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Trump and Netanyahu Hold Talks; "Hands Off" Protests Against Trump; Justin Wolfers is Interviewed about the Economy; Shannon Douglass is Interviewed about Tariffs; Briefing on Student Visa Revocations. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired April 07, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Percent tariff on imports from Israel. Of course the major issue of the devastating war in Gaza also on the table. There are new questions this morning arising over the Israeli military's involvement in last month's killing of 15 people that the U.N. says were all paramedics and rescue workers. And the Israeli military is now acknowledging flaws in its initial accounts of what happened after video surfaced.

Joining me now, CNN's Jeremy Diamond.

The big question here is, what will these two leaders focus on, finances or the war?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think it's going to be all of the above.

Listen, this issue of the 17 percent tariffs that President Trump slapped on Israel is a major issue of economic concern for the Israeli prime minister. The United States is Israel's largest trading partner, but the Israeli prime minister is also kind of using this first major disagreement to highlight how close and how special the relationship is between the U.S. and Israel, and particularly between himself and President Trump, framing himself as the first world leader to get the privilege to go up and meet with Trump directly and negotiate these tariffs away, or at least attempt to do so, taking quite a deferential tone as he approaches this very delicate issue.

But, of course, beyond this issue of tariffs, there are so many other foreign policy and national security issues that will be on the agenda between the two men. The prime minister's office listed just a few of them. Everything from the war in Gaza, Israel/Turkey relations, Iran and the international Criminal Court. The war in Gaza, of course, will certainly be front and center as these two men sit down. We have watched as the Israeli military has been ramping up its attacks, both from the air and on the ground in Gaza, with relatively little to no restraint at all from the United States, which is, of course, quite a change from the Biden administration, which sought to impose certain guardrails around civilian casualties and the movement of Israeli troops in Gaza. Beyond that, of course, we know that the hostages, former hostages

themselves, and families of current hostages have made appeals directly to President Trump to get another deal between Israel and Hamas to see the release of additional hostages. And we will see whether those direct appeals to the president may impact how he addresses the issue with the Israeli prime minister, who, at this point, many Israelis believe has ultimately put his political survival and the war in Gaza and the defeat of Hamas above the goal of securing the release of the hostages.

But Iran will certainly also be a major discussion between these two men at a moment when we have watched President Trump kind of entering the first stages of trying to approach some diplomacy with Iran about ending its nuclear program. The Israeli prime minister, who, for many, many decades has really had Iran at the forefront of his foreign policy goals, ending its nuclear program, preventing it from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. He will certainly be looking to gauge how serious Trump is about this diplomacy, and whether the United States might ultimately join Israel in some kind of an attack against Iran, something that the Israeli prime minister has considered time and again. But certainly, right now, we are very much at the closest point as we have ever been to that very real possibility at a moment when Trump is also sending letters directly to Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei.

Sara.

SIDNER: There is a lot to talk about. The world's eyes, though, on Gaza and what is happening there as well as the tariffs.

Thank you so much, Jeremy Diamond, live for us in Jerusalem. Thank you. Appreciate you.

All right, coming up right now, we are just one hour away from the opening bell and market futures. Let us take a look. Well, not so good. They are dropping fast. We will see what happens in the hour as we head into the potential for things to get a little bit like mayhem, but the futures markets not looking good this morning, as you can see.

And a good Samaritan and a police officer are hailed as heroes after saving a driver from this fiery wreck. How this all went down. You're going to take a look at it this morning.

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[08:38:42]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, tens of thousands of people joined a nationwide protest this weekend, speaking out against what the organizers call a hostile takeover by President Trump and Elon Musk of the federal government. Over 1,400 "hands off" demonstrations were held at state capitols and federal buildings in all 50 states.

What can you take from the numbers behind that movement? That is something that Harry Enten was wondering this weekend and has the numbers for us now this morning. Hello, Harry.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Hello.

BOLDUAN: Thank you for being here.

So, how are you, first and foremost, gauging the interest in this movement?

ENTEN: Yes, I mean, look, obviously, getting exact numbers is a little bit difficult.

BOLDUAN: Right.

ENTEN: But we can look in the search interest online. I think that gives you an understanding of where things are going at this point. So, weekly Google searches for protests. Look at this, up 1,200 percent, versus a year ago, and it's at or even exceeding the levels that we saw during the January 2017 protests, which you remember were everywhere. It is almost as if I feel like Frankenstein, right, saying the monster, it's alive, it's alive. The Democratic protest, the idea of protesting Donald Trump. If the resistance was a little bit lacking at the beginning of Trump's second term. It is very much alive now. The protests are out there. And the interest in protesting Donald Trump is definitely there now.

[08:40:05]

BOLDUAN: What are you looking at in terms of the polling - the polling on resistance to President Trump maybe now versus before?

ENTEN: Yes, OK. So, you know, again, the whole thing about this second term was maybe the resistance was lacking compared to Donald Trump's first term. And one of the best ways we can understand the, quote/unquote, resistance is how strongly folks disapprove of the job that Donald Trump is doing as president.

And I want to take a look here at a historical comparison, right. Compare where we are now, in April of 2025, compared to - compared to November of 2018. And what do we see? Well, in November of 2018, the strongly disapprove of Trump was 42 percent. Look at where we are now, 43 percent. The level of strong resistance to Donald Trump now is matching what we saw back in November of 2018, when, of course, Republicans got swept out of power in the House of Representatives. It was a Democratic sweep. They crushed them, gained 40 seats. And what we're seeing now is the same level of, quote/unquote, strong resistance to Donald Trump.

This is very different from what we were seeing at the beginning of Donald Trump's second term. As I said at the beginning, the resistance in the polling data, in the data on Google suggests that the resistance is, quote/unquote, its alive.

BOLDUAN: One of the big stories that we were tracking last week were these special elections and how much and what were people reading into it and could take from those election results. How does that apply to kind of this conversation?

ENTEN: OK, so you see the polling here and you see the Google data there, but what about in the real world? I like to live in the real world. I'm a big fan of MTV. OK. So, take a look. Special House elections. The average Democrat, how they are, quote/unquote, doing versus the prior Democratic nominee on average in those different districts, right? We had two Florida special elections last week. How much better did they do? They did 19 points better on average. In April of 2017, there were two special elections. The Democrats did 18 points better than Hillary Clinton did on average.

What we're seeing right now in the election results, very similar to what we saw in Donald Trump's first term. And again, of course, that led to a big sweep for Democrats in the House in November of 2018.

BOLDUAN: Interesting look, Harry, thank you so much.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Sara.

SIDNER: All right, less than an hour until the opening bell rings on Wall Street - and let us take a look at futures right now. Things not looking good. We are seeing a tumble there in futures, once again falling as markets reject President Donald Trump's massive tariffs, some of which went into effect on Saturday. And some countries are bracing for even higher tariffs to kick in this Wednesday. Trump's tariff turmoil also sent European and Asian stocks into a tailspin.

Joining me now is Justin Wolfers, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan. He recently wrote an op-ed for "The New York Times" titled "Your Life Will Never Be the Same After These Tariffs."

That is quite a statement. Holy smokes, your life will never be the same after these tariffs? What do you mean, and how do you mean?

JUSTIN WOLFERS, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: So, one way to think about it is just, next time you go to the store, walk through it and, you know, have a look at the - where each of the grocery items you're buying came from. Where did the avocados come from? Where did the vegetables come from? Where did your pasta come from? And a lot of it came from abroad. And even the stuff that says "made in America," ask where they got their raw materials from. You can do that at the grocery store. You can do that at the local car yard. You can do that with anything you're spending money on. And you'll very quickly discover that our lives, as Americans, are inextricably linked with the rest of the world, and tariffs as large as Trump is imposing are going to cut us off from all of those wonders from around the world. And retaliatory tariffs from these other countries are going to cut off American businesses from the sorts of global opportunities that have helped grow the economy over recent decades.

SIDNER: It is quite a statement, and there's a lot of worry. There's a lot of anxiety, if you will. And the markets are showing that. But in regular people's homes, people are very worried about this because about 60 percent of the population in the U.S. is in the market usually through a 401(k). You use this really great example, the washing machine example. I want you to explain that and why this isn't just about the financial cost of tariffs, in your opinion.

WOLFERS: Yes, so, let's talk about washing machines. So, you know, the tariffs probably are going to raise the price of washing machines pretty dramatically. Now you might say, well, that's OK if Samsung's washing machines become more expensive, I'll just buy an American made Whirlpool or Maytag instead. The problem is that as soon as imported washing machines become more expensive, the domestic producers raise their prices as well.

[08:45:00]

So, that's more expensive if you go ahead and buy the washing machine. But for a lot of families, they're going to discover, if the washing machine, or it could be a new car or a refrigerator or any major purchase becomes more expensive, what they'll do is they'll do without. The old - old Bessy is going to keep clunking along for a little bit longer, and we'll just make do.

But realize, making do may not hurt your wallet, you're not actually spending any money, but it really does hurt your quality of life. Your clothes come out with a few rust stains. Old Bessy spins off its axis. You have to constantly readjust it. And so that's the sense in which every day there's just all sorts of little annoyances that are going to come up, even if you're not paying extra - higher prices, you find ways of avoiding the tariffs.

SIDNER: And God forbid that it breaks because, like you said, a lot of the parts are sourced from overseas.

I do want to end with this. The White House keeps saying, look, we did this before. The tariffs from Trump's first term were kept in place by Joe Biden, and they were. So, what's the big deal. So, compare those tariffs with the new sweeping tariffs that Donald Trump has put in place.

WOLFERS: This is really important. So, the first term tariffs were just not that big. Trump talked a big game but didn't really live up to it. So, we had specific tariffs on specific goods with specific countries. Overall, it raised the average tariff rate from about 1.5 percent, pretty low, to 3 percent. Still pretty low.

What Trump's talking about this time is raising the American tariff rate well above 20 percent. That's higher than the Smoot-Hawley tariffs during the Great Depression. That's ten times higher than most of our other trading partners. And the point that I make in the - in the op-ed actually is, there's a - an economic theory, I don't want to bore your viewers with it, which says that the cost of tariffs rises in the square of the tariff rate. So, if you work through the math of that, that says small tariffs still have a pretty small effect. Big tariffs have a massive effect. And, in fact, that same arithmetic tells you that this time around the tariffs could be 50 times more painful than they were in the first Trump term. SIDNER: Wow. That's quite a statement. And the thought of something

squaring itself is - is terrifying to a lot of people when they hear that as they watch some of their savings really fall off in a big way. We will see - there's a lot of people waiting to see if Donald Trump blinks, or if other countries come to heel, which is what the administration is hoping for.

Justin Wolfers, thank you so much. I really appreciate - the op-ed is excellent and I really appreciate you coming on this morning.

All right, Pope Francis making a surprise appearance in public two weeks after getting out of the hospital.

And a council representing hundreds of colleges and universities pushing for answers from U.S. officials as hundreds of international students are seeing their visas revoked.

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[08:52:24]

BOLDUAN: So, a second child has now died from the measles. Officials saying that the school age child was not vaccinated and had no underlying health conditions - health problems. The new HHS secretary, RFK Jr., was actually in west Texas this weekend to attend the eight- year-old girl's funeral. And Kennedy is now offering his most direct endorsement of the measles vaccine so far, of course, after years of trying to undermine the proven science of this very vaccine, now saying this, but only on social media, "the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine."

Now, this guidance, coming far later than is needed, as you can tell just by the numbers, which is the outbreak in west Texas has exploded now to 481 cases.

And a remarkable rescue out of New Jersey. A man is recovering after an accident that ended with his Jeep engulfed in flames. He was saved by a quick thinking good Samaritan and a responding officer.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HASEEB MEHMOOD, GOOD SAMARITAN: He was just screaming. And I was just trying to console him. I was just telling him, it's fine. You're good. You're good. I'm here. I'm here to help you out.

I just saw him struggling, and I just - I couldn't leave the spot. I'm glad I was able to help.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: My goodness, no wonder - I mean, no kidding. Look at this. The man suffered a broken leg. The responding officer says that he, though, was grateful that the good Samaritan was there and stepped up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OFFICER DANIEL STODDARD, SOUTH BRUNSWICK POLICE: It's heartwarming to think that people still would, you know, give up their comfort and their safety to go help somebody else. That's not something that you see, you know, very, very often nowadays.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Very, very true. And great for them.

We're also watching this. Pope Francis made a surprise appearance in Saint Peter's Square on Sunday. It was his first public appearance since he left the hospital two weeks ago after that life-threatening bout with pneumonia. The 88-year-old pontiff was in a wheelchair. He also was on oxygen. And the Vatican says that that supplemental oxygen is gradually being reduced as he improves.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, we are watching futures right now. They are in tumble territory, if you will, as the impacts of Trump's sweeping global tariffs continue to be felt across global markets. These tariffs will cost Americans. Specifically, American farmers will be hit extremely hard. Prices are set to increase almost immediately.

Joining me now is Shannon Douglass, the president of the California Farm Bureau.

Shannon, thank you so much for being here.

I visited farms in central California as a reporter, lived there a long time. Huge producers of grapes, which are shipped all over the U.S. But as I learned there, one of their biggest clients is China.

[08:55:03]

I've also visited almond farmers in California. California producing 80 percent of the world's almonds. So, the largest almond producer in the world.

What are you hearing from these farmers as these tariffs are put in place?

SHANNON DOUGLASS, PRESIDENT, CALIFORNIA FARM BUREAU: Thanks for having me this morning.

I think it's very fair to say that we're all very nervous about these tariffs. We all - it'll take a little bit of time for us to feel the pain as far as when - the timing of when we sell our crops. But it really has our farmers very nervous about what those prices are going to look like when it comes time to sell the crops.

And it's too late in the year to make a lot of changes in your planting decisions. And the crops that you mentioned in particular, those are pretty permanent crops. So, we can't switch very quickly. We're - we're nervous I think is a fair statement. SIDNER: OK. How soon do you think that you'll start feeling the

impacts of these tariffs that farmers will suddenly go, whoa, this is really crushing?

DOUGLASS: It really is going to vary depending on the crop that someone is raising. So, we're probably most concerned right now about our fresh produce. And some of our - those are going to start coming to market sooner. So, things like our nuts, we're starting to, of course, see those impacts slowly because those are crop, we have a longer time to sell. But the products that are going to come ripe and be ready for the market here in the next few weeks and months, those are the ones that are particularly going to feel it. If they - particularly those fresh products, we only have a few days in some cases, but really just weeks, typically, to get those sold. We don't have a lot of storage capacity for those. So, we can't have those sitting on our shelf for a long time or - or wait till some kind of a trade dispute has ended.

SIDNER: Yes. Is there anything about these tariffs that farmers are looking forward to, that they like?

DOUGLASS: Very true. There are some things that are going to be helpful. And we have some commodities. You mentioned grapes and table grapes in particular is one where they have had some really negative impacts from dumping on the market at the wrong time. So that's where another country will come in and dump a lot of their competing products. So, the same thing, something like table grapes, at a time when our product is ready, at a lower cost, really typically even lower than the cost of production.

And - and we've seen a really tremendous negative impact from that. So, we've noticed our - our California market share in table grapes go from about 14 percent down to only about 5 percent. And that's a pretty significant drop, which we really believe has been tied to the problematic dumping of those products. So, we recognize there are some areas that do need fixing in our trade partnerships, but as a whole, we really are so dependent on the value of trade and having those good relationships for the majority of our crops.

SIDNER: Shannon Douglass, good luck to you and the other farmers in California and around the U.S. Thank you so much. I really do appreciate your time this morning.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: This morning, a group representing more than a thousand colleges and universities is looking for answers as more international students face the possibility of being kicked out of the United States. The Trump administration has canceled the visas of hundreds of students so far as part of their immigration crackdown. And there's more twists and turns to this.

CNN's Gloria Pazmino joins me now with much more on this.

What more are you learning, Gloria? GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, what we're seeing now

is that there are education officials trying to get some answers out of the Trump administration.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

PAZMINO: The American Council on Education represents 1,600 colleges and universities, and they are telling the administration that they have questions. They have requested a briefing with Secretary Kristi Noem, as well as Marco Rubio, because they are getting notified that these student visas are being revoked.

And specifically they're saying that they need more information about how this is happening and why it's happening. They sent a letter over the weekend saying, "we seek clarity amidst reports that student visas are being revoked and records are being terminated in the Student Exchange Visitor Information System without additional information being shared with the institution those students attend."

So, the key part there, and what we have seen in the most recent cases, is that often student visas are revoked after the fact. Sometimes students are not properly notified. And it kind of sets off this domino effect where colleges don't know what the status of students are. And the students also do not know.

Over the weekend, we continue to see more visa revocations. Six people at Harvard, we confirmed that their visas were revoked. And UCLA also notifying its student community over the weekend that several student visas had been revoked. They said that there had been no law enforcement action that they were aware of. Meaning, we are not seeing an arrest as a result of these or a detention like we have seen in some cases in the past few weeks, but it does seem like these revocations are continuing.

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