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Trump Meets With Cabinet as Markets Dive, China Tariffs Raised; 10 Percent Universal Tariff Still in Place, 145 Percent on China; Bipartisan Bill Aims to Give Congress a Say on Tariffs; Speaker Johnson Says We'll Find $1.5 Trillion in Cuts While Preserving Our Essential Programs. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired April 10, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: -- to be opened up, so that we take everybody from Africa, Asia, South America, Europe. The bad ones, they opened up their jails and they dumped them in the United States. And now, this beautiful young woman who seems to be a boy, she loves what she does though. I think she loves what she does because she's a patriot. She hates to see it, and Tom and all the people.

But for us to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to -- this is just, I don't know either -- again, they either hated the country or why -- who would do this? Who would want millions of people to pour through an open border? We have no idea who the hell they are. They just walk right through.

And half of them, whether you like it or not, you could look at them and you could say, they are not going to help us. These are some rough people. But they empty out their jails and they empty out their mental institutions, insane asylums, and they let them into the United States of America. And inflation, we can fix, and all of the other things we can fix, we'll get it going. But this is something, it's such a horrible thing and it's really hard. We have to do deportations. Now we're doing self-deportation.

We're coming up with all sorts of ideas, and they must have known it's not going to work out well. And we want people to come into our country, by the way. We need them badly for the jobs, but we want them to come in legally. They have to come in legally. They have to show that they can love our country. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you. Thank you very much.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": President Trump there saying he thinks it is going to work out, but he was asked if he's been in touch with President Xi of China, because of course now the cumulative tariffs on China are at 145 percent, he wouldn't answer. He just said he thinks it is going to work out. But that was a long cabinet meeting and there are many things certainly to fact check here.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah, a lot of adulation and praise from cabinet members for the president. A lot to fact-check as well. Let's go straight to the White House with CNN's Jeff Zeleny. We also have with us Senior Reporter, Daniel Dale and Richard Quest, who has been closely watching markets.

And Jeff, on that point, the president was asked what he makes of the fact that the stock market has trended downward since yesterday's enormous gains following his announcement of this 90-day pause on most tariffs. The president there is saying that he hasn't been watching the market today.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: So today, the president is not watching the market. Yesterday, of course, we know he was watching the market. Look, the president in the cabinet room there is just steps away from the Oval Office. He, of course, has the full battery of aides around him and information at his fingertips. He was having a long cabinet meeting by design.

This is something that was on the agenda today, so the president can be meeting with his advisors, but, so he perhaps would not have to be watching the market bit by bit. But he is very aware of what is going on in the market. There is no doubt about that. But, the reality here is we can always put to bed the question, is the President watching the market? Yes, he is. The bond market as well. But I thought the treasury secretary, when he was asked that direct question about the market today, his response was quite interesting. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT BESSENT, (R) UNITED STATES TREASURY SECRETARY: As we go through the queue and settle with these countries who are going to bring us their best offers, we will end up in a place of great certainty over the next 90 days on tariffs. We had very good inflation numbers today. Oil is down. We had a successful bond market. So I don't think you'd see anything unusual today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: It doesn't seem anything unusual. There will be uncertainty -- there will be certainty in 90 days. Of course, there's uncertainty right now. But look, the Trump administration is trying to put a good light on the fact that the market is once again responding to the trade war that is at hand. Nevermind the one that has been set aside, but the reality here is that the U.S. and China are on the brink of a very significant and serious trade war. So that is what the market is doing. But by and large, otherwise in the cabinet meeting, we did see Elon Musk literally sitting at the table there. It's the first time we have seen him in public, of course, since all this ended.

We know very clear what side he was on in this whole discussion over trade. He thought that the Peter Navarro's side of things pushing for sweeping tariffs was wrong. So Elon Musk clearly back at the table here, but otherwise, it clearly was a moment for the president to be built up a bit, if you will, pumped up a bit by his staff, by saying how great things are, even as we know there are many challenges afoot in the markets and otherwise.

KEILAR: Yeah, he was getting a lot of love which perhaps he was needing today.

[14:05:00]

Jeff Zeleny, thank you so much. Let's scoot on over to Daniel Dale, our resident fact-checker. And there's a lot to fact-check here, maybe hard to do it all. I'll let you take it away. I did just want to mention one thing, which was RFK Jr. talking about the measles outbreak because he seemed to say, Hey, we're doing such a great job in the U.S. Look at Europe, there are so many more people who are sick with measles, who have died from measles. We just need to be clear. That is an issue that is being driven by measles illness in Romania and Kazakhstan, which obviously do not have as good of healthcare systems as the U.S. When you look at the places in the -- in Europe that do, some places are doing better than the U.S. I just wanted to put that one out there. Daniel, what did you see?

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Thank you. So, I'll try to stick mostly to the big news of the day, which is on tariffs, trade and foreign affairs. President Trump keeps saying that the U.S. has $1 trillion trade deficit with China. That's about quadrupled the actual figure, which was $263 billion last year. If you only count trade in goods and don't count trade and services, it's about $295 billion. So still nowhere close.

President Trump also said again that during his first term, we took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China through his tariffs. As many of our colleagues keep pointing out, because we have to, all that revenue was paid by U.S. importers. And we know from study after study and just from talking to people in this country, most of those costs were passed on to U.S. consumers.

He also repeated, Brianna, a bit of alternative history. He keeps using, saying that the European Union was formed for the purpose of taking advantage of the United States. I spoke this week to an expert on European integration. He said, not only is that wrong, it is completely detached from the actual history. European integration has long happened with the firm support of U.S. administrations from both parties. And he said that, talking about Japan, we defend them and spend billions of dollars. They don't pay anything. In fact, Japan does share the costs of the U.S. military presence in that country, paying billions of dollars per year.

I want to briefly move on to two other subjects. He spoke again about autism and keeps kind of flirting with this debunk conspiracy theory that childhood vaccines cause autism, saying that something artificial had to have caused the increase in diagnoses over recent decades and said, maybe it's a shot. That is debunked. It is not a shot. Experts tend to attribute this increase in diagnosis to increased awareness, increased screening. There may be some environmental factors, but it's not childhood vaccines.

And he again, repeated near the end there, he returned to this old favorite that other countries around the world emptying jails and mental institutions under President Biden to somehow send criminals and people with mental health issues to United States as migrants. I have begged and pleaded with Trump's team for any evidence, any corroboration of those claims. They haven't provided any submission of it whatsoever.

SANCHEZ: Daniel Dale, thank you so much for walking us through that. Over to Richard Quest. Richard, as you well know and as we've seen in recent days, markets react very sensitively to what the administration says, the sort of plans that they project outward. How do you think markets are going to respond or are responding -- doesn't look great -- to what we just heard from the White House?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR AT LARGE: Yeah. I feel sorry for Daniel because there was so much in that news conference. I prefer the old journalist joke, why let the facts get in the way of a good story? Which, if you know what I mean. Because there was just too much there that was either half truth, partial truth, not even on the reservation of truth, or reality to actually dissect.

So we have to look at the markets and ask what are they seeing. What are they reacting to? And we can put it into two buckets. The first one is the tariffs that are already now in place and in force, the 145 percent on China, the 10 percent general, the autos, the steels, and the farmers to come. That's the number that's baked into the economy at the moment. The next bit that they're reacting to is this 90-day process that you heard Scott Bessent talk about of countries bringing to the table their best offer.

And this, to a large extent, is the most optimistic part about it because this is the part, if the administration gets right, they will rebalance trade in the U.S. favor, which is what needs to be done. So that is a tempering, if you will, on the market. But the worry overall is that it's not going to happen. And that somehow it's going to fall apart and we'll be back to the high tariffs that we were going to see last week.

KEILAR: And we're still facing high tariffs right now.

QUEST: Oh, yeah.

KEILAR: I think that's what we need to remind people of, Richard, like at this moment in time, the U.S. has this protectionist posture, the likes of which even without going to, what was it, nuclear winter, I think is what Bill Ackman described it as, or something similar to that -- with -- even without going to that, this is really unprecedented, this moment we're at with these 10 percent tariffs and all the other ones, and the market knows that.

[14:10:18]

QUEST: Yes, I mean, depending on your definition, and there are several out there. The general tariff rate of the United States is the highest that it's been since about 1904. So we've never had -- 1904 to 1918, we've never had this level of tariff from the U.S. in recent memory. And that's what you are seeing baked into the number. The 10 percent, I keep banging on about this, the 10 percent general tariff, the low floor -- the floor, if you will, that the president announced yesterday is three times higher than the previous average. The U.S. average tariff against the world was 2.5 percent until yesterday. Now it is 10 percent. That is three times as much.

If you add in China, which is 14 percent of imports. And by the way, you want to talk about an element -- a level of amateurishness. Yesterday, the president said it was 125 percent. Today, the White House has to clarify, it's actually 145 percent. You know that again, that old joke, a dollar here and a dollar there, and pretty soon you're talking real money. The reality is the markets are confused. They are worried. They do not know how to model what is happening. And any way they do model, growth is lower and inflation is higher.

SANCHEZ: Richard Quest, always appreciate the analysis. Thank you so much. Despite this tariff pause, Yale's Budget Lab finds that those tariffs still in place right now would cost the average American household just over $4,500 -- under $4,500, we should say, this year. Joining us to discuss is Republican Congressman Jeff Hurd of Colorado. Congressman, thank you so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us. Since President Trump took office in January, nearly $11 trillion has been lost in markets, $6 trillion in just the past week which, if you've noticed, the markets have yet to recover. How would you say the president has been handling tariffs? How has this gone so far?

REP. JEFF HURD, (R-CO): Well, there's certainly been a lot of dislocation in the economy. All of us have seen that. Certainly, people that I represent have seen that. But, there's a lot of good things that are happening as well. Just this morning, we passed the great budget resolution, advancing a process that we campaigned on, that the president campaigned on, that we as Republicans campaigned on. So, I'm cautiously optimistic, don't want to count any chickens before the hatch, but I think we're headed in the right direction overall on those key issues that all of us campaigned on.

SANCHEZ: I do have some questions for you on that budget resolution, but I do want to stick to tariffs for a moment because you've introduced legislation to try to limit the president's power to impose tariffs without Congressional approval. Do you think that President Trump has stepped outside his constitutional authority with these moves?

HURD: I do have concerns about the scope and breadth of these tariffs. I support strategic tariffs, tariffs that are meant to onshore manufacturing, particularly critical national security related manufacturing, growing American jobs, making sure that we have export markets to buy things that we produce in the United States, but we need to do it the right way. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly says that Congress has the tariff authority. And so, a legislation that I've introduced along with a number of my other colleagues makes sure that we follow that constitutional prerogative and puts this decision making where it belongs, which is with Congress.

SANCHEZ: I wonder if your concern about this Congressional authority also extends to the idea that some U.S. allies and trade partners may balk at the way that the White House handled this. Couldn't they have said, we want to give you 90 days to negotiate new trade deals, and then if it's not reached at the end of those 90 days, we'll install these tariffs? Couldn't this have been done differently in a way that wouldn't have caused as much economic turmoil as it has?

HURD: Well, certainly there's lots of different ways that things could have been handled, but my focus is making sure that going forward, Congress has a say when it comes to these tariffs because, like I said, strategic tariffs is one of the tools in the toolbox that I think we can use to advance American interest, to make life better for Americans, to lower the cost of groceries, gas, your utility bill. But we just need to make sure that we do it in the right way.

And again, I think Congress and the people that we represent should have a role in this. The Constitution contemplates it. I certainly know I'm hearing it from my constituents as well. And that's why I think this piece of legislation is an important step in the right direction.

SANCHEZ: The President has promised to veto the Senate version of this bill. The administration argues that it would be dangerous to hamper the President's authority, and it would undermine foreign policy and his ability to protect national security. I wonder what your response is and whether you agree with the White House's approach that there are all these national emergencies that require the President to bypass Congressional authority.

[14:15:00]

HURD: Well, look, one thing I've learned in politics is things rapidly change. So, the way things look today could be very different in the future. And that goes for the, what this bill will look like in the coming weeks and coming months. And I do think the president does have some authority. And look, this statute that we're talking about contemplates the president may need to take emergency action, imposes tariffs, just needs to notify Congress within 48 hours when tariffs have been imposed and then gives Congress time, 60 days within which to determine whether or not these tariffs make sense, if they're the right strategic approach for our country to advance the interests of particularly national security, economic security interests of the people that we represent.

SANCHEZ: Do you think, Congressman, that it is the right strategic approach to install tariffs on pharmaceutical goods in a broad way the way that the White House is vowing to do when it would make certain medications undoubtedly more expensive for patients?

HURD: Well, this is one of the things that we need to look at, and again, this is why we need to go back to the Constitution. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution says that Congress should have the ability to review these tariffs, to have input in order to determine whether or not tariffs on things like pharmaceuticals are in the best strategic interests of our country.

SANCHEZ: Would you warn the White House against it?

HURD: Look, I think this is something that we need -- we as Congress need to work with the president on exactly what the specifics look like, issue by issue. I think that's something that we can have a dialog on and discuss. But again, the fundamental issue is Congress needs to have a role in these discussions. It's important the people that we represent have a say. We know better than anyone else what our constituents, the people that sent us here, matter to them. Making sure that we support manufacturing, a whole host of things beyond just pharmaceuticals, it's important that Congress has a say in those.

SANCHEZ: Congressman, about the budget resolution that was passed. The Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson, they've committed to finding $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. How does the math add up in a way where you will not be touching Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security?

HURD: Well, I think it can certainly add up. I mean, we're going to have to see what exactly the process looks like as the committees now can move forward. The instructions that they've got under the budget resolution, now it's time to put pencil to paper and see the sorts of changes that we can make. Look, we want to preserve these critical programs. We want to preserve Medicaid. We want to make sure that folks who rely on Medicare can continue to receive those benefits. It's important for us to preserve these things.

We need to make sure that those dollars are spent in the right way, and that's what we're going to be seeing in the coming weeks, here, in the House of Representatives.

SANCHEZ: Can you guaranty your constituents that those programs will not be cut?

HURD: Well, my commitment to my constituents is we are going to preserve these programs and make sure that those who need them most have them and can rely on them. They're essential to my district, about 30 percent of the people in my district are on Medicaid. I know the critical importance of this. Rural hospitals, rural America, the types of districts that I represent, these programs are critical, and our commitment is to make sure that we're going to preserve them and protect the people that need them most.

SANCHEZ: And lastly, Congressman, I was curious to get your perspective on accusations that have been made, not just by members of Congress, but also folks in the public eye. Do you suspect that anyone in the administration or in the halls of Congress may have either shorted the market before tariffs were announced, or perhaps bought low before yesterday's pause in order to profit from these decisions? Would you want to know if any insider trading has taken place?

HURD: I would absolutely want to know that. We are in a special position of responsibility and public trust here as elected officials. And finding out if somebody was trading on inside information, I think is something that's really important. I will tell you personally, for me, I don't believe that members of Congress should be buying and selling individual securities. I don't do that. I don't think it's right. And it's part of being a public service is making sure that you hold yourself to a higher standard.

So yes, I would absolutely be concerned about that. It's something we should certainly look into if that's the case, but we need to let the facts determine our actions, not just speculation. SANCHEZ: Congressman Jeff Hurd, we'll leave the conversation there. Very much appreciate your time.

HURD: Happy to join you.

SANCHEZ: Thanks much. Still to come, President Trump says major tariffs on pharmaceuticals are still on the way. We just discussed this with the Congressman. We'll take a look at whether insurance or patients will wind up picking up the cost.

KEILAR: And later, a new tip in the Bryan Kohberger case that defense attorneys say could prove someone else killed four University of Idaho students. We'll have that and much more coming up on "CNN News Central."

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[14:24:00]

SANCHEZ: Reality sets in. After the historic rally we saw yesterday, the Dow tumbles as the White House says its tariffs on China are actually higher than what the president had announced yesterday. One of many stories that we're obviously tracking. The European Union paused its retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products following President Trump's trade U-turn as well.

KEILAR: That's right. The leader of the E.U. tweeting this morning, "We want to give negotiations a chance." Keep in mind, the E.U., like the rest of the world, is still facing a 25 percent tariff on cars, aluminum and steel products, along with a 10 percent broad tariff across the board. So, this is significant when you consider the European Union is second only to China in exports to the U.S. and it makes up 15 percent of all imported goods.

SANCHEZ: The CNN's Anna Stewart is live in London with more on the global reaction. Anna, earlier this week, the leader of the E.U. said it would start looking for trading partners outside of the United States. Is that still the case since President Trump paused his tariffs?

[14:25:00]

ANNA STEWART, CNN REPORTER: Yeah, that pause has definitely not stopped the E.U.'s desire to strike up some trade deals elsewhere. And just in the last two hours actually, there is an announcement that the E.U. Commission is in talks now with the UAE about a trade deal and also looking at the E.U. leader, E.U. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's X page today, lots of posts. She's had a call with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney about CETA, which is the E.U.- Canadian deal.

She's also had a call with the New Zealand Prime Minister about a partnership that they already have. And all of this playing out very publicly, I have to say, on social media so perhaps U.S. president is aware that the E.U. is talking about trade with many other allies and partners around the world. It was very interesting that in the E.U.'s announcement that they would also pause the countermeasures they made against steel and aluminum tariffs, that they said if negotiations are not satisfactory, our countermeasures will kick in.

And you have to remember, they've only announced countermeasures to the initial tariffs on steel and aluminum. They're still working on much broader list to retaliate against cars and against potentially higher tariffs across the board. So, this is not necessarily the end. This really is just a pause, I think, for now for the E.U. and the U.S.

KEILAR: And Anna, how are foreign leaders feeling about the prospects of negotiating with the White House?

STEWART: Well, I think I have to say for the E.U., it is looking more positive than it ever has been because the E.U. is a block where they have offered zero-for-zero tariffs on industrial goods and cars, and they got absolutely nowhere. So this pause does suggest that negotiations may even be possible and President Trump, just in the last hour of course, said that he would actually be able to strike deals with all of the countries all on the same day. So perhaps there's a little bit of hope there.

SANCHEZ: Anna Stewart live from London, thank you so much. Right now, the pharmaceutical industry is bracing after President Trump warned that major tariffs will soon be hitting drug imports to try to force companies to make more medicines here in the United States.

KEILAR: But the president's plan could backfire. Drug experts warned that tariffs could raise already high prices even more, could make existing drug shortages even worse. CNN's Meg Tirrell has details.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, pharmaceutical tariffs were left out of that original round of tariffs that President Trump announced on what he called Liberation Day, April 2nd. But he did talk in that speech about why he has pharmaceutical tariffs in his sights. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The United States can no longer produce enough antibiotics to treat our sick. We have a tremendous problem. We have to go to foreign countries to treat our sick. If anything ever happened from a war standpoint, we wouldn't be able to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TIRRELL: Now essentially, universally experts agree that this is a problem that needs to be fixed, but they warn that tariffs are unfortunately likely to make this problem worse before they bring any manufacturing back to the United States, if they do that at all. And it really comes down to the fact that most antibiotics are generic medicines. These are older medicines that sell sometimes for pennies per dose, which is really great for their accessibility, but it creates a very fragile ecosystem around creating them.

And in fact, 92 percent of prescriptions dispensed in the U.S. are for generic drugs. Now, here's how experts say tariffs could cause more drug shortages. Generic medicines have very low profit margins, so they're sold for not much more than it costs to make them. But there are also limits on how much generic drug makers can raise the price of generic drugs, both because of group purchasing organization contracts that typically are locked in for a few years, also because of laws that exist that limit their ability to raise drug prices faster than the price of inflation.

So if the price of the inputs, the ingredients that go into these drugs, starts to rise but you can't raise the price commensurately, that could actually make it unprofitable to manufacture these generic medicines. And that could cause some of these manufacturers, experts tell us, to just decide to stop making the drug or providing it for the U.S. market. And already, we see a lot of drug shortages out there that are causing problems for patients and for hospitals and doctors, and antibiotics are one of the top-five categories where we see these shortages, but we also see them in things like cancer and chemotherapy drugs and many other drug classes.

So this is a major problem. But unfortunately, tariffs experts tell us will likely make this problem worse in the short term and they're not convinced because it's so expensive to build manufacturing plants and takes a long time in the United States, that this is actually going to bring manufacturing back. We should also note that on branded medicines, those pricier drugs, this could potentially raise those prices even further, making pricey drugs even more expensive.

KEILAR: Meg, thank you for that report. And a major update in the Idaho murders case. Bryan Kohberger's attorneys say a tip could lead to an alternate suspect in the brutal killings of four University of Idaho students.

ANNOUNCER: A CNN Town Hall, "America Asks Congress," live tonight at 9 p.m.

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