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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

Markets Gain After Trump Halts Most Tariffs for 90 Days; Trump Raises Tariffs on Chinese Imports to U.S. to 125 Percent; Speaker Delays Budget Vote s GOP Holdouts Seek Concessions; Civilian Casualties in Ukraine Up 50 Percent in March. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired April 10, 2025 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump says that he's ordered a 90- day pause on reciprocal tariffs, except for China. The country will now see tariff rates rise to a whopping 125 percent as the U.S. president ratchets up his trade war with Beijing. The move is meant to put pressure on China to come to the negotiating table.

The tariff pause sent U.S. stocks skyrocketing on Wednesday. Take a look. All three major indices saw their best day in years.

The Dow jumped almost 7.9 percent, while the S&P 500 gained 9.5 percent. And then there's a tech-heavy Nasdaq that soared over 12 percent.

And the trade war in China is only escalating. U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports and China's retaliatory tariffs of 84 percent of imports of U.S. goods is now in effect. The Chinese foreign minister says that the country will never accept what he calls bullying behavior, and is promising to take, quote, resolute and effective measures to safeguard its rights and interests.

Well, despite the market gains, economists say that President Trump has done lasting damage to the world's sense of stability. And also fears of a global recession have yet to fade. More now from CNN's Jeff Zeleny in Washington.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF U.S. NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: President Trump reversing course on Wednesday in dramatic fashion. His sweeping tariff policy revealed one thing above all else. His threshold for political pain was one week.

After day after day after his advisers and the president himself has said he would not put a pause on this sweeping tariff plan, that is exactly what he did. And it sent the financial markets soaring, of course, after they have been falling for day after day for nearly a week's time. The president, as we asked him in the South Lawn of the White House, explained it like this.

ZELENY: Can you walk us through your thinking about why you decided to put a 90-day pause? DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.

ZELENY: You said that, that these tariffs would go into effect on Monday, you said no pause. Today there is a pause. So, who can people believe you?

TRUMP: Yes, it's not a question of that. You have to have flexibility. I could say, here's a wall and I'm going to go through that wall. I'm going to go through it no matter what. Keep going and you can't go through the wall. Sometimes you have to be able to go under the wall, around the wall or over the wall.

ZELENY: But we're learning there actually was a growing alarm inside the Treasury Department and indeed here at the White House about the bond markets, the weakening of the dollar. So that is one of the many things the president acknowledged led him to put a pause on tariffs until July, except China.

The trade war with China is still very much underway. The percentage is now at 125 percent for China goods coming here to the U.S. Now, the question is, when will that end? Will it end? Who will blink first?

The president asked directly about that. He said he believes China wants to make a deal. There has been zero indication from President Xi that he is willing to blink.

So the bottom line here is the U.S. now and China in a trade war, even as other countries are hit with a 10 percent tariff as the market, still rattled, now recovers.

Jeff Zeleny, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL: Let's stay in Washington, where President Trump said that he would use the Justice Department to go after two officials who criticized him during his first term. This is another sign of his willingness to punish those that he perceives as his enemies and using the Department of Justice.

Mr. Trump signed executive orders stripping Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs of any security clearance that the former officials may still hold. Here it is grievances about the two men while sitting in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I said, who the hell is Miles Taylor? And I think what he did, he wrote a book anonymous, said all sorts of lies and bad things. I think it's a very important case. And I think he's guilty of treason, if you want to know the truth.

This guy Krebs was saying, oh, the election was great. It was great. Well, we're going to find out about this guy, too, because this guy's a wise guy. He said, we would prove this is the most secure election in the history of our country. Now, this was a disaster.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: Miles Taylor, he worked at the Department of Homeland Security. He gained prominence after admitting that he wrote an op ed in The New York Times that said that he was part of the so-called resistance against President Trump.

The Trump administration is also taking aim at another perceived enemy. The DOJ said that employees are not allowed to spend money to engage with the American Bar Association, which in the U.S. is an organization for lawyers and law students. It's sided with firms targeted by some of President Trump's previous executive orders.

[04:35:00]

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed a key vote on a budget bill until potentially later today, as Republicans were really feuding over spending cuts in the legislation. GOP leaders failed to convince holdouts to vote for the bill on Wednesday, despite a push from President Trump himself.

Here's CNN's Manu Raju.

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MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: After a day of furious negotiating and trying to urge Republicans to fall in line behind a Senate budget blueprint that is essential to moving ahead with Donald Trump's agenda. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, had to punt on moving on that budget blueprint because of resistance and opposition from a band of House conservatives who say that they will not go along with this plan at the moment because they're concerned about language that the Senate added in that they believe will water down spending cuts. Ultimately, they'll be improved in the final legislation.

Remember how this process works. The Senate and the House must adopt the same identical budget blueprint. That's a non-binding document, but it lays out fiscal goals and the like. And once they adopt that budget blueprint in both chambers, that's when they can draft the details of legislation that can not be filibustered in the Senate, meaning it can be approved along straight party lines. Democrats are not needed.

Republicans will have to push this through, which is why they're employing this process. It takes some time to get together because they need to get their whole party on board. And in a narrowly divided House, they are not on board behind this plan yet, and they are not in agreement with the Senate on how to move ahead.

Nevertheless, the Speaker believes that ultimately they can get across the finish line. After delaying the vote on Wednesday night, he's bringing this to the floor, he says, on Thursday. He said he spoke to Donald Trump about that decision for about 20 minutes or so on Wednesday evening as he was huddled behind closed doors with the group of holdouts, those conservative holdouts.

Now, this is actually supposed to be the easy part of the Trump agenda, agreeing on this budget blueprint. The more complicated part is actually drafting the details of this legislation. The legislation would include a sweeping overhaul of the United States tax code.

It would also include provisions dealing with new immigration enforcement, lots of money for immigration enforcement. Energy drilling projects would be part of it. But the big disagreement is about spending cuts to domestic programs here in the United States.

Now, $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, that is the level the House Republicans initially put in their first version of their budget proposal. But then after they sent it over to the Senate, the Senate changed that language and said that they would agree to a minimum of $4 billion, much different, of course, than $1.5 trillion in the House plan. The senator said, well, look, this is going to give us flexibility to cut spending and even deeper.

And sure, we can go as high as $1.5 trillion, but they did not want to be locked into that level. That simply is not good enough for those conservative members who came to the House and have demanded deeper spending cuts. But if they go as far as what these House hardliners want, that could lead to cuts to some social safety net programs like Medicaid, which a lot of Republicans are concerned about voting again -- voting for cuts to Medicaid because their constituents rely on it.

So, there lies a challenge right now for the speaker and his narrow House majority.

Manu Raju, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL: Yet another long night in Washington.

Well, still to come here on Early Start, the U.N. issuing new data on casualties in Ukraine as Russia steps up its attacks. We'll have a live report with the latest on that conflict.

Plus, the death toll is still climbing in the Dominican Republic as the country mourns the many people killed in the nightclub roof collapse tragedy. We'll take you to DR next for an update.

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SANDOVAL: Ukraine's president says that more than 150 Chinese citizens have been identified as fighting alongside Russian forces. And this comes just a day after Ukraine's military said that it captured two Chinese nationals while fighting in the Donetsk region. Though through all of this, China has repeatedly denied any involvement in this ongoing war.

Ukraine saw a sharp increase in civilian casualties in March, and that's according to a new report out from the United Nations. At least 164 people were killed. That figure is actually 50 percent higher than February.

For more now, let's head to London and CNN's international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson. Nick, there is so much happening here. You have that fighting that, as we mentioned, has essentially been stepped up.

Meanwhile, at NATO headquarters, there are these talks between the so- called coalition of the willing. So how does this really all tie together -- Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, I think it ties together in a complicated sort of way. But I think one way of analyzing it is this way, because as well today you have this meeting in Istanbul between U.S. and Russian officials talking about trying to sort of get their diplomatic relations, particularly when it comes to use of embassies, et cetera, back on some kind of normalized track. At least that's Russia's view of the situation.

That has nothing to do with Ukraine, but it has everything to do with Ukraine. And I think in the context of that, you have to listen to what President Trump said just a couple of days ago, which is pertinent to those figures you are quoting from the U.N. monitoring group that's monitoring those Russian strikes in Ukraine. As you say, 164 people killed in March, civilians 910 injured, 50 percent increase over February, where 129 killed, 588 injured.

And the sort of biggest incident in the last week was in Kryvyi Rih, 19 civilians killed there in a Russian strike in Ukraine. In fact, President Zelenskyy's hometown, nine of those were children. And President Trump commented on that.

He said it's, you know, it's horrible. Russia is continuing to bomb Ukraine. And then this flies in the face of what President Trump has wanted from Russia to join Ukraine in unconditional support for President Trump's own offer and plan of a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.

So all of this comes together in that way, that you have these defense ministers meeting in Brussels at NATO headquarters, the group coalition of the willing, which really was formed after President Trump had that disastrous meeting in the White House with President Zelenskyy, where there was an effort by the European leaders. This group is led by France and the U.K. to find a mechanism of support, security guarantees for Ukraine if it goes into this ceasefire situation.

[04:45:00]

And everyone was turning to the U.S. to say, you know, what guarantees, what support can you provide to this mechanism to give Ukraine these security guarantees? And I think one way of reading that situation today is that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth won't be there in that meeting, and he won't be -- isn't expected to be there at the meeting tomorrow at defense ministers at NATO headquarters, which is the Ukraine contact group meeting. And understanding, of course, that his predecessor, Lloyd Austin, chaired 25 of those different contact group meetings, which was all about providing financial military support for Ukraine.

So the big picture is this. Russia and the U.S. are continuing talks, which ostensibly to better normalize their relations, which are supposed to be predicated on the fact that Putin is committed to a ceasefire in Ukraine.

But as President Zelenskyy keeps pointing out, and the evidence on the ground appears to point out from this uptick in the killing of civilians there, Putin is not really committed to a ceasefire in the way that Ukraine has said and demonstrated it would be.

SANDOVAL: CNN's Nic Robertson with a very important reminder that civilians are among that U.N. statistic that was just shared. Thank you so much for that great insight, Nic. Appreciate you.

Well, as Israeli airstrikes continue to bombard Palestinians in Gaza, a member of Gaza's civil defense says, quote, the entire world is watching in silence. An Israeli strike on Wednesday killed at least 23 Palestinians, some of them children. Sixty people were wounded.

Dozens of people are still believed to be trapped or missing beneath all of this rubble now of what was once a four-story residential building in Gaza City.

Israel's military says that it struck what they describe as a senior Hamas terrorist who planned and carried out the attacks from northern Gaza. However, they did not identify their target.

The death toll in one of the deadliest tragedies in the Dominican Republic now stands at nearly 200, and authorities say that bodies of many of the victims in Tuesday's nightclub roof collapse, they've yet to be identified.

CNN contributor Stefano Pozzebon with the very latest out of Santo Domingo.

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STEFANO POZZEBON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR (voice-over): The names read out loud by forensic doctors, each of them a life cut short. More than 100 bodies have been recovered, but dozens yet to be identified in the rooftop collapse of a nightclub in Santo Domingo, a growing death toll cutting through the soul of this nation. The jet set was an iconic venue.

Monday night, many local celebrities had come here to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Several are now being mourned, including two former Major League Baseball players, a Latin music star and the governor of a local province.

Dominican President Luis Abinader declared three days of national mourning to commemorate the victims.

Outside the venue, relative search for the names of their loved ones in lists hanging on a field hospital.

I've lost two brothers. This is a national tragedy. We are just heartbroken, says this man.

The rescue operations continue in the dark. There are still people to be found, a race against time, even when hope is fading fast. A small group of faithful singing their pain and refusing to let go.

Stefano Pozzebon, CNN, Santo Domingo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL: More headlines after this break. Don't go anywhere.

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SANDOVAL: Welcome back. You're watching Early Start. Let's take you straight to the Vatican now, where Pope Francis welcomed a pair of very special visitors. You may recognize them. That's Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla. They stopped by to see the pontiff on Wednesday during their trip to Italy.

The royal family released this photo. The Vatican says the Pope Francis expressed his good wishes to their majesties on the occasion of their wedding anniversary and wished His Majesty a speedy recovery of his health. The 88-year-old pontiff spent five weeks in the hospital in February and March with double pneumonia.

Well, new research has revealed the secrets of the notorious prison where Al Capone and machine gun Kelly were once locked up. Researchers used special high-tech equipment to create essentially a 3D map of the Alcatraz Island prison complex in California. As CNN's Louise McLoughlin reports, researchers have even uncovered clues about a breakout at the prison that was once considered escape proof.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LOUISE MCLOUGHLIN, CNN PRODUCER: We're about to show you parts of Alcatraz that hasn't been seen in more than a century. Pete Kelsey was called in to 3D map the infamous island, now under threat from rising sea levels, using a $100,000 drone.

PETE KELSEY, PROJECT MANAGER, VCTO LABS: So we sent that thing into some of the worst places you can imagine, sewer lines, cisterns, up the smokestack at the power plant.

MCLOUGHLIN: Peter and his team also used robots, and most importantly, LiDAR, cutting-edge laser mapping technology that allowed the team to essentially go back in time and capture data that may save Alcatraz's future. KELSEY: I mean, think of it like an X-ray or a CAT scan of the entire island. And that's where a lot of discovery potentially can come from, is when you can give scientists, researchers, academics a view that no one has ever seen before. So what we're looking at is a modern building only about a hundred years old, which abuts -- which is right up against the original Civil War era gate to Alcatraz.

And because they were constructed right up next to each other, this original sign over the gate was blocked, literally blocked.

[04:55:02]

So by cutting a cross section through this data like we see here, we see a view that no one has seen in over a hundred years.

MCLOUGHLIN: The team's discoveries have also lifted the veil on the prison's famous 1962 escape.

KELSEY: And this is where one of the three guys dug his way out of his cell into this corridor. Then they climbed up all these pipes every night for weeks. They come up here and start building stuff that they needed for the escape until, on escape night, they got out through this air vent up onto the roof.

I've been doing this kind of work for decades and literally all over the world. This project, however, I think it just might be my Mona Lisa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL: And just as fascinating, I say.

So they do say that diamonds never go out of fashion. Well, now a new exhibit is proving just that, the luxury jeweler Cartier putting some of its best-loved pieces on display at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. It starts this Saturday. The exhibition, including more than 350 pieces, from tiaras to necklaces and watches as well, included -- or at least in this exhibition -- are some of the gems that were worn by the British royal family, Grace Kelly, the Princess of Monaco, and even movie star Elizabeth Taylor.

See, that's why I'm not wearing my watch. It's my generosity. It's on display there.

You're watching EARLY START. I'm Polo Sandoval. In New York, we're going to have more of today's top stories coming up. Stick around.

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