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Fareed Zakaria GPS

The Case for and Against Trump's Tariffs; Trump Wants to Restore American Manufacturing; How China Is Responding To Trump's Tariffs; The U.S.-China Trade War; Interview With The Wall Street Journal Chief China Correspondent Lingling Wei; Interview With Former Senior Adviser To The U.S. State Department Vali Nasr. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired April 13, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:59]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you live from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, America against the world. President Trump may have done an abrupt about face on Wednesday on his so-called reciprocal tariffs, but the U.S. still has the highest tariff rates in 100 years. To what end?

We'll have a great debate between former Treasury secretary Larry Summers and the MAGA intellectual Oren Cass.

Also, most goods coming from China are now tariffed at an astounding 145 percent. I'll ask the "Wall Street Journal's" Lingling Wei what Beijing's next move is likely to be.

Then Iran and America met yesterday about Tehran's nuclear program. Does Trump seriously want a version of Obama's 2015 nuclear deal? I'll ask Vali Nasr.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

It was the flip-flop hailed around the world. After insisting that he would not budge on his tariffs and branding anyone who urged him to do so as a panican, a new party based on weak and stupid people, Donald Trump reversed course and paused his massive reciprocal tariffs for 90 days, except on China, while he negotiates deals with foreign countries.

But sighs of relief may be premature. For one, America's tariffs are still at 100 plus year high by one measure, according to the Yale Budget Lab, which will cost Americans dearly. Even more importantly, these tariff negotiations will inevitably result in an orgy of corruption. The American economy is being transformed from the leading free market

in the world to the leading example of crony capitalism. A market economy functions best when there are limited constraints placed on it, but especially when these constraints are clear, fair, and applicable to all. The more complicated the taxes, rules and regulations, the greater the inefficiency in country after country, from India to Nigeria to Morocco.

But more significant, the greater the complexity, the greater the corruption. With tariffs come tariff waivers, often granted by the hundreds to specific industries, companies, even products. In 2018 and '19, the Trump administration announced an assortment of tariffs, including 25 percent on steel, and also a program of waivers. They got around 500,000 applications. This week, when asked how he would determine these exemptions, Trump replied --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Instinctively.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Studies show that politicians' instincts usually favor their contributors, which then encourages pervasive corruption. It was true with tariffs for much of American history, until FDR changed the system. And over time, in Paul Krugman's words, tariff policy went from being famously dirty to remarkably clean.

It's getting dirtier fast. We already have the evidence from Trump's first term. A detailed academic study of the tariffs in Trump's first term found that companies that made substantial investments in political connections to Republicans prior to and during the beginning of the Trump administration were more likely to secure exemptions for products otherwise subject to tariffs.

Conversely, companies that made contributions to Democratic politicians had decreased odds of tariff exemption approval. That study looked at more than 7,000 applications for exemptions from tariffs on China in the first term, and found that just a $4,000 donation to the Democratic Party reduced the company's chances of being granted an exemption to less than 1 in 10.

[10:05:05]

As Timothy Carney from the conservative think tank AEI notes, Trump's first election created a trade lobbying boom from 921 entities who hired lobbyists to work on trade to a peak of 1,419 by 2019.

With the highest tariffs in the industrialized world, the American bazaar is now open. Countries and companies will descend on Washington to cut deals and gain carve outs, exemptions and special terms. In the last four weeks, Vietnam has announced a flurry of measures designed to mollify the Trump administration and get a good trade deal. Among them, approval for Elon Musk's Starlink to operate in the country and a plan to expedite a Trump Organization project. In fact, there are at least 19 Trump branded real estate projects

around the world that will be under development while he is president, and possibly many others in the works. President Trump has launched his own social media company and his own meme coin. Other countries surely see this all as an invitation to invest and to influence American foreign and economic policy.

It has been deeply dispiriting to watch some of America's legendary capitalists, canonical figures from Wall Street, endorse a deal-making process by which the American free market is going to be pockmarked with tariffs, taxes, rules, exemptions and carveouts.

It's worth recalling that Milton Friedman repeatedly noted about businessmen. "You can get any leading businessman to give you an eloquent speech on the virtues of a free market. But when it comes to their own business, they want to go down to Washington and get a special tariff to protect their business. They want a special tax deduction. They want a tax subsidy."

The India I grew up in was a country riddled with tariffs, high barriers designed to protect the country's domestic industry and shielded from what was regarded as unfair foreign competition. It produced stagnation, poverty and lots of corruption. Thoroughly politicizing the economy. No business of any size in India could survive without a good relationship with the government.

When I got to America, I was delighted to see that most businessmen went about their work with little care as to who was in the White House. But now I watch tech pioneers give interviews slavishly extolling Donald Trump's genius and Wall Street titans race to post- North Korea style congratulations to the president for his brilliance in rescuing the economy from his own actions.

And I wonder what country am I living in?

Go to CNN.com/Fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week, and let's get started.

The Trump tariffs have roiled the global economy, and America's too. Markets are all over the place and some experts believe a recession is quite possible. Most mainstream economists argue the tariffs and these tariffs in particular are a terrible idea. But the president's aides and MAGA faithful beg to differ.

What are the arguments on both sides?

Well, you're about to hear them. Larry Summers served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, and Oren Cass is known as a MAGA intellectual. He's the founder of the conservative think tank American Compass.

Welcome both.

Oren, let me start with you. You've long argued for a 10 percent across the board tariff, and you've long argued for tariffs that would help America decouple from China's economy. So I think it's fair to say that where we have ended up at the end of last week has ended up pretty much where you want it to be. And I just want to begin by throwing up a few charts to show you what the market reaction to those policies has been.

So if you look at expected change in prices over the next year, inflation expectations, they're higher than they've been in I think about 40 years. If you look at U.S. asset performance, the 30-year Treasury is down. The dollar is down. The S&P 500 is down. If you look at the index of consumer sentiment, it's again the lowest in 40 years.

So consumer sentiment has tanked. Inflation expectations have soared. And people are fleeing almost every dollar asset. Isn't that a pretty decisive verdict against your policies?

OREN CASS, FOUNDER AND CHIEF ECONOMIST, AMERICAN COMPASS: Well, thank you for having me, Fareed. I think it's really important to have a clear discussion about the different ideas here. You know, the two policies that I'm very supportive of, one is the 10 percent across the board tariff, as you mentioned.

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The other is much higher tariffs on China that I've proposed and been arguing throughout this period need to be phased in gradually. So, you know, I think I would say I agree with and have been making a lot of the same criticisms about the uncertainty that's been created, by the way that some of these tariffs have been put into place. And certainly going as high as we've gone, as quickly as we've gone on China, I think is not the way to transition there.

I will say, though, that I have a hard time swallowing this analysis that sort of focuses on stock prices as the appropriate measure of good economic policy, especially to the extent that that criticism is now coming from the left of center. You know, no one I think who understands these things --

ZAKARIA: But, Oren, I showed you five charts with five different indices, not just stocks. I showed you bonds. I showed you stocks, I showed you the dollar. I showed you inflation expectations and I showed you consumer sentiment.

CASS: Well, I think the consumer sentiment measure reflects the uncertainty that we've seen. And I completely agree that we need to do this in a way that has less uncertainty and a lot more stability. But the idea that we're going to measure the quality of our economic policy by the rate of increase in the value of financial assets, I think, is deeply mistaken. That, of course, is exactly what all the major corporations have been lobbying for for the last 25 years.

To the point of your monologue that has led to an economic model that did produce extraordinary stock returns and not such good results either for the American industrial base or for workers and their families. And so I think it's important to recognize here that the need for corrective is very real. We need to do a better job getting it right on the specifics. But I'm really concerned by the people who look at this situation and say, no, no, what we really should do is just what we've been doing since the year 2000, which is embraced this kind of hyper globalization that has not worked well for America at all.

ZAKARIA: All right, Larry, let me give you a chance to respond.

LARRY SUMMERS, FORMER U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: Sure. Nobody is saying that the stock prices are the right criterion for judging economic policy, Oren. And I completely agree that what happens to the middle class is what's crucial. However, when you cause financial markets to gyrate in a way that is where there are only three compares, the 1987 crash, the pandemic, and the 2008 financial crisis, and you do that not because of some external event, but because of the rhetoric of the president of the United States and the threats of the president of the United States, you're making a pretty big mistake.

When you cause the consensus judgment of economists to be that the main hope for avoiding recession is a policy reversal, you're making a pretty egregious error. When even the leading intellectual in favor of the president's approach, Oren, thinks it's been done in a blunderbuss way, with big -- with much too rapid increases in tariffs, much too much uncertainty created, you're doing things in an inept way.

And you pointed out something very important, Fareed, in your comment that it's not making it better when you start giving an exemption here and an exemption there. It's introducing all kinds of corruption into the system. It's introducing what economists call rent seeking, where it's hugely advantageous for people to be friends of the first family, hugely advantageous for people to hire lobbyists.

So the big boom that's being created here is in crony capitalism. I'm all for the middle class, judging policies by what happens to the middle class is exactly right. But when you tank their sentiment worse than it's been tanked in 20 years, you're not looking out for the middle class. When you make inflation highest expectation, higher expectations even than it was during the Biden stimulus, you're not looking out for the middle class.

So this is the worst self-inflicted wound through economic policy since the Second World War. It's wrong on competitiveness, wrong on unemployment, wrong on inflation, wrong on uncertainty. The best thing we can hope for is that people start to see sense and reverse these errors.

[10:15:03]

ZAKARIA: All right. We're going to have to leave it there for a moment. When we come back, we'll continue this debate right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: And we are back with former Treasury secretary Larry Summers and the MAGA intellectual Oren Cass.

Oren, let me ask you a question, but I want to show you one more graph, which is manufacturing share of U.S. employment since basically 1940. And as you well know, it's basically a straight slope down from about 1950.

[10:20:01]

And in fact, the slope is pretty standard. You can't find NAFTA on it, you can't find China WTO. It just keeps going down from about 30 percent of U.S. employment to about 8 percent now. So when you say you're going to look out for the working class, 80 percent of the working -- of the middle class, 80 percent of Americans work in services, 8 percent work in manufacturing, aren't your policies taxing most of the middle class to subsidize this very small and shrinking part of the middle class, which is the factory worker? Why is that a good deal for the middle class?

CASS: Well, Fareed, you and I both know that that's not the relevant chart to look at. There's nobody who cares about manufacturing employment as a share of total employment. Of course, that's going to decline over time. I'm surprised -- actually I'm not at all surprised you didn't put up the chart that matters, which is actual manufacturing employment. And if you put that chart up, what you'd see is that we stayed in a very steady band between about 17 million jobs and 19 million jobs from the 1950s all the way up through the year 2000.

We stayed in that band through all of the technological progress, all of the automation. What we were getting were more and better jobs in manufacturing --

ZAKARIA: But, Oren, that's a decline since the population. The population growth showed that --

(CROSSTALK)

CASS: Fareed, you showed your chart. Fareed, you showed your chart. Let me answer the question. What we see after the year 2000 is a collapse in the number of manufacturing jobs. A sharp, frankly unprecedented collapse that devastated communities across the country. And it's not just about the jobs in the factories. If we had highly productive jobs in factories, didn't have as many people working in the factories, but they were anchoring local economies, they were anchoring supply chains, they were providing better jobs in those towns in services, I think that would be a terrific outcome.

That's exactly the outcome we should be looking for. In fact, when the Cato Institute, the very libertarian organization, made a short film about free trade showing how it could work, they showed a community devastated by NAFTA. And then, you know how it came back, because a new manufacturing plant came into town, not because everybody was working in the plant, but as they showed, because even the pizza place in town did better when the factory was back.

And so that's what we care about. That's what economists who are actually debating this issue are grappling with. Does making things matter? Do we care that we have a strong industrial sector? And if the answer is yes, then you have to be very worried about this. And the problem is that too many economists, I believe Larry is among them, says the answer is no. Making things just doesn't matter anymore. And I think that's wrong.

ZAKARIA: OK, Larry, let me ask you to respond to that, but also respond to the argument that people make, you've heard it many times, that at least this got all kinds of countries to the negotiating table, that Trump, by using this perhaps blunderbuss, perhaps, you know, two extreme version got countries to negotiate.

SUMMERS: So, Fareed, look, on manufacturing, the first most important thing to say is that the 8 percent number is misleading. It's really about 4 percent who are working in production in manufacturing. The rest of the people are in marketing or accounting or all that. So it's really a very small and dwindling share. I see Oren's point. We could debate the exact merits about just how much manufacturing and how important it is to get more manufacturing.

Here's the thing. The Trump program is completely ill conceived for the objective. Take for example the focus on steel tariffs. There are 50 times more people who work in industries that use steel, that are made less competitive than there are who work in the steel industry. When we stop imports, we make all the inputs to our export industries more expensive and make our export industries less competitive.

There are important things to do for manufacturing. For example, semiconductors are probably the most sensitive industry in the world, and this administration has destroyed the chips program, which was investing in building capacity in manufacturing.

So let's assume that we want to support manufacturing. There is no reason to believe that this program will be other than counterproductive, especially since it especially burdens our manufacturing teammates, Canada and Mexico, from its design.

With respect to getting people attention, look, Fareed, if you punch your erstwhile friend in the face, you will get their attention.

[10:25:03]

They might even suck up to you a little bit for a little while so you don't do it again. But you will have lost a friend for a very long time. You will have driven them into the arms of your adversaries, and I don't think you'll end up getting better deals from them.

There is a winner in what's being pursued. I'm sorry to say it, but the person who has a really artful deal here is Xi Jinping and China, who is seeing scope for influence, scope for new markets, scope to displace the United States of a kind they could not have imagined as a result of the policies that we are pursuing. So, yes, we can have an argument --

ZAKARIA: I got to let you go. I got to let you go.

SUMMERS: It's a discussion Oren and I can have about the importance of manufacturing, but that's not the issue with the Trump program.

ZAKARIA: Larry Summers, Orrin Hatch, thank you for a serious debate. I'm sorry. Oren Cass, my apologies. Next on GPS, how is President Xi Jinping approaching this spiraling

U.S.-China trade war? I'll ask my next guest when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:30:57]

ZAKARIA: This week as President Donald Trump paused his tariffs on the world, he raised them on one country, China. The levies on Chinese goods stand at a staggering 145 percent, though they now exclude electronics like smartphones and laptops, about 23 percent of the imports from China. Beijing responded by upping its own tariffs on the U.S. to 125 percent. So, how is Chinese President Xi Jinping playing his cards in all of this?

I want to bring in Lingling Wei. She is the "Wall Street Journal's" chief China correspondent. Pleasure to have you. You're always so smart on these issues. How do you think the Chinese reacted to last week's events?

LINGLING WEI, CHIEF CHINA CORRESPONDENT, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Sure. Last week's events just confirmed to the Chinese leadership that their strategy of standing firm to the United States is paying off.

Fareed, you just mentioned about the exemptions that took place overnight. The exemptions of a lot of electronics from very high tariffs on China. And we just saw the Chinese commerce ministry, basically, issuing a statement saying the United States just made, quote, "a small step toward correcting its wrong practice."

So, to the Chinese, you know, the administration is retreating from its, you know, very unsustainable tariff increases on China. So overall, the leadership under Xi Jinping, they are digging in. The strategy mainly involves, you know, hitting back at the United States when the United States strikes. And also trying, you know, to prepare the entire nation for a very long fight with the U.S.

And at the same time, the Chinese leadership has been very proactively reaching out to traditional U.S. allies, you know, to try to counter the U.S. efforts to isolate China. So overall --

ZAKARIA: You mean like Europe, Japan, Vietnam. Those kinds of places?

WEI: Absolutely. Countries in Europe, countries in the rest of Asia, and also, as you just pointed out the rest of the Southeast Asian countries. Xi Jinping is planning on a trip to there involving Vietnam, Cambodia and some other countries.

ZAKARIA: And he has planned a trip to Europe as well.

WEI: Exactly. He's planning on having conversations with senior European leaders. So, definitely China is falling in the dividing mode in terms of a divide and conquer strategy.

But I would also want to add is that China really doesn't see this as simply just a tariffs war or a trade war. They're seeing this as a very long-term strategic competition with the United States. The -- as you pointed out earlier, the Trump administration, based on last week's actions, really made it very clear China is the primary focus for the administration's trade actions. And there may be other actions that are being considered.

So, the Chinese think, you know, basically it's not just about tariffs. It's not just about bilateral trade. It's also about broader competition.

ZAKARIA: All right. Stay with us. Because when we come back, I want to ask Lingling Wei, what does this do to the dangers around Taiwan? Is it more likely that China will go to war or less likely, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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ZAKARIA: And we are back with Lingling Wei, who is the "Wall Street Journal's" chief China correspondent. So, until now, this has all been happening at the economic realm. Is there a possibility this goes beyond that into geopolitics and particularly, you know, around Taiwan, which is the one thing everybody worries about is the kind of geopolitical event that could change the world?

WEI: That's definitely a risk, Fareed. And risks are rising because of the tensions we're seeing in the trade arena. As you mentioned, so far, China mainly retaliated with a bunch of economic measures, such as blacklisting U.S. companies and restricting exports of some critical minerals U.S. companies need to make products.

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But if tensions continue to rise, other options are on the table for the Chinese as well, which will include, you know, weaponizing information China has gained from cyber-attacks in the United States, more gray zone pressures on allies that are, you know, the U.S. has shown less incentives to defend, and Taiwan is one of them. So, there are definitely risks there.

ZAKARIA: Do you think -- I mean, here you have these two leaders who seem to be stuck in a position where neither one wants to give in. Is it -- can Xi Jinping reverse course?

WEI: The political cost for him to reverse course would be immense. Much, much higher than, you know, standing firm to the United States. So, the two sides are stuck right now because of lack of a mechanism for any kind of a higher-level conversation.

As you know, Fareed, Chinese leaders really initiate a call to foreign leaders, let alone a leader of its biggest strategic foe. So, it's very unlikely for Xi Jinping to initiate a call or even to be on a call with President Trump without preparation in advance.

So, what we need to see right now is some kind of mechanism, some kind of communication being established between the two governments and then --

ZAKARIA: At a lower level.

WEI: At a lower level, but still also high enough, you know, to be -- to be significant. I also wanted to flag a statement Xi Jinping made last week when he was talking to the visiting Spanish prime minister.

So, during the call, Xi Jinping said, China's development over the past seven decades has been a result of self-reliance and hard work. What he didn't mention was it's also a result of China's reform and opening, because, you know --

ZAKARIA: Which used to be the mantra, reform and opening, but now it's self-reliance and hard work.

WEI: Exactly.

ZAKARIA: So, he's preparing China for a decoupled economy.

WEI: Absolutely. He's girding the nation for decoupling from the United States. It's unthinkable just a few years ago, even last year. But now it's becoming more and more a possibility and even reality from the Chinese perspective.

ZAKARIA: Wow. Lingling Wei, always a pleasure to have you on.

Next on GPS, American and Iranian officials held largely indirect talks in Oman yesterday. Could the White House negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran? I'll be back in a moment with Vali Nasr.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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ZAKARIA: At the foreign minister's residence in Oman yesterday, a source tells CNN that the American delegation, led by Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff, sat in one reception room while the Iranian delegation, led by Foreign Minister Araghchi, sat in another, and Omanis passed messages back and forth.

Then, after the talks concluded, the two delegations did meet face to face in the middle for a few minutes. The White House says the two sides plan to meet again next Saturday.

Joining me now is Vali Nasr, professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has written a book to be published next month called "Iran's Grand Strategy." Vali, what do you hear about the talks?

VALI NASR, PROFESSOR, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: I think the talks went as well as one might have expected. Both sides are giving positive vibes and the definition of a success in the first talk would be that it would be followed by a second talk, and that's in the works. So, I think there is momentum here to go forward.

ZAKARIA: What do you think, you know, this deal could look like? Because the Iranians seem to be eager to get it done. But so far, the Trump approach has always been maximum pressure, maximum pressure, withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. But for the Iranians to make concessions, surely, they will need some concessions from the Americans. In other words, some relaxation of sanctions. Do you think that's likely?

NASR: Well, I think the Iranians went to Oman wanting to establish three things. One is that, does the Trump administration want total dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program, or is it only interested in Iran not having a bomb? I think they came away with the United States saying that they're only interested in rolling back Iran's program to a monitored civilian stage.

Secondly, the Iranians wanted to know if the United States would be serious about lifting sanctions. First, the maximum pressure sanctions that the U.S. imposed unilaterally and potentially even the kinds of sanctions you had -- the United States had agreed to under the previous nuclear deal. And thirdly --

ZAKARIA: And what did they learn on that?

NASR: I think, they must have heard positive, because otherwise they wouldn't say it was constructive. And the third is that the Iranians want to assure that the United States would not support snapback sanctions at the United Nations in October.

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And that actually has to be decided before June. So, the Iranians went to Oman establishing these three things. I think they went back hearing that the U.S. does not want dismantlement of the nuclear program, is willing to negotiate about lifting of sanctions and will not pursue further action against Iran at the United Nations. So, that is the basis.

And I think for the Americans, they probably came away with an understanding that Iran will seriously roll back its program to levels that would move them far away from being close -- far away from a breakout position.

ZAKARIA: So, you know, the hawks within the Trump administration have been arguing it's not enough to do this on the nuclear stuff. Trump has always said, I just want Iran not to have a bomb. They should thrive otherwise. Which is interesting and frankly, you know, unexpected and creative even.

But there are hawks there who say, no, we've got to deal with missiles. We've got to deal with their funding of Hezbollah, you know, Hamas, all that. Is that a -- is it possible to imagine Iran making deals on those other two issues?

NASR: No -- I mean, first of all, the issue of Iran's proxies in the region is not as urgent as it was in 2013, 2015. Israel is claiming that it has dispensed with Hezbollah. It has dispensed with Hamas. The U.S. is bombing the Houthis in Yemen and is claiming success. And Iran's proxy in Syria has collapsed. So, this is not as big an item as it was before. Iran's missiles is but that is Iran's, basically, last line of defense. And that might require much bigger arms control negotiations across the region.

I think for President Trump, like President Obama, he understands that the biggest issue with Iran that could be a cause of war in the Middle East is the nuclear issue, not missiles, not proxies. Those are icing on the cake. You have to deal with this.

And if you told Iran that you cannot have any enrichment at all, Iran will not accept it. And then you're going to go down the path of war, which President Trump does not want.

And I think on the other side, coming out of Oman now, it looks like the three major foreign policy issues that President Trump took on, which is Gaza, Ukraine, Russia, and Iran nuclear deal, of these, Iran looks most promising right now.

Gaza ceasefire has fallen apart. Ukraine peace talks are not going anywhere. In fact, Mr. Witkoff went to Moscow -- from Moscow and he hadn't left Moscow when the Russians attacked a Ukrainian city with missiles. So, there is also incentive here that we can get a deal with -- if we can get a deal with Iran, at least the president will have a foreign policy success to show for.

ZAKARIA: Now, what you're describing does sound a lot like the Obama nuclear deal, does it not?

NASR: It does. I mean, President Trump can claim that he got better terms. But the bottom line is there is no other way of doing this. I mean, Iran would not unilaterally give up everything that it has, particularly because the U.S. double crossed it last time.

But the best we can get is that Iran goes back to terms that look like the first nuclear deal. It might be a little bit more stringent here or there. And the United States would also go back to what it promised under the previous nuclear deal. And then that would create a basis, if you would, of maybe some stability that then you can build on by talking about other things like missiles.

ZAKARIA: It does sound like a kind of -- there's an eight wasted years in the process. But let me ask you another piece on this Iran proxies. You mentioned the Houthis. So, the Americans bombed the Houthis.

But as far as I can see, I've been tracking it. There are still -- you know, the same number of ships being diverted. It didn't seem to change anything. The Houthis still are holding hostage -- all commercial or 70 percent of commercial traffic going through the Red Sea.

Did it accomplish anything? And, you know, could it? I mean, the Saudis tried this for seven years.

NASR: Well, I think the benefit of attacking the Houthis, the administration would say, was to send Tehran a very powerful signal that it's willing to do something militarily if there is no diplomatic solution. So that extent the Iranians got the message.

But these air campaigns satisfy the domestic constituency of the United States that we're doing something, we're inflicting pain. But air campaigns, by themselves, don't eradicate the problem. It's true of Israel with Hamas, and Hezbollah is true of the United States.

And ultimately, the danger here is that the United States is very close to actually owning the Yemen war. The Saudis gave it up. The Israelis never made it their own. But the United States is actually gradually going down the path that it does the air campaign. If it doesn't work, at some point in time, it will feel the pressure that it has to do something more.

[10:55:02]

And that's a slippery slope that could get them into a conflict that they may not want.

ZAKARIA: And Yemen is not a place you want to get --

NASR: Exactly.

ZAKARIA: On and off that's been at war for 50 -- 60 years. These guys can -- these guys can last for a long time.

NASR: Exactly, exactly.

ZAKARIA: Well, Vali Nasr, always a pleasure to have you on.

NASR: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Thank you so much. And thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

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