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Trump Takes Questions On New Aug. 1 Deadline For Trade Deals; Trump On Putin: "Very Nice But It Turns Out To Be Meaningless"; Trump Sends Letters To 14 Countries, Threatening Higher Tariffs Beginning August 1; California Gov. Gavin Newsom Kicks Off Visit To South Carolina. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired July 08, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will give you total access and you don't have to pay any tariffs. But please don't charge us tariffs. And we don't like that deal.

So the letters I send out are -- we have made some deals. We can make a lot more deals. It's just too time-consuming. It just makes it more complicated. And we can do things over the years, too. You know, we're going to -- we're not going to -- we're not hardline.

But it's about time the United States of America started collecting money from countries that were ripping us off, ripping us off and laughing behind our back at how stupid we were. OK? Thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, I have a tariff issue. So you've talked about India coming. But then a couple days ago, you issued a new tariff threat to members of the BRICS countries for --

TRUMP: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- if they aligned with anti-American policies.

TRUMP: 10 percent charge.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That would be India, Brazil, Russia, et cetera.

TRUMP: That's right. They have to pay 10 percent if they're in BRICS. Because BRICS was set up to hurt us. BRICS was set up to degenerate our dollar and take our dollar as the standard, take it off as the standard. And that's OK if they want to play that game. But I can play that game, too. So anybody that's in BRICS is getting a 10 percent charge.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is that immediate, sir?

TRUMP: Yes, pretty soon.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Or is that if they engage in something bigger?

TRUMP: Well, if they're a member of BRICS, they're going to have to pay 10 percent tariff. Just for that one thing. And they won't be a member long. I thought BRICS was -- you know, I said this about a year ago and it largely broke up. But, you know, there are a couple that hang around, but I thought it largely broke up.

BRICS is not, in my opinion, not a serious threat. But what they're trying to do is destroy the dollar so that another country can take over and be the standard. And we're not going to lose the standard at any time.

If you have a smart president, you will never lose the standard. If you have a stupid president, like the last one, you would lose the standard. You wouldn't have the dollar as you.

And if we lost the world standard dollar, that would be like losing a war, a major world war. We would not be the same country any longer. We're not going to let that happen.

The dollar -- you ever hear the expression, dollar is king? The dollar is king. We're going to keep it that way. OK?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: And I'm just saying, if people want to challenge it, they can, but they're going to have to pay a big price. And I don't think any of them are willing to pay that price.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Mr. President. Are you optimistic about reaching the tariff deal with the European Union soon?

TRUMP: Well, the European Union has been speaking to us, Ursula and the whole group, and they've been very nice. They treated us very badly until recently. Now they're treating us very nicely. It's like a different world, actually.

They've treated us very badly. They were among the toughest to deal with. Actually, in many respects, they were much worse than China. Look at what they do to our companies. They sue Apple. They sue Google.

$17 billion they got from Apple on a lawsuit that they didn't have a case. They have, you know, judges that are European Union judges. And they take so much money away from our country in terms of that, in terms of other things that they do. They're very tough. But now they're being very nice to us, and we'll see what happens.

We're probably two days off from sending them a letter. We are talking to them. I just want you to know, a letter means a deal. You know, a lot of people said, we've got 200 countries. We can't meet with 200 countries. We have a few trusted people that know what they're doing, that are doing a good job, but you can't -- you have to do it in a more general way, but it's a very good way. It's a better way. It's a more powerful way.

And we sent them a letter. You read the letter. I think it was well- crafted. And mostly, it's just a little number in there. You'll pay 25 percent, 35 percent. We have some at 60 percent, 70 percent. Those are ones with massive, you know, where we have massive trade deficits, because they've treated us very badly.

But I would say, in every case, I'm treating them better than they treated us over the years. Don't you agree with that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do.

TRUMP: I could have done much -- I could have been much harsher. I don't want to do that. We want to have relationships. But in every case, they treated us far worse than I'm treating them.

I'm treating them very good. I could go higher with the tariffs, but I don't want to hurt them. That's why, when you just read it, you come up with the number. It's so incredible that prices are actually going down. Just so you know, when I got in, everyone said, oh, eggs, eggs are going through the roof. That was -- I was in for about four days, and they started screaming at me about eggs.

They said, that's Biden's problem. I didn't know about eggs. But eggs went up about five times. You did a fantastic job. And we ended up shortly -- in fact, for Easter, they said, go out and buy plastic eggs. You can't use real eggs.

Well, we bought 200,000 eggs for the White House for the Easter egg hunt that we have at the White House, and there were eggs. We had the price down. And now the price is lower than it was before.

[12:35:05]

We did a good job with eggs, but we did a good job with groceries. Prices are down in this country. A big part of it's oil, the oil.

You have -- you had a couple of places last week, you had $1.99 for oil, for gasoline. Nobody thought they'd see that. I want to get it lower if I can.

But we're -- we've done a good job. You've done a very good job. Do you want to say a couple of words about that, you and Chris, about what's happening with energy?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, absolutely. But I would say on the pricing side, President Trump, the fact that you've endorsed and supported a policy of energy dominance, that sends a signal --

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: OK, we're going to continue to monitor President Trump's meeting with the Cabinet, in the Cabinet room, as he is answering questions from reporters. My panel is here. Terrific panel.

And there were a number of issues that I do want to touch on that he talked about. One -- and maybe most important, because it is so uncertain still, is the question of tariffs. He's sending out these letters to all these countries, and the letters have a new number on it, which is the new tariff for and by the United States.

But we don't know exactly what that is going to mean, ultimately, if there will be a negotiation. We'll talk about that in a second. He talked about Jerome Powell, the Fed chair. It was asked a question about a Republican congressman who wants to investigate whether Powell didn't tell the truth to Congress. Trump is totally fine with Powell resigning. He's not a fan.

And then there is the question of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin. Hopefully we'll be able to turn around a soundbite from you because what he said about Vladimir Putin was very interesting. And actually, let's listen to that now, and then we'll talk about it.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

TRUMP: -- we get -- we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you want to sanction him? Lindsey Graham has a sanctions bill on Russia. Do you wanted to move (INAUDIBLE)?

TRUMP: I'm looking at it. Yes, no, I'm looking to --

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Eli Stokols, you cover the White House on a daily basis. We have in, I don't know, the past month or two, heard much tougher language from the president when it comes to Vladimir Putin than we did in the almost 10 years that he has been on the political scene.

ELI STOKOLS, WHITE HOUSE & FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: Right, that soundbite that you just played was like, you know, 10 years in the making.

BASH: Right.

STOKOLS: It's taken him 10 years to come to that point of view that a lot of American -- a lot of his predecessors and a lot of people in both parties, Republicans and Democrats, have had that view of Putin for a long time. What's changed, I am told, is that the president's simply frustrated that Russia has shown no interest in his efforts to attempt to bring about negotiations to end the war.

After Ukraine accepted a 30-day ceasefire, Vladimir Putin has increased the bombing -- the bombardment of Ukraine fivefold. And so Trump is frustrated about that. He's -- I'm told he's been cooler to Putin in their phone conversations. They had a long conversation last week. It did not go very well. You heard the president afterwards saying he was frustrated. And so we are hearing the president's frustration rhetorically. We're not seeing that translate yet into any kind of response.

He said there may be a surprise for Russia. He talked about the sanctions bill at the end of that clip, saying, I have the option of looking at the sanctions bill if and when the Senate takes it up and passes it. But at this point, he's just talking tougher to Vladimir Putin.

BASH: Except I would argue that the action is what he is doing vis-a- vis Ukraine, meaning that he is not listening to those in the MAGA wing of his party who don't want to have anything to do with Ukraine, maybe even including the vice president. But who knows where he is now that he's actually on the inside getting briefings about what's going on in Ukraine. But the fact that the president is now sort of allowing weapons once again to go from the U.S. to Ukraine perhaps is a way to send a message to Vladimir Putin.

DAVID WEIGEL, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Yes, and Eli put it well. And this is a campaign promise that Trump made and later said was sarcastic, but did make many times. I've met voters who voted for Trump on the premise that he could bring wars to an end when Joe Biden couldn't.

He had said that he could end this war immediately. He has those voices on the right saying just withdraw. There is every dollar spent in Ukraine could be spent here. And he has -- there is that hangover, that memory of Joe Biden ending our commitment to Afghanistan and being humiliated, another thing Trump ran on.

So I've never figured out what the endgame is when it became impossible to just end the war on day one like he promised.

[12:40:01]

BASH: Yes. And also in this press conference, the president said he planned to press U.S. defense contractors to step up production of equipment to help Ukraine defend itself.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, actually, the White House framing on this has been very interesting as well. Not only what the president says, but they had said that the decision on the weapons was to, quote, "put America's first, so America's interests first.

So now the defense of Ukraine is tied to America's interests, which is the way that the previous administration had explained their decision, but is a remarkable shift for the Trump administration, which has up until this point said or acted the opposite.

Not that long ago, it was Ukrainian President Zelenskyy who was sitting at the White House and with -- alongside the president and was getting hammered for -- by the vice president and the president over what was happening. And now to see the president essentially say, throw his hands up in the air and say that Vladimir Putin isn't coming around, really remarkable. That is being shown in the actions that they have taken.

BASH: Can we talk about tariffs for a minute? One of the last things he said there, a letter means a deal. A deal is a deal. A deal is a negotiation. A letter, as I discussed with the treasury secretary on Sunday, is either a threat or it is a position.

And clearly what the White House is doing and what the president himself has done has morphed from, I can make deals with anybody and I'm going to make 90 deals in 90 days with all of these countries when he put the pause on the tariffs after Liberation Day to nope, I'm just going to set the new tariff. And if you want to change that, then you have to negotiate directly with me.

STOKOLS: Yes, and there are negotiations going on with a lot of different countries and the European Union, as the president said. But sending a letter and saying this is what the tariff is, that's not a deal, right? That's just a one-sided thing.

And I think, you know, he can do that, but if he does that to the European Union, there's going to be a pushback. There will be counter tariffs. And we'll be right back where we were at the beginning of this in April.

And so there's been this 90-day period. He said, I didn't extend the deadline. He actually signed an executive order yesterday so that the tariffs didn't go into effect on July 9th. They go into effect on August 1st.

BASH: Right.

STOKOLS: That's on the White House website. We all know he had to sign an executive order to move the deadline. So there's a lot of, you know, bluster here and defensiveness because he's promised something, the deals haven't materialized, now he's trying to impose.

And look, the U.S. does have a lot of leverage. The E.U., for one, may just say, we can live with a 10 percent tariff. Let's just agree to this, let's give him something, let's not escalate this, and let's ride it out for four years. The president does have leverage with a lot of these countries.

BASH: Yes.

STOKOLS: But if you go way up on the number and you just say this is what it is, there's going to be a lot of counter tariffs and responses that will hit the economy.

BASH: And as I bring you in, Dave, I just want to put up on the screen what -- where we are right now with one of -- with some of these trading partners who were hit with new tariffs after or as the president started sending letters and as that pause lifted and as he's trying to kind of rejigger how he's approaching these countries.

WEIGEL: Yes, it's a repeat, but with everyone's experience of the first Liberation Day, adjusting to the expectation that he want -- he prefers to declare some sort of victory and move off of this than to do something that hurts American consumers. That is, I think, generally how people are interpreting those actions, those negotiations.

This -- the White House likes to declare victory and move on. And you saw it in the, frankly, in the Jeffrey Epstein answer. He was exasperated by a question that very much helped him in his campaign in 2024 because, in their view, they moved on. It's a new administration.

Why is the media still asking this question? I expect we'll get some of the same response if this round of tariffs doesn't go very well.

BASH: We couldn't agree more.

WEIGEL: Yes.

BASH: We don't want to waste time on Jeffrey Epstein. It was conservative media that demanded these answers.

ALVAREZ: Well, and the base is still demanding those answers.

BASH: Right.

ALVAREZ: So he is still getting pushback, and it'll be interesting, actually, to see what unfolds after that answer because that was, I think, the first time we heard from him after all that. But back on to the tariffs, the goalposts keep changing.

We have seen that time and again with the deadline, and you correct me if I'm wrong here, but now it's also the substance, for the substance of the deal to be the letter, which is very similar to what a true social post would be, the way that he was written in very vintage President Donald Trump form.

But it is -- the markets have appeared to sort of taken this approach of, we'll wait and see how this actually unfolds, but it does affect the consumers, the small businesses who are trying to navigate what's the there there, and the president essentially saying, this is it.

BASH: Yes, until it's not.

All right, everybody, stand by. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:49:35]

BASH: The governor of California is spending the day in the critical presidential primary state of South Carolina. Gavin Newsom's two-day visit to the Palmetto State is fueling further speculation that he's eying the White House.

I'm joined now by CNN's Dianne Gallagher, who's in Bennettsville, South Carolina, ahead of Newsom's visit this afternoon. Dianne, what are you hearing from people who I know that you are outside an event that he is going to appear at momentarily? What are you hearing from the people who came to see him?

[12:50:09]

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So I spoke to one woman just a few moments ago who told me she was here to, quote, "see the next president of the United States." Now, Newsom says that's not what this is about. He has a two-day, eight county tour through the Midlands, Pee Dee, and upstate region.

We are talking some of the reddest parts of what is already a ruby red state. Just two of the counties that he's hitting actually voted for the Harris-Walz ticket. And we're talking razor thin margins there. Pickens County that he's hitting up tomorrow, look, they voted 75 percent for Donald Trump.

But Newsom is arguing that voting for Trump, and what has really been decades of Republican rule in these areas, has not benefited the lives of the people who live here. The Democratic Party, when they announced Newsom's visit, said that he was going to focus on things that he had done in California, like disaster response, focusing on economic prosperity for people in areas that are dealing with job loss, that are dealing with that disaster -- natural disaster fallout from hurricanes and wildfires.

He also is highlighting President Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill, that mega bill that focuses so much on policy and talking about Medicaid, talking about environmental and disaster response. He says that this is not about 2028, but I can tell you that people here in South Carolina know why someone comes to visit.

I spoke to a state lawmaker just a bit ago who said visiting South Carolina, especially rural parts, in 2025, at least means you're looking to create and cultivate relationships with local party officials, elected officials, and of course, voters.

Because even if South Carolina isn't the first stop on the primary list in 2027, 2028, it's definitely going to be early. They take that first in the South at minimum very seriously --

BASH: Yes.

GALLAGHER -- and said that visiting places like this, Gavin Newsom showing he's not afraid to go to Republican areas, to areas that he's not going to probably receive the warmest of welcome, and talk to those voters, shows that he's at least serious about a state like South Carolina. And they believe, this one official believes, maybe 2028 as well. And again, Newsom says this is about the midterm elections and helping Democrats in areas for 2026.

BASH: Sure it is.

Dianne, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

The panel is back. Dave Weigel, you're going to leave here and head to South Carolina.

WEIGEL: Right.

BASH: It's a good thing that the national reporters like you who cover politics and Dianne are really clear that he's not considering 2028 yet.

WEIGEL: Oh, absolutely. Yes, please. Clip this -- clip his statements from here. I'm sure he's going to stick to them for three years.

No, this is a change for Newsom who after the 2024 election did not want to be the president of the resistance, did not want to be in every story about Donald Trump, and feels that his hand has been forced because the president has used California, especially with the ICE raids, as not just an example, but as a fight he wants to have with blue states.

From South Carolina's perspective, I was there a month ago and Democrats -- when I asked them who they wanted to hear from, the answer was pretty much everybody. There is no front runner in South Carolina or anywhere else. There are Democrats they've heard of fighting Trump.

There are Democrats they hear less about in Congress because they're losing. But there's great openness. Every Democrat I mentioned people wanted to hear from.

BASH: Yes, it is interesting that he is going to, I mean, OK, most of South Carolina you would sort of pinpoint as a red area, but there obviously are Democratic lawmakers, there are pockets of blue. And the fact that he is going to those red areas suggests that it is part of the broader strategy that we have seen from him since, I don't know, since -- I guess since Trump was elected.

He has the podcast, he has MAGA, influencers on, and now he -- and, you know, he debated Ron DeSantis even before that, and now he's going into conservative areas.

ALVAREZ: But this was also part of the 2024 playbook when Harris was running. She was also going to those red districts to try to peel off some voters, knowing that they may not win those districts, but at the very least, they could try to gain a few votes and take away from the Republican ticket.

So this is something that he in particular has started on early by appealing to perhaps disaffected Republican voters, but it was something that we saw already in the 2024 campaign for Democrats, though it didn't go so much the way that they wanted.

But the other interesting thing with Gavin Newsom is that you mentioned the immigration and customs enforcement raids that were happening in Los Angeles and are still happening. He went to camera to respond to that.

BASH: I'm just going to interrupt this conversation because our colleague Kaitlan Collins asked the president about who authorized the weapons pause, which happened several weeks ago to Ukraine. Listen to that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

[12:55:03]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, this morning we talked about -- of course, this was a top of mind question -- this morning we talked about protecting the farmers and the farmland, but obviously this president's vision of no amnesty, mass deportation continues but in a strategic way, and then ensuring that our farmers have the labor that they need.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: OK, we don't have that right now, but Eli, let's just talk about that for a second and why we found it important to interrupt because this has been one of the questions. I'm being told that he said he didn't know who ordered the pause. He's the president. Presumably he should order the pause.

There has been -- and let me just kind of put in the context here as I come to you. There have been a lot of questions about whether when he was very focused on Iran, people at the Pentagon who don't want anything to do with U.S. involvement in Ukraine, paused the weapons going to Ukraine.

STOKOLS: Yes, I'm very eager to hear his response to Kaitlan's question myself because we've been asking the White House about this --

BASH: Yes.

STOKOLS: -- since we learned of the pause last week. And I think what struck people -- what surprised people was that Trump had been so empathetic toward Ukraine, critical of Putin at NATO, and then he comes back and suddenly the Pentagon is pausing all defense aid to Ukraine.

Just did not seem like they were on the same page. And I talked to people in Europe who said, what is going on there? Is there any coordination? The White House was insistent that this didn't come as a surprise. The president knew.

Everybody was aware of this, and the Pentagon aid, the review actually took place during the Iran situation, but it didn't come out until later because they were distracted or doing that. But it's never been clear if the president was actually aware that that was coming and if he was aware whether he would have allowed it to go forward.

BASH: Yes, and again, there are people at the Pentagon, not necessarily Pete Hegseth, but underneath him, who really want to use their positions to live up to the -- what they call America First by the president, and that means pulling back American power from far- flung areas.

Thank you so much to all of you. Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)