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Canadian PM in Oval Office Meeting: Canada "Wont' be for Sale Ever"; Trump: We Will Set the Price of Doing Business in America; Soon: Canadian PM Speaks After Meeting with Trump; Newark Airport Hit with More Flight Delays, Cancellations. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 06, 2025 - 15:00   ET

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

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ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Tough Talk on Trade: As President Trump meets with the Prime Minister of Canada, billions of dollars at stake for both countries. And another concern, the White House admitting it is not engaged in talks with Beijing, contradicting claims made to say otherwise.

Plus, an Airport in Crisis: Newark wrestling with cancellations, and delays and frustrated travelers. Air traffic controllers stressed to the point some now taking leave to recover from on-the-job trauma.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And Pay to Play: President Trump could jump into the fight over paying college players. Can he solve a problem that is sparking debate among fans and coaches?

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEW CENTRAL.

HILL: Moments ago, Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney departing the White House after his meeting with President Donald Trump. Any moment now, the Prime Minister is expected to deliver remarks from the Canadian Embassy.

Ahead of his face-to-face today, both leaders took questions in the Oval Office and that started off cordial enough. But there was perhaps a little bit more tension as the moment wore on, especially once President Trump began talking about his desire for Canada to become the 51st state. CNN's Kristen Holmes is live from the White House for us this hour.

So, the President certainly also had a lot to say about his global trade war. There has yet to be a single deal announced, although he was teasing a very, very big, really, really positive, important one coming soon, not sure if that's a trade deal or not, Kristen.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean he seemed to be over and over again backpedaling from the idea that it was a trade deal. He kept saying, I'm not saying it's a trade deal. I'm not saying it's a trade deal. And then he started talking about the trade deals overall. Essentially trying to or seemingly blaming the media for asking questions about the trade deal and then blaming his own people for the messaging around the trade deal. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think my people haven't made it clear. We will sign some deals, but much bigger than that is we're going to put down the price that people are going to have to pay to shop in the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now, there was a lot of confusion among people that I spoke to after this, because remember the administration has been touting a potential trade deal now for three weeks. He went on to say that they could pen or could sign 25 trade deals if they wanted to right now, but that wasn't exactly what they wanted to do. They needed these countries to come to the table, to come to the United States, which is very confusing given the fact that we've heard so many administration officials really focus on these trade deals.

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They talk about the economy. They talk about how they need a trade deal to move the needle forward because of what we are seeing in the markets, because of what we're seeing from people who are having issues with what's going on in the economy.

So, it was very, very strange to see it almost backpedaling, saying they're not that important. There's other things that are more important, particularly after weeks around this type of messaging.

HILL: Yes, absolutely. Kristen, appreciate the reporting. Thank you.

Also joining us this hour, CNN's Paula Newton joining us ahead of those remarks from Prime Minister Carney. So, some pushback that we saw there in the Oval Office by the Prime Minister, specifically in response to President Trump once again saying that he thought Canada would make a great 51st state and, oh, how happy Canadians would be. The Prime Minister was very clear, that's not happening.

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, you'd have to think, right, Erica? If he didn't have a comeback in the Oval Office for that line, you would definitely have faulted him. Indeed, he did. We will get to that in a moment.

Like, look, there was no spectacle here in the Oval Office and President Trump really went out of his way to compliment the Prime Minister. That was the tone and, as I have been saying, the substance of it much tougher. As Kristen was just alluding to, there are no trade deals yet and certainly the President conceded there would be no new trade deal with Canada either, keeping in mind that Canada is the largest customer of American goods. It really hits Americans where they live, the trade war, even with Canada.

Going back, though, to that issue of the 51st state, President wouldn't rule it out. Listen to what Prime Minister Mark Carney had to say. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK CARNEY, PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA: If I may, as you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale.

TRUMP: That's true.

CARNEY: We're sitting in one right now, you know, Buckingham Palace, that you visited as well.

TRUMP: That's true.

CARNEY: And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign last several months, it's not for sale, won't be for sale, ever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEWTON: Now, thankfully, after that, the President even conceded, well, we're not even going to talk about that today. I mean, look, the expectations were set very low for this meeting. I think it does give allies a look-see into what may happen, because on the trade route, in terms of substance, White House not moving so quickly.

On the other hand, I mean, certainly a good relationship, remembering that Canada and the United States have so much at stake, whether it comes to the economy or security. I want to tee it up, though, G7, in just a few weeks. The White House, so far, has not committed - the President - to attending that G7 in Canada. We're about to hear, hopefully, in the next hour whether or not the Prime Minister got that guarantee from the President.

HILL: Yes, it'd be interesting to see if he did. Paula, I appreciate it, as always. Brianna?

KEILAR: And with us now is former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Jean Charest. First off, Mr. Charest, and thank you for joining us this afternoon, how do you think this meeting went, in your view, and how are Canadians reacting to it?

JEAN CHAREST, FORMER CANADIAN DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Canadians are reacting very well, Brianna. We're off to a good start. A respectful meeting, seemed to be very honest to President Trump. What we expected is that he would get off his chest, this idea of a 51st state, but, you know, Mark Carney, Prime Minister Carney's response was pretty good when he says, you know, in real estate, some things are not for sale, including the very White House, in which both of them were seated, to make the broader point. The other thing Prime Minister Carney has made as a point is that he's just come out of an election campaign, a consultation of the 40 million owners of Canada, who very clearly have said, we want a good relationship with the United States, we want it to be respectful, we want it to be constructive and that seems to be the tone that we picked up today from the meeting of President Trump with Prime Minister Carney.

KEILAR: And there's another message that Mr. Carney has for President Trump, and that is that he's inviting King Charles, right? He's inviting King Charles, Canada's head of state, to the opening of Parliament later this month. The monarch hasn't read this speech from the throne in almost 50 years. It's something you well know that the Governor General could just do. So, there is a clear message, having King Charles do it. What is that message?

CHAREST: Well, and I'm impressed how much you know about the Canadian system.

We have a British parliamentary system, Brianna, in Canada, and when we talk about 51st State, this speaks to one of the major differences between our respective countries. We have a quite different political system. The head of state, the symbolic head of state, is Prince Charles, who will be reading the speech from the throne, and that makes one very important point. We have very different institutions from those of the United States.

Historically, Canada and Canadians have made the choice of building a country that is very different from our American neighbors.

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And yet we remain very good friends, we're allies, we're business partners. We want to see the Americans succeed, and we believe that we can do that as partners much better than we could otherwise.

KEILAR: It seems certainly like it was a deliberate move, an ask on short notice by the Prime Minister. Trump said today the U.S. doesn't need anything from Canada. You heard him say this. He said also earlier, he'd posted on social media, we don't need their cars, their energy, their lumber. How do Canadians see it? How do you see it, about what the U.S. does and does not need from Canada?

CHAREST: Well, Brianna, you know, the United States is the bigger partner, a major economic power, also a superpower. But the fact of the matter is, we need each other. We always need our neighbors, and let's be specific. The United States needs Canada's energy. We supply 60 percent of all the foreign oil that is sold to the United States. American farmers need our potash, otherwise they can't farm, and they need it in the spring, they need it in the fall. And the United States needs our uranium. The United States needs our strategic minerals. And we need a strong American economy to be able to prosper together and build things together, as we do in the automotive industry.

So, the good news is that now discussions will start based on the agreement that President Trump signed in 2018, called CUSMA. And it includes Mexico, of course. And this is a good starting point for us to build out this relationship and to just make it stronger and make each other more prosperous.

KEILAR: The Prime Minister said Canada will strengthen its relationship with reliable trading partners. He said that ahead of this visit, and it sounds like inherent in that statement is that the U.S. is not reliable. I will say we've heard from many Canadian officials and former officials like yourself, who have said that as much that the U.S. is not the reliable partner that it once was. What do you think it would take for the U.S. to once again become a reliable trading partner in Canada's eyes?

CHAREST: And at the very least, Brianna, let's call it unpredictable. The last few months for the - the whole world has been in a situation where it's been difficult to predict where the administration will be going in - on this issue of tariffs.

What we need is a good, solid trade relationship, probably based on CUSMA, this trade deal, again, that President Trump himself signed. And maybe we need to enlarge it to security issues, to issues that deal with the Arctic, and things where we have a common interest. And that's what will allow us to have a relationship of trust.

But whatever it is, Brianna, in the end, the United States will always be our most important trading partner, whether there is a trade agreement or not. And chances are, Canada will always be the most important, if not one of the most important trading partners of the United States, whatever the agreement is.

So, if that's going to be the case, why not get the boast out of it? Why not work in a spirit of respect and cooperation so that we can better face the world together?

KEILAR: Mr. Charest, thank you so much for taking time to be with us today. It's obviously a critical moment as the new prime minister is visiting here in Washington. Thank you.

CHAREST: Thank you.

KEILAR: And still to come, flight delays and cancellations for the ninth straight day at Newark International Airport, as we're getting some new details about what was a scary communication breakdown that set off flight disruptions there.

Plus, time to check your driver's license. No, really, you're going to want to do this. REAL ID requirements go into place tomorrow. We're going to tell you how it could impact your travel plans.

And then later, President Trump is considering an executive action to address the inflow of money into college sports. That and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: Critical issues plaguing air traffic control systems are still impacting travel at Newark Liberty International Airport. For the ninth day, people have been stuck waiting hours to board delayed flights if they're not canceled altogether. And today, the FAA imposed a ground delay on all flights that were coming into Newark. This ongoing chaos initially triggered by an air traffic control outage back on April 28th, when controllers lost radar contact with planes they were tracking. It's an incident that prompted several of them to actually go and leave to recover from the stress. It's called trauma leave.

We have CNN's Brynn Gingras, who's talking to frustrated passengers inside the airport, so many of them. What are they saying, Brynn?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It really is. It's such an uplifting story, Brianna, because travel woes are the worst. And we are meeting so many people who are experiencing them. And quite honestly, it's not just domestic flights happening at Newark International Airport. It is international flights.

We just met someone coming from Spain, was delayed getting here to Newark from Spain, and now is delayed getting out of here, going to Atlanta. So, it's just one thing after another.

And you mentioned that issue with those air traffic controllers needing to take a leave. Well, that's just part of the problem here at Newark. There's also a runway that's shut down for construction. There's also some cloud cover that's making delays. Four-hour ground delay.

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Flights coming into Newark sometimes have to wait four hours before they can take off and come this way to Newark. And, of course, if you look at the board behind me, all you can see is that it is lit up an orange at Terminal B, where we are right now for the departures and Terminal A as well.

I will say this, if you were flying out of Newark and you were in Terminal C, it actually looks pretty good. This is actually the best news of the entire day that we've been watching all day long. But look, the problems are just, again, compounding. And it doesn't sound like there's a solution in the near future.

But listen to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy talking about what he is doing to try to fix some of these issues.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN DUFFY, SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION: We are going to radically transform the way air traffic control looks. We're going to build a brand-new air traffic control system from new telecom to new radars to new infrastructure. We're bringing our new air traffic controllers. This has been a problem in the decades coming, and we're going to fix it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRAS: And so, a more in-depth infrastructure plan allegedly coming out on Thursday from the Transportation Secretary. But again, this is now years, decades from now. This is not going to solve the solution - or solve the problems, rather, that are happening right now, as we see now day nine of delays and cancellations out of Newark Airport and only getting worse, guys.

KEILAR: Yes. What a tough situation for folks there. Brynn Gingras, live for us from Newark Airport, thank you. Erica?

HILL: Well, this chaotic meltdown at Newark Liberty follows our previous reporting about, as Brianna and Brynn were just mentioning, several air traffic controllers needing to take trauma leave because of equipment failure and radar outages that made them lose contact with several planes they were monitoring. CNN obtained audio revealing one of those tenuous moments during a communication outage last month.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, you do not have a bravo clearance. We lost our radar and it's not working correctly. Radar service terminates. Squawk VFR change approved. If you want a bravo clearance, you can just call the tower when you get closer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay, I'll wait for that frequency from you. Okay?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay, no, just squawk VFR, look up the tower frequencies. And we don't have a radar, so I don't know where you are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Joining us now is Mary Schiavo, CNN Transportation Analyst. She's also the former inspector general, of course, for the Department of Transportation.

Mary, you know, as we've learned more about this story with CNN's reporting over the last couple of days, we are hearing, of course, from Secretary Duffy that DOT is set to announce a plan on Thursday. They're going to transform air traffic control, they say, with this infrastructure.

The fact that it has gotten to the point where it was this bad, where there was loss of radar, issues of communication, doesn't that signal a wider problem? Announcing a solution that will be ready in decades. How do we get to this point?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: Well, we got to this point because for years, literally for decades, administrations, Republicans and Democrats, kicked the can down the road. These problems were readily apparent in the '90s. And the other problem is we had money for new systems, but entire systems had to be scrapped because they were not managed by the Federal Aviation Administration. The money, in many instances, was wasted. And they simply did not have the right persons in the right place to manage these contracts. And this was known literally for years, so people just put patches on the system. And as a result, we have a patchwork system.

The airports and the approach controls, the TRACONs that we were talking about that had the problems on Monday, Terminal Radar Approach Control, some of them don't have the same equipment. Some of the radars vary dramatically in ages. And so, you can't easily move one controller to another facility. They're not like moving checkerboard pieces. They're like moving chess pieces.

And so, we have literally gotten to this point by just putting temporary solutions in place rather than fixing the whole system. So, Secretary Duffy is right, but he may not realize how huge this contract, this project and this job is going to be. And so, I agree. It's going to be probably 10 years, it's going to be a decade fix.

He has said, though, that the shortages of the employees should be fixed in two to three years. That will help. But we still have two to three years to get to that point.

HILL: You mentioned the shortage of employees. The CEO of United says that the control facility at Newark has actually had a staffing shortage. They've been chronically understaffed for years. So, the fact that we've known about this, I mean, we've talked about it a number of times across the country, that there is this shortage. That too. What's missing in terms of incentives and bringing people in to fill those jobs?

SCHIAVO: Well, you know, a lot of things are stacked against it. For example, they have age cutoffs. You have to be under 32 to get employed. And most people retire out at 55. Neither one of those is necessary. There's also an issue on the training. For years, the FAA was looking for a magic bullet. What kind of a person is really going to make it through all the training and be a good controller? Because about a third washout. It's tough. It's a hard job.

You know, and then finally, the stress of the situation.

[15:25:00]

If you are in this situation right now and we're so understaffed and you are forced to work long, long overtime hours, and remember that control - the approach control for Newark was moved in July of last year from New York to Philadelphia, so - and 10 people were moved and some of them didn't want to move. So, there's been turmoil in this area for some time. So, what you have to do is put incentives for people to stay in place, put more people in the pipeline if you know that so many are going to washout, because it's hard, put more in the pipeline.

And remember, during COVID, training and hiring stopped. So, we're two years behind also, still feeling a fallout from COVID. And lift that retirement at 55 and the age of under 32. Other people can be trained to do this job.

HILL: Yes. Let me ask you real quickly, sort of rapid fire, if you will. Number one, is it safe to fly in or out of Newark?

SCHIAVO: Well, not unless they permanently limit the flights until the shortage and the construction is over. That's the only way Secretary Duffy has that power. Emergency Airways is directed. You can limit the flights. Apparently, United and others aren't willing to do it voluntarily.

HILL: So that's interesting. So, we could see the number of flights limited if the government steps in. Before I let you go, too, you mentioned these patchwork fixes across the country and the patches across the country. Are there any other airports that are facing similar challenges that have you concerned?

SCHIAVO: Oh, yes, absolutely. And some - and others in the New Jersey area, because Newark isn't the only one served by Philadelphia. New York has these problems. Atlanta, the busiest airport in the world, is understaffed in controllers. So, airports all over the country have these problems. Some actually have an excess of controllers, but not many. So, Newark is not alone. And Duffy is going to have his hands full because, as I mentioned, you can't easily transfer one controller to another tower. There is a period of retraining.

HILL: Yes. Mary Schiavo, appreciate it as always. Thank you.

SCHIAVO: Thank you.

HILL: Still to come here, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the U.S. is not engaged in trade negotiations with China yet, but he insists trade deals could be announced this week. What else? He told lawmakers on Capitol Hill today. That's next.

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