Return to Transcripts main page

The Situation Room

Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Speaks Out; Republicans Pass Budget Agreement; Impact on Farmers of Trade War?. Aired 11:30a- 12p ET

Aired April 10, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:32:39]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: All right, there's breaking news we're following.

We're getting our first look right now at the Russian-American ballerina just released from Russian detention. Ksenia Karelina is on her way home after a prisoner swap between the U.S. and Russia. She was sentenced to 12 years in a Russian prison last year after donating just over $50 -- $50 -- to a charity supporting Ukraine.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: All right, let's go back now to the Trump tariffs and a closer look at what's at stake for Americans.

For some farmers, everything right now is at stake. And one of them, a Trump supporter from Kentucky, wrote this: "As a businessman, President Trump must know how urgent this is. The current trade war with China is a gamble with American livelihoods, especially for farmers, those of us who grew up with soil and sweat, who can't imagine doing anything else."

The author of that op-ed is Caleb Ragland. He joins us now. He's the president of the American Soybean Association and owns a 1,500-acre soybean farm in Magnolia, Kentucky.

Caleb, thank you for your time.

CALEB RAGLAND, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN SOYBEAN ASSOCIATION: Good to be here.

BROWN: So, your family has been farming the Bluegrass State for more than 200 years. That's a long time. Are you concerned that history could end with you?

RAGLAND: Look, we are very concerned about the current outlook.

As a soybean farmer, we are dependent on trade. Right at 50 percent of the soybeans produced in the United States are exported. China takes more of our soybeans than all other foreign customers combined. So they're a major part of our market. And this trade war is very concerning to us right now.

BROWN: Tell us a little bit more about that impact on you and this trade war with China and how it's already dealing a blow to you and your family business.

RAGLAND: Well, the ag economy in general is already in a tough spot.

The last couple years, prices have declined. Soybeans are down 40 percent from where they were three years ago. Cost of production are higher. Interest rates are higher. The overall farm economy is struggling. Then we add a trade war with our biggest customer, and it's going to result in lower prices.

And, quite frankly, there's not much room for error right now in the budgets. We're looking at basically losses for the upcoming year if commodity prices don't improve. And it's not just my family. It's farm families all across this country. There's 500,000 farmers that raise soybeans in the United States. And we're all in the same boat.

[11:35:15]

We desperately need to get something rectified quickly with China, our biggest export customer. And we want to encourage the administration to get a proactive trade deal done. Let's get a phase two-type deal done that's good for us and good for the country as a whole, rectify some of the issues we have had with trade and other issues, and move forward and it be positive, instead of building barriers with tariffs.

BROWN: The administration is saying, hang on, be patient. But given what you just laid out, how much patience can you afford right now?

RAGLAND: Well, Pamela, right now, we're planting a crop that looks like it will be produced at a loss. And, by fall, when the soybeans are harvested and ready to sell, we're going to need a drastic improvement in our markets, or it's going to get even tougher for farm families all across this country.

That trickles down to our rural communities. Our rural communities are a lot of folks across this country. And that impacts small business. That impacts just the whole infrastructure within our communities. It's not just our farm families. We won't keep this nation strong. We're the backbone of America.

And I know the president said he loves farmers. I believe he does. I think he's trying to do what's right for this country. But we do want to make sure that our voice is heard and that -- realize that we got to make sure that we survive through these tough times. And we're going to need an improvement in our prices.

And that's by having strong demand for the products we produce. We want to have good markets and we want to have opportunities. That's what we need.

BROWN: I want to get your reaction to what GOP Congressman Dusty Johnson just said about the tariffs. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DUSTY JOHNSON (R-SD): I think people feel good that the president has shown a willingness to adjust fire based on new information in the landscape.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Farmers in South Dakota?

D. JOHNSON: I will tell you what. Farmers in South Dakota have been a lot less concerned about Trump's tariffs than people would assume. They understand that they're the tip of the spear. They understand that retaliation hits American farmers first.

They also understand that the president has a plan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: What's your reaction to that?

RAGLAND: Well, I believe that the president does have a plan and I do believe he wants what's best for our country.

We want to make sure that the understanding is clear of how deep of an impact this has and how short of a leash we're on right now. Farmers are financially stretched very thin right now just due to tough conditions the last couple of years. And, quite frankly, we don't have near the financial cushion we had during the first trade war in 2018.

So we just want to make sure that there's a clear understanding that our livelihoods are at stake. And we do need improvements in trade, and I commend the president for doing that. I commend him for the progress we have made here in the last few days. Yesterday had some exciting developments.

But China is the number one buyer of our soybeans internationally, and they're more than all other markets combined. So it's -- the soybean farmer is even more dependent on China than many other ag export. It's the number one ag export to China. And we want to make sure that we're able to survive through this.

BROWN: All right, Caleb Ragland, well, we certainly hope you survive through this, you and all the other farmers out there. Really important to hear your perspective. Thank you so much.

BLITZER: And House Speaker Johnson is speaking right now. I want to listen in on this vote that just passed on the budget.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): So a big day for us. We will now get the committees operating on all cylinders. They will be working over the two-week district work period that encompasses Passover and Easter. They will take a couple of days off for those holy celebrations and then keep their sleeves rolled up and get right back to work.

The committees in the Senate and the House will be working in a collaborative fashion. We have explained this, that this really is a one-team approach by Republicans in both chambers. I'm so grateful to Leader Thune and his steady hand of leadership. We had a joint press conference this morning making our commitments known of what we're going to try to do.

And that is ensure real savings for the American people, because we have to do that. We have a responsibility to get our country back on a sound fiscal trajectory and also make sure that we ensure and protect those essential programs.

The Democrats, as I noted this morning, have said that we're going to gut Medicaid. It is not true. We're going to protect the benefits that everyone is legally entitled to. The beneficiaries who have a legal right to that, it will be preserved. Those are essential safety net programs that Republicans support.

The president has made clear, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid will not take a hit. So you can count on that, and you can watch it develop as we go.

(CROSSTALK)

[11:40:02]

M. JOHNSON: Our other -- hold on.

Our other priorities as well, I just want to tell you what's -- what will happen when we return after the two-week district work period. Our committees will begin to the markup process. We have our 11 committees that will get instructions for reconciliation in the House.

They are ready to go. We have been working on this for many months, almost a year now really when we first started the effort. And so we have the work product already prepared. We have bills drafted. They -- most of them have been scored already. And now we go through the process of marking it up and finding the equilibrium points with everybody so that all those interests are met.

We're looking forward to that happening. And I just want to say this. The American people are counting on us. Time is of the essence. We know what's going on around the world. We know that the debt limit cliff is approaching us pretty quickly here. We know that markets have been a little unstable.

They want to know that Congress is on the job. And I'm here to tell you that we are, the Article I branch of this government, that the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate are going to do our job. And we are going to provide stability and we are going to send our -- this message to all of our allies and friends around the world and to our adversaries as well that America is back and the America first agenda will be enacted.

President Trump's promises will be fulfilled, and we're really excited that today we took a big step in getting that done. We're going to continue to work together.

Yes, yes.

QUESTION: Mr. Speaker, what changed between last night and this morning? BLITZER: All right, so there you hear the House speaker, Mike Johnson, making the case. He's very happy, Pamela, that the House of Representatives passed the Senate version of the budget plan.

But it's interesting that it passed very narrowly, 216 to 214. It was very close.

BROWN: Very close.

BLITZER: But it did pass.

BROWN: It did pass. Last night, he didn't think he had the votes. He clearly got them today.

Let's listen back in because there's Q&A going on.

M. JOHNSON: Sometimes, when the pressure gets turned up, people need to release that. So I'm -- that's what I do. I allow them to do that. We take thoughtful discussion and deliberation. Sometimes, we do it out in the open. Sometimes, we do it in closed meetings. But we had that until late last night.

I did more of it this morning. I want to compliment our president, President Trump, who has always engaged with us and available and accessible. He didn't have to call a single member to wrangle anybody on this thing. He allowed me the space to do what I need to do and we got the votes together. And we reaffirmed our commitments. It's real.

We want to find real savings. We have an obligation to do that. But we also have to protect these essential programs. We can and we will do both. And you're going to see that in the next few weeks.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: How do you ensure that this type of war with hard-liners doesn't derail the process in the coming months?

M. JOHNSON: Look, everyone that you would describe as a hard-liner, I mean, people who were in the room last night, are there in good faith.

I mean, these are my closest friends, colleagues. I mean, all of us, we're one big team. And their intention is good. They're in good faith. They want to make sure, because they believe we have a responsibility, I do, to make sure that the national debt and our deficits that we have been running around here for too long are turned back on a different trajectory.

And I use the analogy all the time we have a -- it's effectively like a giant aircraft carrier, and you don't turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. It takes miles of open ocean. But we have a responsibility and we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with this reconciliation measure before us to take -- make a real turn in that aircraft carrier.

And we're very serious about it. And so the colleagues that were in the conversations up to past midnight last night just wanted assurances that we're really, really going to do that, and we are. But we're going to do it in a way that doesn't unduly affect or harm any beneficiary of a public program that's available to them. So you will see that...

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Can you give some areas of spending cuts you're looking at? Because you said you have been working on this for a while, so you must know where you're going to cut.

M. JOHNSON: Yes, we have big menus of options and items in 11 different committees of jurisdiction. And one of the big ones is Energy and Commerce, because they have such a broad jurisdiction.

And that's where you will be looking at Medicaid, for example, which is the thing that the Democrats are trying to, frankly, lie to the American people about. No one has talked about cutting one benefit in Medicaid to anyone who's duly owed. What we have talked about is returning work requirements.

So, for example, you don't have able-bodied young men on a program that's designed for single mothers and the elderly and disabled. They're draining resources from people who actually do that. So if you clean that up and shore it up, you save a lot of money and you return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working, instead of playing video games all day.

We have a lot of fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid. Just one tiny example, the estimate is $51 billion a year and Medicaid is lost to fraud. That's unconscionable. We now have -- with the DOGE efforts and with new algorithms and with new oversight responsibilities and opportunities, we have the ability to carve that out. We have a responsibility to do it.

That estimate by some people, some estimates say that is very low. It's actually much higher than that. So we're going to go through, carve out, find these savings, low-hanging fruit and examples like that. There's a lot of it in the federal government. I mean, look, we have a $36 trillion federal debt right now. We're running deficits every year.

[11:45:00]

It's not the way to run our country. We need to return to fiscal sanity. And that's what the Republican Party represents. And you know what? That's good for every American.

QUESTION: But, sir, the instructions are $800 billion for these committees.

M. JOHNSON: Yes.

QUESTION: Are you saying there's $800 billion in fraud, waste, and abuse for these programs?

M. JOHNSON: I'm saying that the categories of fraud, waste, and abuse, in addition to the other areas that we have been looking at for almost a year now, that we can find well more than $800 billion in savings, and we will.

And that's what we committed to. That's what...

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Because the markets are down 1,300 points. And you talked about sending them a strong signal that Congress is doing its work.

M. JOHNSON: Yes.

QUESTION: I mean, obviously, we saw the president put the pause on his tariffs.

M. JOHNSON: Yes.

QUESTION: Does he need to just end them, scrap them at this point...

M. JOHNSON: No, I'm going to let the...

QUESTION: ... to give the markets more certainty?

M. JOHNSON: I'm delighted to let the president make the decisions on that. I mean, he and I spoke yesterday about the spike in the stock market after the pause, and I think he recognized the moment was right to do it, and that seems to be a great decision.

So we're going to let him do that. I'm going to do my job over here, but I do hope and believe that the vote today is a very strong signal to the markets, to investors, job creators, entrepreneurs, the people that make the economy run that the -- that Congress is going to get us on sound footing. And you can count on that, and you can bet on it, and you ought to -- I think today would be a great day to buy stocks.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: All right, you're seeing the Dow Jones industrial average. You see it's down about 1,300 points right now.

The House of Representatives voted 216 to 214 to pass this Senate version of this Republican budget plan, big day for the House speaker, Mike Johnson.

Now, we're going to continue to follow all the breaking news here in THE SITUATION ROOM.

We will be right back with more news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:51:05]

BLITZER: We're now hearing from former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for the first time since President Donald Trump launched an international trade war, slapping tariffs on many countries around the globe, before walking back most of those tariffs only yesterday.

The move sparking wild swings on Wall Street, with uncertainty roiling the markets for a week now.

Janet Yellen spoke exclusively with CNN International anchor Bianna Golodryga just moments ago.

Bianna's joining us now live from New York.

What were the key takeaways from the former Treasury secretary, Bianna?

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, Wolf, she did not hold back.

Secretary Yellen, we should note this was her first interview since the start of President Trump's administration. And she, I believe, made comments that may have impacted the market and led to an additional sell-off, because she said, as a result of the president's trade policies and economic policies, the risk, in her view, of a recession has gone up.

I asked her about how she, who is -- she's now back as a professor -- would grade the Trump administration's overall economic policies thus far. And her response was quite scathing. Here's what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JANET YELLEN, FORMER U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY: I'm afraid I could not give it a passing grade. I'm sorry. I think policy has been -- this is the worst self-inflicted wound that I have ever seen an administration impose on a well-functioning economy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: The worst self-inflicted wound by an administration.

Wolf, that is quite, quite damning. And she also said that there was a collective sigh of relief, given the fact that the president put a pause on these reciprocal tariffs. But I asked her to respond to a headline in "The Economist" today which reads: "Trump's incoherent trade policy will do lasting damage even after his backtracking."

And I asked her if she agreed with that assessment. Here was her response:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YELLEN: It was a relief that the reciprocal tariffs that would have affected more than 180 countries, that a pause was placed on those, but, still, even if they never go into effect, the U.S. and global economies have suffered a huge protectionist shock.

We have enormous, almost prohibitive tariffs on China, which is one of our most important sources of imports, very substantial tariffs still on Canada and Mexico on the auto sector and a 10 percent a general tariff that applies to most countries around the world. And economists calculate that, at this point, average tariff levels are now in the 20 to 25 percent range.

At the beginning of the Trump administration,they were just over 2 percent. So, even if the reciprocal tariffs are abandoned, we have the highest average tariff rate since 1934. And this is going to raise the costs that households in the United States face.

One credible estimate that came out this morning that takes into account yesterday's actions estimates a cost to the typical American household of the existing tariffs of about $4,000, which is enormous. It'll have a significant impact on the price level and an adverse impact on the United States and on the global economy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:55:07]

GOLODRYGA: And, Wolf, Secretary Yellen also said that she believed that rising Treasury yields was what ultimately led the president to put a pause on these reciprocal tariffs.

I should note this was an interview conducted by myself and my co- anchor Zain Asher. Secretary Yellen also said that she does fear that foreign investors may have lost confidence in the U.S. as a safe haven because of some of these policies.

And then, Wolf, as you know, this is an administration, this is a president that almost on a daily basis has been trashing the economy that they inherited from President Biden. Well, she was Treasury secretary under President Biden until he left office. And so I asked her to respond to some of the comments that they have made about her work, about that term.

And she said: "I will leave it at this. This was an economy that was the envy of the world when we left office."

But now she, as I noted, is concerned about a likely recession because of some of these policies in the early months of Trump's administration.

BLITZER: Yes. And, as you pointed out, she said this is the worst self-inflicted wound by a president on a healthy economy that she's ever seen.

Bianna Golodryga, excellent work. Thank you very, very much -- Pamela.

BROWN: And thank you so much for joining us, everyone. You can keep up with us on social media @WolfBlitzer and @PamelaBrownCNN.

We will see you back here tomorrow and every weekday morning for our expanded two-hour SITUATION ROOM at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

BLITZER: "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" is coming up next right after a short break.