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Another Outage Hits Newark Airport; Pope Leo Celebrates First Mass; Trump Backing Down on China Tariffs?. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired May 09, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Talks have yet to even kick off, but President Trump is floating a major concession China, a dramatic break in his rhetoric. What does it signal about the United States' leverage with Beijing?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And growing up with the future pope. What it's like when your brother becomes the most powerful man in the Catholic Church. CNN just sat down with Pope Leo's brother and apparent Wordle rival.

And a half-ton hunk of metal hurtling towards Earth, don't worry about it. Well, at least that's what the experts are saying.

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

SANCHEZ: The White House news briefing is set to start any moment, as the president signals he's open to a major concession ahead of a key meeting with China tomorrow.

This would be the first time that the world's two largest economies are going to be speaking face-to-face since Trump launched his sweeping global trade war. The president hit Chinese goods with a 145 percent tariff, far higher than any other country in the world. But, today, ahead of these key talks, the president says that a much lower 80 percent tariff -- quote -- "seems right," saying it's up to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

CNN's Alayna Treene is live for us at the White House.

Alayna, do we know what is behind Trump floating this on the eve of these significant talks with the Chinese?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: What I find really interesting and I think one of the questions I have, Boris, is whether or not the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, or the United States trade representative, Jamieson Greer, knew that he was going to do that, because in all of the conversations, Boris, that I have had with senior Trump administration officials, what they have told me is they want to keep expectations for these meetings in Switzerland very low.

Essentially, the goal is to de-escalate the trade war with China. As you mentioned, it's the first time that they're actually going to be meeting or even having significant talks ever since this tariff war, but also that they don't expect, they're not under the illusion that there's going to be some grand deal that comes out of this.

Now, of course, they are hoping that there could be some tangible wins, tangible points on the board that they can point to, but not necessarily a broad trade deal. So this post from the president, I'm curious if it caught them off guard here.

But one thing that's been really interesting is just the different rhetoric we have heard from the president himself over the past several days. Just on Wednesday, a reporter asked him if he would be open to lowering tariffs to launch these negotiations. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Are you open to pulling back your tariffs in order to get China to the negotiating table?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: "No," he says there.

And then yesterday, of course, he was also in the Oval Office speaking with reporters, and he was asked if he is open to lowering tariffs on China, if that's the ultimate goal. And he said -- had a very different response. He said, well, at 145 percent, they got to come down.

So I think it's clear that the president does see these tariffs coming down at some point. That's the ultimate goal, but very unlikely that we will get any sort of word on that this weekend from these talks in China.

SANCHEZ: And, Alayna, President Trump is headed to the Middle East next week. It's his first major foreign trip since returning to the White House.

We understand that he's getting some help from one of his former top advisers, actually someone who is family, right?

TREENE: That's right.

They are turning to a familiar face on these Middle East negotiations, and that's Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law. So I'd remind you that Kushner was a chief Middle East negotiator for the president during his first term, but both he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, also, of course, the president's daughter, have chosen to really separate themselves from the Trump administration and the White House this time around. However, we are now learning, according to conversations with multiple Trump administration officials and people close to Kushner, that he has been informally advising top -- top officials on this, people like Steve Witkoff, the president's Middle East envoy and the point person on Russia and Iran talks.

He has really been giving him and others a lot of input on advice how to approach these talks with Arab leaders. But one key thing that I think is so important through all of this is what his ultimate goal is this time around. He wants to operate out of the limelight.

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But his goal is to expand on the Abraham Accords, something he worked on during the president's first term, and that's really about normalizing diplomatic relationships between Israel and Arab nations. That is going to be a key goal that they hope they can make progress on next week, I'm told -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Alayna Treene from the White House for us, thanks so much for the reporting -- Brianna.

KEILAR: For more on these talks, let's bring in Douglas Holtz-Eakin. He was the chief economist on the White House Council of Economic Advisers during President George W. Bush's administration. He's now the president of the American Action Forum.

All right, Doug, what could the president, Trump, be trying to achieve here by talking about dropping these 145 percent tariffs to 80 percent?

DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN, FORMER CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE DIRECTOR: I think there are really two things that are significant, number one, the fact that he moved first.

And getting these talks started with China has been difficult. Both sides refused to initiate the talks. They arranged for this notion. They somehow just happened to both be in Switzerland. This was a fairly significant move for the president to say, yes, I can imagine us going to 80 percent.

The second is the direction. It's down. I don't think, substantively, there's much difference between 145 percent, which cuts off trade, it's practically an embargo, and 80 percent, which probably does about the same thing. It's hard to make money and pay 80 percent tariffs, so there won't be much trade.

But it's the right direction, and he went first, and I think that's the significance.

KEILAR: What does moving first signify?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: A willingness to come to a deal and to recognize that the 145 percent tariff is something that just cannot survive.

And China has said that, and they have had some demands and haven't really been willing to engage. He can now say, look, I have done something. What are you willing to do? And that's the starting point of a negotiation.

KEILAR: So these talks this weekend between China and the U.S. and Switzerland, what do they need to achieve?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: I think the fact that they're talking is the major achievement. I don't expect for an agreement to come out of these talks. I think you can figure out pretty quickly in a meeting like this what things are off the table, things China is unwilling to do, things the United States is unwilling to do.

So you can find the areas of a negotiation. That would be a good start. If they do that this weekend, I think that'd be an accomplishment.

KEILAR: The Port of Seattle did not have container ships in its port as of last night. There were none, first time...

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Right.

KEILAR: ... since the height of the pandemic, according to the port commissioner, who spoke to CNN's Kaitlan Collins.

Trump said yesterday it's a good thing that traffic into ports is slow because it means the U.S. is no longer losing money. How do you see it?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: I think the president has that wrong. People trade because the trade makes both sides better off. You acquire something in value and you give up something in value and both sides are happy with that exchange.

So to cut off trade is not to make us better off. It will actually make us worse off. And in the near term, it could have significant repercussions. You worry about the whole supply chain. You worry about the employment in the supply chain. And we're going to have to worry about the prices in that supply chain.

So, tariffs mean two things, higher costs and potentially higher prices and less in the way of business. And that's bad for employment.

KEILAR: He's clearly trying to project a position of strength going into this key weekend.

But as you look at these two parties, the U.S. or China, who's in a better negotiating position here?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: I think the administration overestimated their leverage.

The notion that somehow they could impose a draconian tariff and get China to bend quickly just proved to be wrong. And I think it's important to remember that this is a regime that was perfectly willing to lock people in their apartments for years to fight the pandemic. The tariff is not something that I think shakes them very much.

And I think it's wise to acknowledge their willingness to have their own population suffer a great deal.

KEILAR: Yes, it is a good warning.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, always great to have you. Thank you so much.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Thank you.

KEILAR: And, today, history's first U.S.-born pope, Leo XIV, celebrating his first mass as the new pontiff inside the Sistine Chapel.

Pope Leo talked about the great responsibility that he has now leading the Catholic Church, and he did this in front of the cardinals who elected him.

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POPE LEO XIV, LEADER OF CATHOLIC CHURCH: Through the ministry of Peter, you have called me to carry that cross and to be blessed with that mission. And I know I can rely on each and every one of you to walk with me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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SANCHEZ: Notably using his native tongue there, speaking in English to the College of Cardinals.

Pope Leo grew up near Chicago, the youngest of three brothers.

Earlier today, CNN's Whitney Wild caught up with one of them, John Prevost, who talked about his kid brother's long journey to the papacy.

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JOHN PREVOST, BROTHER OF POPE LEO XIV: It's bittersweet in the sense that when we dropped him off for a freshman year of high school, the ride home was very sad, in the sense that, like you just said, he's leaving. He's gone. We will see him once in a while.

Now it's even worse in the sense that will we ever get to see him unless we go over to Rome?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh.

PREVOST: You know what I mean?

Like, last year, as cardinal, the pope said, go take four weeks. So here he was. I don't think we're going to have that anymore.

WILD: How does that feel as a brother?

PREVOST: It's hard. Yes, it's hard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: It's got to be tough to incorporate family time into the pope's schedule.

Bishop Robert Barron joins us now. He's the founder of World (sic) on Fire, a Catholic media organization.

Sir, thanks so much for being with us.

I obviously have seen a lot of the memes and a lot of the press coverage. Chicagoans especially are hailing the pick of Pope Leo XIV. You actually grew up less than a half-hour away from him. Why is where a pope is from so significant? How does that impact how they lead?

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON, DIOCESE OF WINONA-ROCHESTER, MINNESOTA: Well, we're all from some place, and that always shapes your thinking and your heart and soul.

As you say, I'm only a few years younger than the pope and grew up just a short distance away from him, so I know that culture very well. So you're shaped by it inevitably. But I think what's really important is, the pope is the pope for the whole world.

You see behind me St. Peter's Basilica, and it's the Petrine ministry, which is to bring unity to the entire church. That's why I think it was so interesting yesterday, when he spoke, he didn't speak English at all. He spoke Latin, Italian and Spanish, to signal, I think that, though he's from America, he's a pope for the whole world.

And I think he will do that remarkably well.

KEILAR: Yes, it's also remarkable to see his doppelganger, his brother, talk about him, the papal doppelganger, you could say.

And Leo's brother had this to say about the new pope's views on immigration. He said this to our affiliate. Let's listen.

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PREVOST: I think he sees the United States as headed in the wrong direction in terms of immigration, that this is a total injustice. These are people. Doesn't matter where they're born. They are people first, and so they need to be treated as people first.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, as a cardinal, the pope also appears to have reposted social media posts that were critical of the Trump administration's immigration policies. We should note that the Trump administration's immigration policies, it's maybe not a personal thing of the pope's.

Francis diverged. The church diverges, has been clear about where it is on migration and migrants. But I wonder if you think, as pope, Pope Leo will be vocal in challenging President Trump's immigration policy and what that might look like. BARRON: I think he will advocate for Catholic social teaching. The

fact that he chose the name Leo is very interesting. Of course, he's the father of Catholic social teaching tradition.

And according to that teaching, a nation has a right to defend its borders and to define them. That's part of our teaching, because an unregulated border is a moral problem for lots of people. At the same time, as his brother said quite correctly and eloquently, we reach out to those especially in need.

Now, how you work out the details of that relationship, well, that's often up to the politicians. And we can have a lively debate about that. But I think Pope Leo will speak, as he always has, out of that social teaching tradition, which is neither Republican nor Democratic, to use our terms.

It's not liberal or conservative. It transcends those categories. And I think he's consistently taught out of that tradition.

SANCHEZ: I wonder how this election, his ascendancy to the papacy as an American might change the way that the church in the United States itself functions.

BARRON: Well, I think it will have a positive impact on the church in the States. I think it will intrigue people enough maybe to take another look at the church. It might inspire Catholics who have fallen away to come back.

I think it will have a great evangelical impact. And, see, that's the number one concern, at least in the West, for the church, the number of those who have disaffiliated, especially among the young. So if this election of an American pope generates more interest in the church, that's evangelically terrific.

KEILAR: I think, talking to Catholics and church observers, Bishop, I think it would be -- the expectation here is that you are going to see a bump in church attendance in America. There is obviously so much interest in the fact that this is the first U.S.-born pope.

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I think the question then is, does that persist over time? How do you think the church here in America should approach that? If they are going to have this bump in attendance, how do you retain that?

BARRON: Well, that's the great challenge.

We have been at it now for a while, the so-called new evangelization, to find a way to repurpose the faith to those who've already heard it, but have maybe fallen away. I think the way we have been engaging social media has been very important. Go back even 20 years, none of that existed.

Now there's been an explosion in the church's use of social media. So the young people weren't coming to us as readily, so we found a way to go to them. I think that the pope now is someone who's alert to that, and I think that's what we have to do to continue in this task of new evangelization.

SANCHEZ: Bishop, I understand that you spent quite a bit of time with Pope Leo XIV during the most recent synod. What is he like?

BARRON: He's a very good man.

I didn't know him too well. I think I had met him in Chicago once before, but then for those two months, the last two Octobers, I was with him pretty much every day. The first time I went up to him, I -- he had just become the prefect for the Dicastery of Bishops.

And I said: "Well, you just got a big job." And he kind of smiled. It never occurred to me he'd get a bigger job in a few years. He's a very gentle man. He's humble. He's soft-spoken. He's someone that deliberates very carefully, not a flashy personality, but an attractive personality because of that sort of quiet serenity about him.

I think that the church will take to him. You're not going to find a histrionic speaker. You're not going to find someone that's got maybe a big personality on the public stage, but I think people will be drawn in by his spiritual charisma.

KEILAR: Yes, it'll be very interesting to see. He certainly has a lot of eyes on him and a lot of expectations.

Bishop Robert Barron, thank you so much for being with us.

BARRON: You're welcome.

KEILAR: Coming up: another blackout at Newark Airport. Air traffic controllers lost radar for 90 seconds early this morning. What we know about this troubling outage.

And then new details of what appears to be an aborted plan to deport migrants to Libya. We will tell you where a military plane eventually went and who was on it.

SANCHEZ: Plus, a half-ton out-of-control Soviet spacecraft is set to crash back into Earth. Where exactly? We don't know. We're not sure.

We will discuss and try to predict when we come back on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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SANCHEZ: We're learning of another outage affecting flights around Newark Liberty International Airport.

A source tells CNN that air traffic controllers lost radar for about 90 seconds early this morning. Another source says they also lost radio communication. One controller was directing a FedEx flight when her radar screen went dark. Listen to this.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: FedEx 1989, I'm going to hand you off here. Our scopes just went black again. If you care about this, contact your airline and try to get some pressure for them to fix this stuff.

FEDEX 1989 PILOT: Sorry to hear about that. FedEx 1989, I'm switching. Good luck, guys.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: The plane continued on to Boston, where it was able to land safely.

The incident, though, was reminiscent of what happened last week when controllers lost contact with planes they were supposed to be monitoring. The outage led to staffing shortages after at least five employees took trauma leave. Since then, there's been a flood of flight delays and cancellations, which are still happening.

CNN aviation analyst and former NTSB Managing Director Peter Goelz joins us now live to discuss.

Peter, thanks so much for being with us.

What is it like for air traffic controllers to lose radar and radio communications as flights are trying to land and take off?

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it's absolutely your worst nightmare, Boris.

I mean, as a controller, you have tremendous responsibility to keep planes separated, to keep them on their tracks to land or to take off. And to suddenly have it go black and not be able to communicate to the pilots is just the worst.

And I can understand why the five controllers took some annual leave and some mental health leave to recover. It's frightening.

SANCHEZ: What does it mean that this would happen two times in two weeks? I mean, you would imagine that it would be addressed or at least they would attempt to address it the first time.

GOELZ: Well, I think there's two things going on here.

One is, they don't really know what's caused this -- these outages. They think it might be a problem with copper wiring, might be a problem with a conduit that has water seeping in. They simply don't know yet. And so they're going to have to develop backup strategies until they discover exactly what caused this.

But the reality is, Boris, Newark's going to be in hot water for the foreseeable future. There's simply too many flights being squeezed into too little -- in a too-little time frame and they have one runway out.

SANCHEZ: Wow. So the Department of Transportation has announced that they're going

to build a brand-new air traffic control system by 2028. That includes all new hardware and software. There is some concern that that timeline is simply unrealistic. I wonder what you think.

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GOELZ: (AUDIO GAP) has had challenges implementing complex programs in a timely fashion.

I mean, yesterday's performance by the secretary was outstanding. I mean, he had every stakeholder imaginable singing from the same page. Whether they can get this program implemented is another question. And, of course, the most significant challenge will be, will the Congress appropriate the $12 billion that he's put the price tag on up front?

If they don't, then we're going to have problems with delivery and timing.

SANCHEZ: I do wonder, what got the United States to this point?

Because the secretary, Secretary Sean Duffy, said that the system has been obsolete for something like 50 years.

GOELZ: Well, it has been obsolete for 50 years.

If you look, there was an accident in 2006 in Lexington, Kentucky, in which a aircraft took off on a wrong runway early in the morning. And there were questions raised about, were there enough controllers in the tower to handle a situation?

Back then, then a junior Senator Patty Murray, who is now ranking member of her committee, demanded that more controllers be hired. She identified the shortages and said, we have got to address this. And the FAA promised to do that. They failed. They couldn't do it.

So, I mean, this is a very vexing problem. And you admire the secretary for tackling it. He's being candid about it. He's put the right price tag on it. The question is, will he get the support and the time to implement it?

SANCHEZ: Peter Goelz, very much appreciate your perspective on this. Thanks for joining us.

GOELZ: Thank you, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Next: Fighting between India and Pakistan intensifies, raising more fears that these two nuclear-armed rivals are on the brink of a wider conflict.

And this half-ton Soviet era spacecraft is hurtling toward us as we speak, and it could crash somewhere in the United States. Scientists, though, say it's probably nothing to worry about. We will weigh the odds in just moments. Don't go anywhere.

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