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Treasury Secretary Downplays New Trump Tariff Threat; Trump Threatens New Tariffs on Alcohol from EU after EU Threatened Tariffs on American Whiskey after U.S. Slapped Tariffs on European Metals. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 13, 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]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on "Inside Politics" careening further into economic chaos. The president just responded to Europe's new reciprocal tariffs with new reciprocal tariffs of his own. The cycle keeps repeating. The circle widening. It's all impacting your wallet but many Republicans so far are saying no pain, no gain.

Plus, breaking news the White House pulls the plug on its nominee to lead the CDC, Dr. Dave Weldon, has been facing growing scrutiny over his anti-vaccine views, but if that was a deal breaker for him, what about other Trump appointees in charge of health care.

And we have brand new reporting about Pete Buttigieg, he is deciding not to run for the U.S. Senate in 2026 that leaves the door wide open for a presidential run in 2028 will he choose that door? I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics".

First up, there's a saying in a trade war, there are no winners, only losers. Today that seems to be hitting the mark. President Trump is warning the European Union he'll impose a 200 percent tariff on its alcohol, including champagne and wine, if EU countries move forward with their own retaliatory tariffs against the U.S.

Now this announcement came in a social media post that included the following quote, this will be great for the wine and champagne business in the U.S., but as bubbly aficionados will tell you, champagne only comes from Champagne France. What's made here in the U.S. is sparkling wine. Never mind that the Treasury Secretary tried to downplay this broader threat on CNBC.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY: One out of two items with one trading block. I'm not sure why that's a big deal for the markets.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If we ratchet up tariffs, they retaliate. We go higher than what?

BESSENT: Well, look, it could go the other way too. Look, that's the nature of these reciprocal tariffs that all President Trump is asking is for countries to take theirs off. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: But that's the problem with trade wars. They invite retaliation and rapidly escalate. Today's threat started on booze earlier this week with U.S. tariffs on European metals, which led to the EU slapping tariffs on American whiskey, which led to the president threatening this morning on European Wine and Spirits, which paved the way for France's promise today to quote, fight back.

As of now, it is unclear how they're going to do that. Here with me at the table to talk about all of this and much more CNN's Phil Mattingly, CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, CNN's Kayla Tausche and Carl Hulse of "The New York Times". While you're the only non-CNN person here, but you're like part of the family Carl.

CARL HULSE, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Oh, thank you.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: If he keeps working.

BASH: Yeah, I know. You have the future in this business.

HUSLE: -- thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Phil Mattingly let's talk tariffs. What's your -- what you're just generally speaking, no, what is your take on where we are now understanding these sorts of economic principles and the political fallout from them.

MATTINGLY: Are we having fun yet? I think the -- and Kayla knows this stuff better than anybody. The thing I've been struck by over the course of the last couple of months is markets not necessarily believing that Trump means what he says when it comes to his belief in tariffs, his devotion --

BASH: Because he keeps changing his mind?

MATTINGLY: And while some of that is sporadic, and I think the Canadian -- the six-hour Canadian back and forth that we saw two days ago is a good example of they're not all fully formed and planned out. I think you need to understand the utilization of what he's done, and his response to retaliation to what he's done is actually part of a broader plan as they head into the April 2nd release of the retaliatory, sorry, the reciprocal tariff proposal. And what it underscores --

BASH: It is also --

MATTINGLY: -- it is also retaliatory. What it underscores is there's a very genuine belief in Trump's economic team, which in the first term, was split between more Wall Street guys and trade devotees now is much more aligned, for the most part, that not only are they going to move forward with sweeping plans that would restructure global trade in a way we haven't seen in about a century. But they believe, because U.S. consumers are such, are the biggest gorilla in the room on some level, that the other countries can't afford to go back and forth for a long period of time. Now, the U.S. consumer in the meantime, the brief pain or disruptions, or whatever words administration officials have used over the course of the last couple of weeks, will feel that. It's a question of how long, and I think the pain threshold of the administration if it goes longer than they want.

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: I mean, I think that we've seen some instances where Trump officials would say hey, they started it.

[12:05:00]

I mean, when it comes to Europe, I was hearing for months that the Trump team was very angry that Europe and many countries in the European Union had put tariffs or taxes, rather, on big media and technology companies operating over in Europe, where there was supposed to be a detente, and Canada did the same thing.

So, they say, hey, you're breaking the rules, and so we're going to come after you. And the hope is that this is a means to an end where they can get some broader deal. The problem is that it's not exactly a linear path from here to there, and even Trump's own aides don't exactly know what he's going to do next.

When there was the back and forth over Canada earlier this week, I talked to a few of them, and they said the president's just in a mood today. He doesn't want to hear dissent. He doesn't want to take no for an answer, and so here we are.

I think that there is more to come, as Phil was just alluding to. I mean, there are several deadlines coming up and there are some -- but there's some people in the Trump orbit who want a complete reshaping of the world order and the international trading system. But not everyone feels that way.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Not everyone feels that way --

TAUSCHE: And the question is, who Trump is going to listen to?

BASH: Himself, because he's the leader of the pack on this, because he has believed this fundamentally for so long that tariffs are the answer. Let's listen to what real people who are being affected by this think one person, for example, this is an Iowa soy farmer, Doug Fuller, listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOUG FILLER, SOYBEAN FARMER: They aren't good for the other countries. They aren't good for me. And who could blame, who could blame them putting reciprocal tariffs on us? You know, it's just -- it's just a match -- you know and nobody's going to win. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And then let's Carl, I want to bring you in on this. I do want to listen to what both people in the Trump Administration, who are supporting this and on Capitol Hill who are supporting this, are warning the American people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Will these policies be worth it if they lead to a recession, even a short-term recession?

HOWARD LUTNICK, COMMERCE SECRETARY: These policies are the most important thing America has ever had.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, it is worth it?

LUTNICK: It is worth it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just like getting on a diet is going to be some pain in the process, and not everyone is going to love how it feels, but we've got to get back to good fundamentals in our economy.

SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-AL): No pain, no gain. That's what we used to tell our football players, there's going to be some pain with tariffs, but tariffs got us back as the strongest economy in the world when President Trump was in the first time. He knows what he's doing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now, not all Republicans on Capitol Hill feel that way, but enough do.

HULSE: There's going to be some pain in the process. I remember that as the Trump slogan when he was running this year. Phil talked about threshold of pain. What is the threshold of pain that lawmakers, excuse me, can take up there, and especially from the AG community.

I grew up in corn and soybean country, I could relate to that guy. The House this week took this little back door step to make sure that you couldn't have a big vote on tariffs on the floor and have this fight kind of out in the open, because they know people are going to start to react to this.

It's just so chaotic. It's chaotic, and it would almost be better if they made up their minds, right? And did something like, OK, here's where we're going. But when you're changing it all the time, no one knows how to react. And you know, Mitch McConnell is not going to like those whiskey tariffs, right? So, I think there's a lot to play out here.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Can I just say -- I was recently in a Miami suburb, Doral, and we were talking to voters there, mostly about immigration policy, but then we started talking about President Donald Trump in general, and all of them, despite some of the hurt they were feeling when it came to immigration, they wanted to give him a grace period.

There was a period of time in which they said he may course correct, he may do something now and then backtrack on it later. But they felt like we still have our faith in him and the decisions that he is making. And I think our polling is also showing that that there may be some waning optimism, but not entirely.

And I think the question is going to be, how long can this continue? And all of the comments that we just heard, how long will that go on before constituents really start piping up and saying, wait a minute. This is really not what I wanted to feel.

BASH: Let's just look at a snapshot for various sectors. First of all, Wall Street, this is a question of recession risk. This is specifically the risk of a recession this year. JP Morgan puts it at 40 percent Pimco 35 percent Goldman Sachs 20 percent and then when it comes to the American people, how are people are feeling about the economy, which they did not feel good about the economy, which is why Donald Trump is president again?

Only 28 percent say they feel good right now. So almost three quarters of Americans say they feel poor about the economy according to our new poll. And then just economic conditions a year from now, which is kind of what you were getting at Priscilla, it's kind of split, but the majority of people say that it's not going to be good.

MATTINGLY: I think it's fascinating to look at polling right now, because I think Jamie Dimon was had an event yesterday. He said, I don't think American people are like reading about tariffs and then making decisions about it yesterday, or decisions about how they're going to spend going forward.

[12:10:00]

And so, I think my question has long been in this moment of disruption, business owners clearly feeling it, planning on the corporate side, and corporate executives clearly rattled. Right now, you could see that when CEOs were in town. But how are people feeling about it? Is it a perception issue, or are they actually seeing it in terms of the prices themselves? I think that's an open question.

BASH: Yeah.

MATTINGLY: In terms of and why that matters is those people are the people who call the lawmakers. The lawmakers are the ones who can drive change or threaten things that the Trump Administration have to respond to, which is why, what Carl picked up on earlier in the week, talked into the House rule preventing a vote on pulling back the emergency declaration that justified the Canada, Mexico fentanyl tariffs.

Show, don't tell we talk about that all the time in our business, right? Show, don't tell. Republicans can say whatever they want with furrowed brows and their concerns and not wanting their constituents to get hit, but as long as they're tucking in rules saying we're abdicating our power that we've abdicated consistently over the course of the last 80 years on trade then Trump's looking around going, I can do what I want to do, and he wants to do this.

BASH: Yeah. And really quick, you talked to some important business leaders this week.

TAUSCHE: I did at that event --

BASH: -- who are very connected to people's investments.

TAUSCHE: Yeah. At the event that Jamie Dimon was speaking at, it was a Blackrock Summit on retirement savings and the crisis there, and I had a chance to sit down with Larry Fink, who's the largest money manager in the world. And he said the economy is weaking -- weakening as we speak, that there's pulling back, not only among businesses, but also among consumers.

One of the statistics he gave was that airlines are seeing people not spending for trips coming up, and he said the federal workforce makes up 4 percent of airline travelers. If they're not booking their summer vacations because they don't know if they're going to have a job, then that's going to have broader repercussions too.

And then there's the fact of these tariffs and how they're going to play out. I mean, there's one small business owner in Florida, Emily Lay (ph) she runs a company called Simplified, which makes calendars and organizers, and she posted on Instagram last night, I've paid a million dollars in tariffs since 2017 --

BASH: Wow.

TAUSCHE: -- we can't make my product here. It's too expensive. We've raised prices as much as we can, but ultimately that's affecting her and her nine employees in Florida, small woman owned business. And so, the distance between a business and a consumer in a small business like that is so short, and it's going to get even shorter as this goes on.

BASH: -- simplified to make my family's calendars really --

(CROSSTALK)

MATTINGLY: Yeah.

HULSE: Yeah.

BASH: -- really interesting conversations. Don't go anywhere, because coming up a first for Trump's second term. We have new reporting on why the White House just withdrew its nominee to lead the CDC just minutes before his confirmation hearing. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

BASH: President Trump's pick to run the nation's preeminent health agency is out. The White House polled Dr. David Weldon's nomination to run the CDC just hours before he was set to testify before the Senate Health Committee. CNN's Meg Tirrell is following the story. What happened? What was the actual final straw for Weldon?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Dana we're starting to get some hints about that, including from Weldon himself, who we just saw, gave a statement to CBS News, which is reporting that he said he found out about this about 12 hours before the hearing was supposed to start this morning, at 10 a.m.

And that specifically there may have been issues from Senator Susan Collins and Senator Bill Cassidy, who, of course, is a doctor, and is Chair of the Health Committee, which was going to be holding this hearing today. Now he notes in this statement that more than 20 years ago, while he was in Congress, he raised concerns about childhood vaccine safety.

He said Collins' staff quote, suddenly couldn't get over that, no matter what I said back. But there are some signs he's been making anti-vaccine comments that have been concerning Senators. Even more recently, Senator Patty Murray told us this week that in the weeks leading up to this hearing, she met with Dr. Weldon and he made some anti-vaccine claims that she was concerned about.

She said, quote, it's dangerous to put someone in charge at CDC who believes the lie that our rigorously tested childhood vaccine schedule is somehow exposing kids to toxic levels of mercury or causing autism. I heard from Dr. Weldon last night in response to that statement, he said he never said this ingredient in vaccines called thimerosal was the cause of rising levels of autism, but he says at the time he was concerned that it could be.

He says, after it was removed, autism rates did not come down, but continued to rise, convincing me that it was not the cause. However, even as he's saying, this was 25 years ago, I was looking into it, these still seem to be plaguing him, and may have contributed to his nomination getting pulled Dana.

BASH: So, as you said, that particular example notwithstanding, he has repeatedly, historically questioned the safety of vaccines. He is not the only one to do so RFK Jr., of course, is the most prominent example. I wonder how much, and maybe this is a political question, but -- you know just from your approach covering medicine, how much the current outbreak of measles in Texas played into the timing of this now?

TIRRELL: That is a huge question, of course, because Robert F Kennedy Jr., the Health Secretary, has been out there saying -- you know, he -- they are encouraging vaccination, which is farther than he's gone in the past. And some folks say he should get credit for that, but he's also spreading incredibly mixed messages about vaccines and sowing fear and doubt about them.

So that's concerning, and a lot of public health scientists say, well, what's really different about what these two folks are messaging here about vaccines. They don't see a difference but it could be.

[12:20:00] You know, Senator Bill Cassidy has been really put in the spotlight over the promises that he says he got from Kennedy over vaccines and his commitment to not upending the vaccine system in the United States. And we've already seen that get chipped away a little bit. We've reported that HHS has asked CDC to look into vaccines and autism, despite there being no link over dozens of studies looking into that. So, it's not really clear why Weldon was taken out, whereas Kennedy obviously was confirmed.

BASH: Yeah, really, really interesting. Meg, thank you so much for that reporting. And coming up, it is deadline day for DOGE every federal agency is required to submit plans for mass layoffs, and we're going to have new details on who will be impacted next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

BASH: He thought the federal government had already been cut to the bone over the past two months. The administration says you ain't seen nothing yet. All federal agencies are required to submit plans today for a so-called reduction in force. In other words, mass layoffs that could be in the tens of thousands.

I want to get straight to CNN's Rene Marsh is following all things DOGE. Rene, what can you tell us about these cuts and how they're going to impact government operations?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, we know that more than 100,000 federal employees have already been fired. But it's this drip, drip, drip of terminations that we have seen over the past several weeks, along with federal workers being placed on paid leave, that has all been building to this point.

This phase that we have entered now, of the Trump Administration, shrinking of the federal government, it really promises to be even more dramatic. The plans the agencies are submitting today include not only mass terminations, but it also includes totally eliminating certain offices and divisions.

And we have new reporting this afternoon that both the Trump Administration and DOGE are proposing a downsizing of the IRS that would result in nearly 20 percent reduction in the workforce by May 15th. Again, that's just one month after Tax Day here in the U.S.

Though, as it relates to the IRS, that would include that 20 roughly 20 percent would include a fresh round of layoffs for nearly 68,000 employees there at that agency, and that would be on top of the more than 6000 probationary employees who have already been fired, the more than 4000 employees who took that deferred resignation.

We do know that when it comes to these plans that these agencies are preparing to submit to the Office of Personnel Management DOGE on the agency level, they have had a very active role in determining these cuts. And Dana, that really speaks to the incredible influence, once again, of Elon Musk, who has said that he wants to see some of these federal agencies. And I'm quoting deleted back to you, Dana.

BASH: Thank you so much, Rene. Now, in addition to Rene's excellent reporting and that of other colleagues here at CNN, we have seen headlines about those DOGE order cuts, hollowing out the federal government all across the board. We have seen, as you see there, "ProPublica" on liquidating a Veterans Health Care Initiative.

"The New York Times", the federal agency dedicated to mental illness and addiction, faces huge cuts. "The Associated Press" USDA ends programs that helped schools serve local food. ABC News, federal student loan site down after layoffs at the Education Department. And those are just some examples.

My panel is back here. Carl Hulse, I'm going to start with you, and as we do, I just want to look at a little bit more of today's new version of the CNN poll. And this is a question about whether these cuts, these government cuts, help or hurt your family. Only 22 percent say help.

HULSE: Well, I think this is kind of what we were talking about earlier, the threshold of pain. There's no way that you can do this to federal agencies without some decline in service. There's it's just impossible. There are just all these people are not in some sort of bureaucratic role where they're not dealing with the public.

And so, but I think you know what we're seeing on Capitol Hill so far is the Republicans are willing to let this play out a little bit, although Republicans have been able to go to Musk and people in the Trump Administration and get some things restored.

BASH: Democrats don't have that power.

HULSE: I don't think they have the same thing. And this is part of the funding fight that's going on right now on Capitol Hill is like Democrats are looking at this like, is it worse if we shut down the government can, or is -- or if we go along with the president and give this new funding bill through will, they just can continue to do this anyway.

So, I do think that folks on the Hill are watching, but there's been no real oversight so far. There's been no committee hearing scheduled by any of the Republicans to look at and --

BASH: Nor will there be?

HULSE: Well, I mean, at some point --

BASH: You think so?

HULSE: I don't know, but that's what I'm saying. What is the pressure point --

BASH: Yeah.

HULSE: -- where I think social security, honestly, is pressure point, right? BASH: Yeah.

HULSE: So, when you have something, some sort of disruption there, they've already pulled back from a plan to cut back on the telephone.