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Markets Open as Trade War Escalates; Two Judges Order Reinstatement of Fired Employees. Aired 9:30-10a ET
Aired March 14, 2025 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[09:33:51]
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, just moments ago, the opening bell ringing on Wall Street, as it always does, as trade war tensions are escalating between Trump and the EU.
CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich with me now.
It has been a very rough week for investors, for those of us who have 401ks, for anybody that is in the market.
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Yes, and look at the markets, though, right now.
SIDNER: It's weird, it starts off like this, seemingly OK, and then, by the end of the day, you're like, what happened?
YURKEVICH: Because there's so much news and there's so much news around tariffs and this trade war.
SIDNER: Yes.
YURKEVICH: This is almost like a palate cleanser, a breath of fresh air before the trading day really gets going. But what we have seen all week is just a very tumultuous week on Wall Street. You can just see, since Donald Trump was inaugurated, just look at that line graph. It is going down. We want to, obviously, see that going up. And so does the president.
But the S&P in correction mode. Also, you have the Nasdaq that hit their correction last week. And the Dow is on pace to have its worst week since June of 2022.
And we are hearing this morning from the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, who is forecasting what April 2nd's tariffs could look like.
[09:35:03]
Take a listen.
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HOWARD LUTNICK, COMMERCE SECRETARY: That would be fair, right? If you're going to tariff cars from anywhere, it's got to be tariffing cars from everywhere.
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS HOST: Right.
LUTNICK: That's the whole point. It's, bring it home. Don't make it so that Japan has an unfair advantage over Korea or Germany or anywhere.
BARTIROMO: Right.
LUTNICK: The idea is, Donald Trump is focused on fairness.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
YURKEVICH: So, these are the reciprocal tariffs that are going to go into effect on April 2nd. And this is what the commerce secretary is saying is going to happen. Any foreign cars that are imported from these three countries that we know of so far are going to be tariffed. They're going to be taxed coming into the U.S.
Obviously, the U.S. consumers buy a lot of these vehicles.
SIDNER: Yes.
YURKEVICH: But the whole reason the president says that he is igniting this trade war is because he wants to get U.S. manufacturers, the big three automakers to build here in America and for consumers to buy those cars. The problem is, we do not have the capacity to do that in the United States. That's why we trade so much with Canada and Mexico. That's why we import vehicles. And with tariffs in place and these reciprocal tariffs that will hit on April 2nd, that is going to raise the cost production of a vehicle. And that ultimately gets passed down to the U.S. consumer.
So, while it sounds great to make in America, to buy in America, we simply don't have the structure and the infrastructure here in the U.S. to make that happen.
However, markets seem to be doing OK with what he said so far with what Lutnick said so far. The day is young. We will see if we hear any more moves on President Trump's trade policy.
SIDNER: We will see what happens because it's how it closes, not how it opens.
YURKEVICH: That is true.
SIDNER: Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
Still ahead, thousands of federal workers must temporarily be given their jobs back after two federal judges deal rulings against Trump's DOGE cuts.
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[09:41:42]
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, a federal judge Thursday ruled that thousands of government employees laid off in mass must be, at least temporarily, given their jobs back. It's also the second judge to rule against the DOGE government job cuts in just one day. The Maryland judge said the government's argument that the firings of the probationary employees were for cause, quote, "borders on the frivolous."
Hours earlier, another judge out in California ruled much the same, putting other laid off workers back to work, saying that the way that the Trump administration went about the firings was a, quote, "sham."
Joining us right now, CNN's senior legal analyst, Elie Honig, for much more on this.
Two judges, Elie, same day, blocking these moves by the Trump administration. Add it together. Why does the Trump administration seem to continue to lose on this front?
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Kate, they keep losing because they keep violating the law. There are laws on the books passed by Congress long ago that essentially say, you can fire these probationary employees but you have to do it a certain way. You have two options. One, you can do this complicated administrative process called the reduction in force. Or, two, you can make a specific showing that that specific employee has performed poorly.
Now the two judges yesterday found that the Trump administration either made no effort to comply with those laws or did it but improperly. Important to know, though, these are temporary rulings. They could change in two circumstances, really. One, if the Trump administration goes back and does this properly, one of the judges said that specifically. And two, of course, the Trump administration will appeal these rulings. And their legal position is, those laws passed by Congress, they don't apply to us. Congress cannot tell the president what to do within the executive branch that he was elected to lead.
So, we're just at the beginning of these disputes. Ultimately, it's going to come down to a question of balance of powers.
BOLDUAN: Yes. And - but what we heard from both judges, right, a sham, a gimmick, the kind of going after the government's manner and reasoning for this. Bigger picture, what does that tell you?
HONIG: Yes. Well, it tells me DOJ has a real credibility problem under this administration. It is really unusual to hear judges use language that pointed. Usually, they're sort of more diplomatic. They'll say, well, I have questions about some of the assertions you're making here, counsel. They're not going to come right out, like yesterday, and say liar and sham and that kind of thing.
And that's really important because when I was at DOJ we were taught, the credibility that you have, because you work at DOJ, is the most valuable asset you have, and it's really hard to build that up, but it's real easy to lose it. And if judges are starting to doubt the truthfulness of this Justice Department, that's going to be a long- term problem for the administration. BOLDUAN: And what you're - that's important. I hadn't even considered that element of it, because that's what those words suggest is, I don't believe you. And it's like on a - in a very, very pointed way, what that trickle down is, if this continues is a great question.
Switching gears. The administration has also now asked the Supreme Court to consider its effort to end birthright citizenship. This was a day one executive order move by Donald Trump. What are the chances that the court takes this up?
HONIG: So, birthright citizenship, of course, goes back to the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, and says essentially that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen here. Donald Trump is trying to change that.
[09:45:04]
When I look at whether the Supreme Court will take this, there's two things the Supreme Court looks for. One, is this a big, important constitutional issue? Obviously, yes. But the second thing the Supreme Court looks for is, is there some dissension? Is there some disagreement in this legal question? And here the answer is, no. Every single court to have considered this, going back to 1868, has rejected what the Trump administration is now arguing, that it doesn't count if the parents are not essentially citizens or here lawfully. That's not what the 14th Amendment says. And so, we don't have this sort of disagreement among the circuits. So, that cuts both ways on whether the Supreme Court will take it.
But I think if the Supreme Court does take this case, I still think Trump's going to lose, because I think the Constitution itself, and the legal history here, is so strongly against the position that they're taking.
BOLDUAN: You know, if they take it up, that might be the - that might be the bigger surprise here when it comes to all - everything that they're being asked to take up, just in general what we're talking about.
HONIG: Right.
BOLDUAN: Thanks, Elie. Good to see you.
HONIG: Thanks, Kate.
BOLDUAN: Sara.
SIDNER: All right, Hamas says it's willing to release the last living American hostage held in Gaza. What we know about the offer to release Edan Alexander.
But first, some of the people who started Twitter talking to CNN about what was happening at X today.
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[09:50:53]
BOLDUAN: If you looked up, well, last night and late last night, you might have gotten a pretty awesome view. The first and only lunar eclipse visible from the U.S. this year, and the first total lunar eclipse since 2022. It's called a blood moon. This very rare situation happens when the moon moves into the deepest part of earth's shadow, turning a reddish orange. And I'm going to say copper hue as sunbeams filter through the earth's atmosphere. We call it sneaky filtering of sunbeams.
The next total lunar eclipse will be in September, visible from Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. So, clearly, the lunar eclipse says, forget you, America, I'm out. But still beautiful. And there are lots of pictures if you were sleeping because it peaked at 2:00 a.m. out on the East Coast. So there is that.
SIDNER: I tried to see it from my teeny tiny apartment in New York, and then I forgot, I don't have a view of the sky from my apartment. So, anyway, back to you.
BOLDUAN: Yes, welcome to - welcome to New York.
OK, back to you.
CNN series - a new CNN series, you've probably heard of, called "Twitter: Breaking the Bird," follows the social media platform's story from origin to takeover by Elon Musk. And this week's episode dives into Twitter's impact on the worlds of news and politics.
Here's a preview.
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JASON GOLDMAN, VIP OF PRODUCT, TWITTER 2007-2010: We were a real mix of actual anarchists and people who were dreamers, like people who believed in a world that could be created through the internet.
RAY MCCLURE, DEVELOPER, TWITTER (ph): More than half of the team knew how to juggle.
GOLDMAN: Yes, we have a lot of jugglers.
MCCLURE: I think that this speaks to the counterculture or kind of backgrounds.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you do startup, the play is the work and the work is the play. These are the people I'm laughing with all day long. I'm working through problems and it's really fun and challenging to solve the problem.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This chaotic, disruptive culture of people, you stayed till 3:00 in the morning at the office and wrote fantastic code. We were the most social people in the startup world.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was there someone who was - who was skilled in the ways of that pinata? I think it was - UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was lively. There were a lot of characters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to run, actually, when you -
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think I was maybe the boring one. We were writing ideas on whiteboards. Kind of typical, small startup where you show up every day and you try to invent the future.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: And then you do.
CNN's Clare Duffy is here with much more on this.
You spoke with some of the founders. What did they tell you?
CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: Yes, I love that clip because I feel like you really get a sense of the cast of characters who were involved in starting this company. They really were these sort of countercultural optimists who had this radical idea of giving everybody on the internet a voice, at a time when the internet, as we know it, didn't exist. This was a year before the iPhone launched.
I spoke with Jason Goldman, who was the company's first head of product. And something that he said that really stuck with me that I think you hear in the series as well is just the fact that the people who were building Twitter at the beginning didn't, and perhaps could never have predicted what it would turn into.
I want to read you something that he told me. He said, "I think you have a notion of what you're doing, you have a hunch, but the fog of uncertainty is pretty dense and that's why there's this natural sort of bias towards action in the tech industry, which is like, let's move forward, let's try to do something and we'll launch that and we'll see what people do with it.
And of course we've seen that play out throughout Twitter's history. There were good things, of course, the way that Twitter was used to organize social movements, like the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter. But it also extends to what we've seen Twitter become when it is now owned by the world's richest man. And he's using it to spread his political and social agenda as he seeks to reshape the government.
But Jason told me that he also thinks there is more that these founders could have done to prevent the way that Twitter has turned into this sort of political tool. And I think that advice is really interesting in this moment when we're on the precipice of the next technology wave with AI.
BOLDUAN: Right.
DUFFY: He said that they should have been more transparent about how the platform worked, the kind of content that it promoted, and the impact that it had on users.
SIDNER: It's always the algorithm. I am curious what they think of how Twitter has transformed to X,
although I think most of us still call it Twitter.
[09:55:00]
It just is how everyone thinks about it. But what do they think of how - that transformation?
DUFFY: Yes, a lot of them really feel sort of sad. I mean you get the sense watching this, you have Ev Williams (ph), who was one of the founding members, who's starting to reflect on, was this a good idea? Is social media at all a good thing? And so I think they are really questioning what this thing that they built, that they were so optimistic about when they created it, whether it was actually a good idea in the end, given how we've seen it transform.
SIDNER: Presidents are using it. That is probably not something that they thought was going to happen.
BOLDUAN: Remember that moment when Obama first tweeted. It was like, yes.
SIDNER: Yes. It's like, whoa.
DUFFY: Yes. I think that's in this episode also.
BOLDUAN: Yes, is it? It was such a moment when you - especially when you look back on like how big of a deal that was then.
SIDNER: Yes, how it's now used. Yes. Yes.
BOLDUAN: It's great to see you. Thank you so much, Clare.
SIDNER: Thank you.
DUFFY: Thank you.
BOLDUAN: Thank you so much for that.
And don't forget, tune in, new episode of "Twitter: Breaking the Bird" airs Sunday at 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific only on CNN.
SIDNER: And now it's time for us to break and get the heck out of here because it's Friday and we have a whole weekend to play.
BOLDUAN: We're - no, we're going to stick around. It's just so fun.
SIDNER: Goodbye.
BOLDUAN: Thanks for joining us.
SIDNER: "NEWSROOM" - oh, not "NEWSROOM." "THE SITUATION ROOM" is next.
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