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Inside Politics

Trump Says New Tariffs Coming Tomorrow on Canadian Steel, Aluminum; Trump Threatens New Tariffs on Canada Again; Trump: We're Doubling Tariffs on Canadian Aluminum & Steel to 50 Percent; Musk Signals Support for Cuts to Entitlements Like Social Security; House Expected to Vote on Bill to Avert Government Shutdown. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 11, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Today on "Inside Politics", another dip on the Trump trade rollercoaster. We're following the twists and turns as the president spooks the markets and threatens Canada with more tariffs on steel, aluminum and cars. Plus, is it time to muzzle Musk the president's billionaire bestie seems to float the idea of cutting money from popular programs like Social Security and Medicare?

And the day that changed everything. Exactly five years ago, the COVID pandemic became real to all Americans as the world began to shut down. Life is back to normal for most of us, but the political aftershocks are here to stay. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics".

And we have breaking news another major sell-off on Wall Street. The DOW is down more than 400 points, meaning the benchmark index has shed more than 1300 points in just two days. Now, investors blamed the drop yesterday on President Trump saying he could or we could be headed for a recession.

Today's trigger was a long Truth Social post from the president vowing yet again to slap new tariffs on Canada. He says he's adding quote, an additional 25 percent tariff to 50 percent on all steel and aluminum coming into the United States from Canada.

If other egregious long-time tariffs are not likewise dropped by Canada, I will substantially increase on April 2nd the tariffs on cars coming into the U.S., which will essentially permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada. President Trump says he's responding to Ontario announcing a 25 percent surcharge on electricity exports to the U.S.

I want to go straight to CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich, who is joining us from New York. Can you break down in layman's terms where we are at this moment with regard to this war of words and the threats that are causing this stubble in the market?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS & POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is an escalation of the trade war from the president this morning. He is saying that he is going to double the tariff on all steel and aluminum coming in from Canada. So that will be 50 percent going into effect tomorrow, on steel and aluminum from Canada.

There's a 25 percent tariff, though, don't forget, going into effect tomorrow also, but that's on everyone else. And also in this Truth Social post, the president saying that he might escalate the tariff beyond 25 percent on April 2nd on auto manufacturing in Canada. And that is problematic because the Canadian auto industry is so intertwined Dana with U.S. auto manufacturing.

The big three, Stellantis, Ford and GM, you can see their stocks right there. They all produce a lot of vehicles with parts and then fully import a lot of vehicles from Canada. So that would have an impact on American's. Bottom line, the average cost to because of these tariffs would increase on a car $3,500 to $12,000 and that was just with a 25 percent tariff.

Trump signaling this morning that he's going to escalate that. But markets have been reacting for the past two days around this news. You can see coming up on your screen here that the DOW, the S&P and the NASDAQ all down this morning trying to digest this news hour by hour. We are also hearing from the Canadian Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, who told us just last hour that he wants to negotiate, but he's waiting on the president. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOUG FORD, ONTARIO PREMIER: The market speaking loud and clear, consumer confidence is down. The market stumbling. You know, there's going to be plants closed in the U.S. assembly plants will shut down because they won't have the aluminum, or they'll be paying twice, three times as much. This is -- this is absolute chaos created by one person, and that's Donald Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YURKEVICH: Now, of all the steel and aluminum that the U.S. imports from around the world, our number one trading partner is Canada. You can see it right there on your screen. So, for the average consumer at home, watching their yes is a lot of confusion right now. Folks are wondering, do they save their money? Do they spend their money?

What's happening with their 401-Ks, right now, still a lot of uncertainty for folks at home who are trying to digest all of this economic news coming out of the White House Dana.

BASH: Yeah. And uncertainty, as we all know, is one the top things may be the thing that the markets Wall Street and Main Street dislike the most. Thank you so much for that explanation, Vanessa.

[12:05:00]

And President Trump's tendency to govern by chaos, its effect on the economy is not a today thing. It's not a yesterday thing. So, we thought it would help to give a bit of a debrief. Catch you up. President Trump started his tariff tango with Mexico, Canada and China on January 31st.

He paused it three days later for one month. The next day China tariffs took effect, Canada and Mexico followed in March, but just a day after those tariffs took effect, the president announced a carve out for automakers. A day after that, a one-month delay for other products.

On March 7th, he threatened reciprocal tariffs on Canadian dairy and lumber. That brings us to the announcement that we have been telling you about this morning on steel and aluminum. OK, digest all that for a second, and now we're going to get an explanation and the ramifications politically from our talented group of reporters here.

Sabrina Rodriguez at "The Washington Post", CNN's David Chalian and CNN's Jeff Zeleny. You catch all that? Wow. David Chalian, I'm going to start with you, because it is confusing. It is uncertain. It is trademark Donald Trump to govern by chaos, as we've said time and time again, but it is also trademark, Donald Trump to care about the markets.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, I think that's why you saw some of that whiplash -

BASH: Yeah.

CHALIAN: -- some of that was in response to the markets, right? Not just to inject chaos for chaos is sake. I know he told reporters last week he doesn't watch the markets. I just -- you know -

BASH: And there's a bridge he can be -

CHALIAN: -- exactly. There's absolutely no truth to that. And you know he's going later to talk to the Business Roundtable. And you know he is clearly getting a lot of input, not just from Republicans on Capitol Hill, but from a lot of the high dollar donor business people, the business community.

These folks have inputs into Donald Trump, and I've talked to some Wall Street folks, both supporters of the president and not supporters of the president, all of whom work for -- you know these big banks and financial institutions who say that there's a -- there's a mood shift right now, and there's real concern in the marketplace. I mean, we see it obviously, in what the DOW is doing, but there's a real concern that there is not a long-term plan here.

BASH: Yeah, and because you mentioned that, I do want to put up on the screen the Business Roundtable is a group, a very large group, of the CEOs from around the world. What we're putting up on the screen are the CEOs who are on the board. Those are the companies that they represent.

We don't know if all of the CEOs from all those companies are going to be there, but presumably a lot of them will be there. That's a meeting about five hours from now.

SABRINA RODRIGUEZ, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: The reality is that Trump, it's unclear what exactly Trump can say to make them feel better, because we've seen Trump in interview after interview in recent days say -- you know brace for a little bit of turbulence. You know, he said a little turbulence in his address to Congress last week.

He said in an interview with Fox News that this is a period of transition. So, companies just want to know right now, what can they plan for? And the problem with his haphazard approach to tariffs at the moment is OK, you give an exemption for one month. Businesses can't make decisions off of one month from now. They want to know if OK, but is it going to come off in six months? Are you going to keep it in place? What is the long-term plan?

And the Trump Administration is not giving clear answers about that. Instead, they're playing a blame game where we hear officials saying, you know, this is a residual from the Biden Administration. But we're going to hear a lot of CEOs today ask the question, OK, what are the specifics you can give us? And I think there's a question of, what can he actually offer?

BASH: You set me up perfectly for this quote from Art Hogan, who's the Chief Market Strategist for a Wealth Management Company. Here's what he said to CNN earlier today. This market is just blatantly sick and tired of the back and forth on trade policy. It feels as though the administration continues to move the goalposts. With that much uncertainty, it's impossible for investors to have any confidence, Jeff?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look and that sums it up right there. And the reality here is we've also seen something different over the last couple days. The president has not spoken. Now in other presidents, it's not unusual to go a day without speaking -

BASH: Such a good point.

ZELENY: -- in front of the cameras, but in this president is we watched all day long. Yesterday, the advisers were saying, oh, he's likely to speak at various events. Did not speak at all. So, far today, the only time he's scheduled to speak is after the markets closed.

However, his words are sending shock waves, once again, to the market. So, it's that uncertainty that we've been talking about. But now there is a question of a narrative setting in talking to Republican largely supporters of the president on Wall Street this morning, a couple asked, is he trying to intentionally spark a recession to bring down interest rates?

Those are actual questions being asked, I would be that's very risky, and I doubt that's the case, but in the absence of sort of words from officials, we did not see his economic advisers on the morning shows or anything at all today.

[12:10:00] So, that's what's also so unusual about this communication strategy. But for a president who loves to talk about records, ones that are true and ones that are fabricated. This is a record that he did not want. The record yesterday of the worst day on Wall Street, and it could be repeated today. So that is what is so interesting about this policy.

And never mind if we sort of place in the context in which we are the spending bill is happening on the Hill. The government is being sort of shrunk. It's all of this. It's contributing to this sort of sense of unease that I was thinking back to the night before he was inaugurated.

He was at a rally at Capital One Arena, and he talked about, he said, we're going to call it the Trump effect. The stock market has surged since I've been elected. Let's call it the Trump effect. And now -

BASH: And it did.

ZELENY: -- it is the Trump effect.

BASH: It did. It did.

CHALIAN: It's been all wiped out.

BASH: It's - exactly.

(CROSSTALK)

CHALIAN: Yeah. I would just know one other thing about the absence of Trump yesterday, which I think makes it even more fascinating. He chose not to speak on a day where obviously everyone was waiting to hear from him, but also on a day where the one administration voice that was speaking was Elon Musk on Fox News.

And Donald Trump's aware of that too. So, he also knew that by choosing not to speak, he understood what voice would be out there. And I thought that that was an interesting decision on the part of the president.

ZELENY: So, the president -- say he'll help one company --

BASH: Yeah.

ZELENY: -- that's Tesla.

BASH: Yeah.

ZELENY: He said overnight, he will buy a Tesla.

BASH: You guys are just doing the teases for the next segment.

ZELENY: Oh.

(CROSSTALK) BASH: I love it. I love it. You want to do the next because when we come back, what Elon Musk says is the big one to eliminate in that interview that David was talking about, and why that is sparking panic politically among some lawmakers?

[12:15:00]

BASH: Midnight message for Elon Musk, President Trump came to the defense of his right man, right hand chainsaw man, at 12:14 a.m., this morning on Truth Social, here's what he said. Quote, I'm going to buy a brand-new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American.

Now we don't know if that purchase has been completed yet, but the president may have felt the need to post that after Musk's interview with Fox Business yesterday. He acknowledged a tough week for the companies he runs, and muddied the waters a bit on a key Trump pledges no cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KUDLOW, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK ANCHOR: How are you running your other businesses?

ELON MUSK, TESLA CEO: With great difficulty. Yeah, I mean -

KUDLOW: There's no turning back you're saying.

MUSK: I'm just here trying to make government more efficient, eliminate waste and fraud. The waste and fraud in entitlement spending -- you know, which is all of the -- which is most of the federal spending is entitlements, so that's like the big one to eliminate. That's the sort of half trillion, maybe six -- 700 billion a year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is back. And I just want to underscore, and if you listen to the whole thing as I did, it did sound like he was talking about what he calls waste and fraud in those entitlement programs, but that's not how he said it. And we all know how things are clipped and used, and you could be sure that they're going to be used by Democrats.

They already are being used by Democrats. Regardless the key is that the president has said over and over again, there will be no cuts at all to those programs.

ZELENY: Right, which creates an obvious political problem, but also a math problem. I mean, the reality here is, if the Trump tax cuts are going to be extended, made permanent, enacted, they are going to have to make some cuts to some programs.

And this is sort of saying the quiet part out loud, I guess, as we often say, but the politics of this are so fascinating, because at some point, if the budget situation is going to be reconciled, if social security will be there for people in the long term, there will have to be a discussion about doing something to observe it.

Donald Trump has not shown any sign of doing that for all his disruption, not that. Of course, Joe Biden didn't either. Democrats and Republicans usually share a common bond on not wanting to touch Social Security. However, I don't think that's what Elon Musk was trying to do there.

But he was pointing out this budget conundrum there, but that is going to be in every ad in the midterms, probably. And it's hard to imagine. There's no evidence there's that much waste, fraud and abuse in the program.

CHALIAN: That's the key.

BASH: Yeah.

(CROSSTALK)

CHALIAN: It's just like, yes, he said clearly, and I know the White House is pushing back and saying this in all their talking -- he's talking about waste, fraud and abuse. Yes, clearly, you just played the sound bite. That's what he was talking about. So, what he was talking about.

BASH: Yeah.

CHALIAN: But he said it makes up for maybe 600 to 700 trillion -- billion dollars in savings, if you -- if the government spends across Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, 2 trillion a year you're -- he's making the argument that more than half of what is spent is waste, fraud and abuse, and that if you were to get rid of it, nothing would touch benefits more than half.

[12:20:00]

That just -- that is not math that adds up on anyone's ledger, which is why the Democrats are seizing the opportunity.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, just to kind of continue on what you're saying. A 2024, audit of social security by the Inspector General found less than 1 percent, 72 billion in improper payments. Now, 72 billion is a lot of money. By the way that was over eight years. This wasn't a year.

But exactly feeding it to your point that he would have to find a lot more than that without messing with the actual programs and the benefits that recipients from those entitlement programs get. Listen to what Mark Alford, a Republican Congressman from Missouri said on CNN this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARK ALFORD (R-MO): Look, Elon Musk is a brainiac with an IQ that I cannot even fathom. He is not a master artful language person like politicians and news anchors. I think when he talks about elimination, I think we're talking about eliminating the waste, abuse and fraud. And it is true that the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security make up about 75 percent of our budget.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And by the way, as we were listening, David was pointing out that he is both a politician and a former news anchor. They're trying to explain it and understand it, but there's a reason why these programs are the third rail of politics.

RODRIGUEZ: I mean, I think, look, Dana, the reality is that one of the things that Trump is very skilled at is at diminishing faith in certain institutions and diminishing faith in certain government programs. And he's done it when talking about the Justice Department, the broader justice system, he's done it when talking about the media.

We see trends and patterns for the past few months, while he was on the campaign trail last year as well, and hearing Elon Musk do the same about talking about all this waste that is happening, and people are not counting dollars and cents of paying attention to exactly how much money it costs to fund social security.

The average American at home is tuning into maybe a fraction of what we all are on a day-to-day basis. So, Donald Trump, the message that they got from Donald Trump was that he's not going to touch these things. That's the reality. And then he starts chipping away by offering the false, debunked claims that millions of people who are dead are receiving Social Security benefits.

Elon Musk, in that Fox Business interview as well, talked about how undocumented immigrants benefit from all these programs, from entitlements, when the fact is that generally, that is not true. By and large, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, undocumented immigrants don't get to benefit from that.

But the average person is not fact checking that. So, the average person is hearing that and saying, wow, there's a lot going on here. That seems fishy, and maybe it makes sense why they're tackling that, and that is an area of concern here.

ZELENY: And you mentioned Inspector Generals. They found that $72 billion or whatnot?

CHALIAN: The Inspector Generals have been fired.

BASH: Yeah.

CHALIAN: So, if the waste fraud and abuse was truly a goal of this administration to root out that, I'm not sure, one of the first orders of business would have been to fire virtually all of the Inspector Generals that actually find waste, fraud and abuse. So that is something that I think we've kind of forgotten about -

BASH: Yeah.

CHALIAN: -- because it's been a month ago and a long time.

BASH: Can I just quickly point out the politics way beyond the entitlement situation, but mostly about DOGE and the way that Elon Musk is perceived. Democrats are already starting to use him in ads. Let's just play a little bit of this from a PAC, Democratic PAC.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Gabe Evans was sent to Washington to cut costs. Instead, Evans just cast the deciding vote to set up cuts threatening health care for nearly 80 million Americans, to cut another big check to billionaires.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Threatening 70 million Americans who rely on Medicaid, half of them children, even forcing rural hospitals to close all to fund massive tax cuts for Elon Musk and billionaires.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: David the ads right themselves.

CHALIAN: Well, especially when you hold up a chainsaw -

BASH: Yeah.

CHALIAN: -- you're talking about potentially. They do write themselves. We're going to see this. This will -- this is not going away.

BASH: No.

CHALIAN: This is going to be a theme all no matter what changes in our political environment, this is going to be a theme of the 2026, midterm elections. I have no doubt about it from the Democrats. We'll see how successful it is.

But here's why it's the third rail, because this is not something that is like getting rid of DEI programs that are -- is a politicized topic. When you get to benefits of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, that's also a lot of people that voted on Donald Trump are impacted by that that has a much wider impact and concern among Americans than just, oh, that's just what Democrats talk about.

BASH: All right. Everybody stand by, because coming up, here we are again shutdown showdown. Are Democrats ready to torpedo the GOP plan to keep the government open past Friday? The Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro, will be here next.

[12:25:00]

BASH: The House will vote in just a few hours on a Republican spending bill to keep the government running. The resolution would fund the federal government through September 30th, but also include GOP priorities like increasing defense spending and giving more money to ICE. House Speaker Mike Johnson says he is confident it will pass.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): We will have the votes. We're going to pass the CR. We can do it on our own.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: But that math may not math. Johnson can only afford to lose one Republican vote if every Democrat shows up and votes against the funding bill. Right now, four Republicans currently say they are no even more are wavering. Now Vice President J.D. Vance met with House Republican members this morning. He warned his party.