding the government until September without doing the responsible things. We can extend it for two weeks, for four weeks, sit at the table and come up with actual spending bills that invest in the priorities of our country, invest in educating our children, keeping our community safe, invest in our economy to create quality jobs and opportunities for future generations.

That's not what this bill does. This bill just basically says whatever President Trump, whatever his assistant or Vice President Elon Musk wants to do, they're going to do. That's not what we should be doing.

Congress was elected to do a job. Congress should do the job. And Mike Johnson should stop surrendering to President Trump.

SIDNER: And to be clear, the Vice President is J.D. Vance, who will be on Capitol Hill trying to push Democrats. Donald Trump is already threatening one -- sorry, trying to push Republicans. Donald Trump is already threatening one Republican, saying if you don't do this, you know, that he might be primaried.

Let me ask you about this. Republicans have been coming under fire in town halls recently for the DOGE cuts that are affecting their districts in big ways. And they're getting a lot of pushback.

But Democrats are starting to face some backlash for not fighting hard enough against Trump's policies. Do you think Democrats should be more like Al Green, who tried to shout down the president during his speech to Congress, or more like Senator Slotkin, who gave a measured response to Donald Trump afterwards?

SCHNEIDER: I don't think it's a matter of measured or more aggressive. Democrats are standing up to the administration, standing up to Republicans in Congress.

I chair the New Democrat Coalition. These are 110 moderate Democrats who want to get work done. We put out a platform two weeks ago that talks about an economy that's creating opportunities and growing for the American people, healthy and safe communities, strong national security, national defense, a vision of how we move forward. And we should be talking about that.

We have to stand up and protect the constitutional prerogatives of the Congress. The founders were very wise in their decision to create checks and balances, three branches, legislative, executive, and judiciary.

President Trump is trying to break that constitution. We need to defend it. We need to fight for the people we represent. And we need to fight for the prerogatives of Congress and introduce legislation, fund the government with the priorities of the people we represent.

Again, not surrender that to a group of people in the White House.

SIDNER: You mentioned Elon Musk. He has been under fire for the work that he and the DOGE guys are doing. And he had something very nasty to say about one of your colleagues, Senator Mark Kelly, after Senator Kelly posted on X about a trip that he made to Ukraine over the weekend.

Musk commented, you are a traitor.

This is a man working in the White House at the president's behest. What do you think of his comments to Senator Kelly?

SCHNEIDER: I think his comments are truly disgusting. Mark Kelly is an American hero. He has served our country in uniform. He is serving our country in the United States Senate. I think Senator Kelly's response was exactly right.

Elon Musk, who is not elected, is trying to run the government, trying to get information about the American people to use for his own profit, is cavorting with dictators around the world.

If anyone should be accused of turning their back on the priorities of the American people, turning their back on the interests of the American people, it's Elon Musk. He has done more to hurt this country. And look what's happening in our stock market, the economy, the cost of groceries.

So many things are so much worse than they were even just five months ago. And I think you can point a finger at the actions of DOGE, Musk and his handful of what they call DOGE Bros or Musketeers, whatever pejorative word you want to use, what they are doing, how they are doing it, with utter disregard and disrespect for federal workers, for the American people. I think there's a lot to be said about Elon Musk, and Elon Musk should just shut his mouth when talking about Senator Kelly or anyone else in Congress.

SIDNER: Congressman Brad Schneider, thank you so much for coming on. I know there's a lot of work to do there on Capitol Hill. We'll be checking back in with you in the next few days to see what happens with the government and whether or not a shutdown is imminent. Appreciate your time this morning.

Right ahead, right now, U.S. and Ukrainian officials are having their first meeting aimed at ending Russia's war on Ukraine. The high-stakes meeting happening on the same day that Ukraine launched one of its largest drone strikes against Moscow.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: All right, breaking this morning. Critical talks between the United States and Ukraine are happening right now in Saudi Arabia. An incredibly high-stakes moment on the world stage as the U.S. seeks to try to broker a peace deal after three years of Russia's unrelenting, unprovoked, brutal war on Ukraine.

Several key issues are front and center of today's talks. President Trump's mineral deal, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy's push for security guarantees, and the aid and intel sharing that has been paused since their Oval Office argument. And breaking in just the last few minutes, Russia is now claiming it

has retaken nearly 40 square miles in the Kursk region. This is the Kremlin aims to force Ukrainian forces out of Russia. The development a major threat to Kyiv's bargaining power as Russia also now accuses Ukraine of launching a massive drone attack. This explosion that you're seeing there happening just south of Moscow.

[08:30:00]