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Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) Discusses Trump's Global Trade War & Joining Sen. Gallego in Blocking V.A. Nominees; Trump Weighing Options For Potential TikTok Deal As Deadline Nears; Trump Speaks As Markets Dive Over Tariff & Recession Fears; Milwaukee Schools Face Lead Crisis As CDC Lead Experts Get Fired. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired April 03, 2025 - 14:30   ET

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

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SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK): It's kind of like remodeling your bathroom. It's a mess during the process. Long term, it's a great benefit on that. But you do have some scramble at the very beginning of it. So we're going to go through some scramble for a little while on this.

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): I'm going to give the president the benefit of doubt. Tariffs are a double-edged sword. I know presidents used them effectively in the past.

SEN. RICK SCOTT (R-FL): When I ran in 2010, I ran on one issue, jobs. All my races, I focused on, how do we get more American jobs? That's what this is going to do.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There's going to be a significant increase on cars, for instance. Are people -- you think people want to pay more for cars?

SCOTT: More American jobs, and they're going to be better paying American jobs.

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Those are Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill today doing their best to defend President Trump's trade war, which now threatens to increase prices virtually on all products for American consumers.

Let's get the view of Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. He joins us now live.

Senator, thanks so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us.

Before we get into the effect of these tariffs, I want to explore the cause. Do you agree with the premise that the global trading system is

dysfunctional, that other countries manipulate or break the rules in order to limit American exports as they advance their own economies at the expense of American workers?

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): There's no question that some countries are taking advantage of us. And we need to be reciprocal as to those countries in a targeted way that is calculated to improve our trading position.

[14:35:07]

But what we have here is a kind of across-the-board tax on all countries, many of them dealing with us fairly. And that tax is going to increase prices and costs for consumers. But also for manufacturers in this country, because the supply chain depends on pieces, components, parts that go into manufacturing.

So we are, in effect, not remodeling the bathroom, as one of my colleagues said. President Trump is burning down the house.

And it is the across-the-board meat-ax approach here that is causing the markets to crater right now because it is a self-inflicted wound that is bleeding and there's no sign of staunching the bleeding right now.

SANCHEZ: Is it your view that with, in the way you described it, just remodeling the bathroom, would revitalize Americas industrial base enough that it would make the U.S. as competitive with a manufacturing powerhouse like China moving forward?

In other words, do you not see this as a national emergency that requires the attention and the scale that this administration is devoting to it?

BLUMENTHAL: To characterize it as an emergency because of fentanyl, as the president has done with respect to Canada, for example, I think is completely inaccurate.

We face challenges abroad in the global economy. We need to be able to compete better. We need to train our workforce to be more skilled and bring down the costs of manufacturing in this country, but not tariffs as a solution, as an across-the-board solution to all of our problems.

If you look at the purposes here, it can't be to reduce the flow of fentanyl because it's against all countries and all products. It can't be simply to reinvigorate manufacturing because plants can't be built that quickly.

It raises revenue for sure. And the purpose almost certainly is to raise more revenue so as to finance tax cuts for the wealthier, the billionaires and millionaires. Raising revenue seems to be the purpose here. it's not meeting an emergency.

SANCHEZ: Notably, President Trump was joined in the Rose Garden yesterday by a number of blue-collar workers, including auto workers. A third-generation Michigan auto worker who says that he supports these tariffs.

I wonder what you say to folks in that realm of society who don't view the free trade that we've watched unfold in the United States over the past few decades as beneficial to them.

They believe that it's gutted their communities and that Trump is standing up to these foreign powers that have helped exacerbate that.

What would you say to them?

BLUMENTHAL: That is a really critical and important question. What I'd say is, yes, we may need tariffs to protect certain industries and jobs.

But this across-the-board tax -- that's what it is, it's a tax -- is a self-inflicted wound. It will affect everyone who builds homes, buys cars, puts food on the table or purchases pharmaceuticals.

And in the end, it will hurt you, as a working family, much more than it will impact the guys in the C-suites, the stock owners of your company, the ones who control it. You are the ones and your families are eventually going to suffer more.

But you do need protection in certain areas. And so carefully calibrated and targeted import duties, tariffs can perform a vital function for our economy.

We're putting tariffs on stuff that we have no way to produce, bananas or coffee. We're never going to grow bananas or coffee in this country. But people who use those products and many, many others are going to pay more for them.

SANCHEZ: Senator, last question. You're placing a hold on all V.A. nominees to protest President Trump's slashing of cuts to V.A. care and benefits, joining Senator Gallego of Arizona to do that.

I wonder, do you regret voting to confirm the V.A. secretary, Doug Collins?

BLUMENTHAL: I do regret it. It was a mistake. In fact, I've apologized to the voters of my state of Connecticut, my constituents, because he made promises and commitments that he's failed to keep.

And right now, what we have, in effect, is a war on veterans. The cuts in funding, the freezes in hiring, the firings of workers are impacting health care in real time for real people.

[14:40:08]

And so the lesson here for me is trust but verify, but don't trust based on the lack of verification that the leaders, so far, confirmed by the

Senate, have given to us.

I am going to continue to fight to restore health care. The V.A. has provided the gold standard and veterans are rightly happy with it. But if those positions of surgeons, nurses, counselors, schedulers are

unfilled, or if those people are fired -- there are 440,000 unfilled positions, 83,000 will be fired -- we are going to see a degradation of our V.A. health care system.

And a failure to fulfill our obligation to provide disability benefits, for example, under the PACT Act, compensation that we own -- that we owe to our veterans who have earned it.

SANCHEZ: Senator Richard Blumenthal, we have to leave the conversation there. Thanks so much for being with us.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Sure.

With a ban on TikTok set to take effect on Saturday, Vice President J.D. Vance says the deal will be made before the potential deadline. What we know, next.

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Once again, the clock is ticking for TikTok. On Saturday, President Trump's executive order delaying the app from being banned in the U.S. expires. Vice President J.D. Vance has been leading White House efforts to find a buyer.

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J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You want to make sure that the TikTok app and the United States is not spying on people. It's good for national security.

You also want to give people access to this incredible platform, which, as we know, that's where a lot of young people get their news.

It will come out before the

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It will come out --

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VANCE: -- a couple days to continue working on it, to finalize some things. And of course, we're going to let the president announce whatever we ultimately decide.

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SANCHEZ: Joining us now is CNN media analyst and Axios media correspondent, Sara Fischer.

Sara, thanks for being with us. What do you think is going to happen here? What are the options for

the White House?

SARA FISCHER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: So if the White House we're to announce that they've assembled a type of deal, that might enable them to have the tech firms that support TikTok app stores, cloud servers to keep TikTok alive in the U.S.

Because essentially, they're saying we have a plan. But the problem is to actually get to a point where a deal manifests. I'm very skeptical that happens. If it happens at all, it's not going to happen soon.

There's a few reasons for that. One, it doesn't matter how many investors want to buy this U.S. app, TikTok. Does China want to let them buy it, is the big question. They have indicated that they don't.

And then, two, how do you value TikTok? Because whenever there's a sale of an asset, you need to know what you're paying for it.

China could come back and say, you know, we think that asset is worth X amount of billion dollars. This U.S. investment group might not have that cash ready.

So I think we're not going to have a true deal anytime soon. But I think that the Trump administration will try to play it up as if enough momentum is there to prevent the app from having to go dark again.

KEILAR: The value is in the algorithm, right? So talk to us about that and how that complicates things.

FISCHER: So you're not even buying the algorithm. According to reports about what deal the U.S. government is potentially looking at, essentially, it would be a group of U.S. investors are buying the app, but they would be licensing the algorithm from ByteDance.

Now, the question that I have is that this was considered a national security concern because, A, they wanted to ensure that U.S. data was stored here. And now it mostly is because Oracle stepped in to store the data.

But, B, you wanted to ensure that you had control over the algorithm, right, so that the CCP couldn't be injecting whatever sort of narratives they wanted into the feeds of the American people.

If you're licensing the algorithm, I don't personally understand how you're solving for that problem. But I'm sure that's something that the U.S. government is talking about with this deal.

SANCHEZ: I wonder how some of TikTok's rivals are watching this, Meta and et cetera, et cetera.

FISCHER: I mean, they're anxiously awaiting the decision here. It benefits them. But also at the same time, there's a reason why none of them are coming out in support of this ban. A lot of these big tech companies, take Meta, for example, they have

app populations and users in countries all around the world. For example, Turkey is a huge population of Instagram users.

If we start to develop a policy where we are unilaterally blocking foreign apps, the fear of big tech is that other countries will do the same to them, and their businesses rely on being available in other countries.

So big tech, of course, sees an opportunity. You know, they're all investing in TikTok like alternatives, but there's a reason that they're not coming out swinging, saying ban TikTok.

Because the precedent that it sets, if we don't have like a valid national security agreement, could be dangerous for their businesses.

KEILAR: Sara Fischer, thank you so much for taking us through that.

We do need to go now over to the White House. This was President Trump just moments ago talking about market reaction to his sweeping tariffs.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Which today are way down, the worst day in a year because of the tariff. So how's it going?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it's going very well. It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated on and it's a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is.

We have $6 trillion or $7 trillion coming into our country. And we've never seen anything like it.

The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom. And the rest of the world wants to see, is there any way they can make a deal?

They've taken advantage of us for many, many years. For many years, we've been at the wrong side of the ball. And I'll tell you what, I think it's going to be unbelievable.

[14:50:05]

The thing that people have to talk about, we're up almost to $7 trillion of investment coming into our country. And you'll see how it's going to turn out. Our country is going to boom.

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SANCHEZ: That was President Trump answering one reporter's questions on the way out to Marine One as he departs for Florida this afternoon.

The president there saying that after the implementation of this wide --widespread tariff policy that things are going well. He said that he anticipates $6 trillion to $7 trillion in revenue.

He says the U.S. economy is going to boom, even as markets seem a little bit -- not all bought in to this new policy.

We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Stay with CNN.

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SANCHEZ: There's some new developments in a lead contamination crisis that's been impacting several Milwaukee public schools.

City officials have been relying on help from the CDC, but the agency's lead experts have just been fired as part of the Trump administration's huge purge of federal health workers.

KEILAR: CNN's Meg Tirrell is here with us.

Meg, they needed those folks as they're dealing with this. What are the details of this?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So we know that lead exposure in childhood is really dangerous. Really, there is no safe level of lead exposure for kids.

This can cause health issues even at very low levels. Things like lowering I.Q., reducing kids ability to focus and pay attention. And so that's why routine screening for blood lead levels is recommended for children.

So in Milwaukee, one kid was found to have really elevated blood lead levels. And that sparked this whole public health investigation. This is a really routine thing, but a crucial thing that public health agencies do to try to find the exposure that was exposing that child to lead.

That led them to the public school system, where it turned out a lot of these buildings were built before 1978, when lead paint was still being used. And they found the source of exposure, but that meant they needed to test the other children to see if they we're exposed as well.

And so they reached out to the CDC a few months ago. They were working together with a toxicologist to try to formulate a plan to figure out if other kids were affected.

Then they found out on Tuesday, the day that 2,500 CDC workers were affected in this reduction in force, that the office that they had been working with, the Center for Environmental Health, was totally wiped out.

And a source told our Brenda Goodman, quote, "We no longer have lead experts."

And so Milwaukee was sort of left thinking, wait, what, what's going to happen with this help that we've been requesting from the CDC?

They had also asked for a disease detective to actually come from CDC and help them with this screening. Guys, all of that's up in the air.

SANCHEZ: Meg, how does this align with RFK Jr's priorities? I mean, he's talked at length about removing toxins like lead from the environment.

TIRRELL: Yes. And that was part of the announcement last week of this whole reorganization. They talked about this, quote, "new priority" of ending the epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water and the elimination of environmental toxins.

Now, we reached out to HHS to see what's all going to happen here. And we had heard from Milwaukee that they were told that their requests for help were being switched over to this other CDC agency, called the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

HHS telling us, really just minutes before we came on air, that that agency did not have any cuts in the reduction in force. They said one of its areas of focus is on toxic chemicals, and this work with lead will continue there.

But, guys, it's being folded into yet another new agency at HHS and everybody is really confused about whether this work can continue, especially as the lead experts are gone -- guys?

SANCHEZ: Wow.

Meg Tirrell, thanks so much for that update.

Up next, President Trump was just defending his unprecedented tariffs as the markets lose trillions of dollars of value. And some Americans have already lost their jobs. We'll be right back.

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