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U.S. Markets Open Amid Tariff Talks; Dr. Ashish Jha is Interviewed about FDA Vaccine Official Forced Out; Fight at Timberwolves-Piston Game. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired March 31, 2025 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Got some problems. Big, big problems.

REPORTER: Does it -

TRUMP: We made a deal on rare earth. And now he's saying, well, you know, I want to renegotiate the deal. He wants to be a member of NATO. Well, he was never going to be a member of NATO. But he understands that. So, if he's looking to renegotiate the deal, he's got big problems.

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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: So what the president might be referencing is Zelenskyy on Friday did kind of emphasize in a press conference, Ukraine's not going to accept a deal that would jeopardize its ascension to the European Union, saying that that cannot be accepted. What do you think of this as a negotiating position on the part of Ukraine, or really, I guess, maybe more broadly, what do you think is or needs to be the priority for Ukraine in these very challenging talks now?

ADM. JAMES STAVRIDIS (RET.), CNN SENIOR MILITARY ANALYST: I think the idea of pushing for an immediate entrance to NATO on the part of Ukraine is simply a negotiating position. And you always start a negotiation with a maximalist position, and then you move toward reality in the center. I think that's what we'll see the Ukrainians do here. A near-term membership in NATO, very unlikely. Over time, not impossible. But a closer entrance into the European Union. That would be something I would push for very hard from the perspective of a President Zelenskyy.

Bottom line, the Ukrainians would be wise to get this mineral deal done. It's clearly something very important to President Trump. And aid to Ukraine is clearly very important to the Ukrainians. Let's construct a win-win outcome here. I think we can do that.

BOLDUAN: Admiral, it's good to see you. Thank you so much. John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, the breaking news. The markets just opened. We're getting a look at the reaction to a huge selloff overseas. This is the domestic markets. You can see the Dow down nearly a point. The Nasdaq now approaching two points. The S&P down more than a point. This is all over the tariff threats from President Trump. The sometimes conflicting tariff threats from President Trump. And the expectation of what might happen on April 2nd, as he has promised.

Let's get right to CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich for what we are seeing.

Not good so far.

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: It is tariff week, and this is the anticipation of what is to come. Several tranches of tariffs are coming into effect this week. The auto tariffs, other sector tariffs and then the reciprocal tariffs that we're going to be hearing from the president on.

Also, as you mentioned, markets in Asia closed down. Also anticipating what's going to be happening this week. We're big trading partners with a lot of those countries, Japan, China as well. You see some of those markets there, all down.

But really what we're looking at is, what is going to be happening to manufacturing, to jobs here in the U.S., because we know that's the president's reason for wanting to put all of these tariffs in place.

A lot of economists are predicting that there could be job losses here in the United States, especially in the auto industry, as these tariffs take effect. You have Patrick Anderson, he's from a Michigan think tank. He says the automakers are in a serious predicament. They're going to have to make tough decisions about what production to continue and what to make. He goes on to say that we expect implementation of these tariffs to affect jobs across the United States.

So, car companies are going to have to think about, can they make as many models? Can they fire up as many plants to make these cars? And a lot of people are saying, no, the capacity doesn't exist. And these auto companies may not want to do that in anticipation of maybe these tariffs going away in a couple of years.

But we are hearing from the White House. They are doubling down, saying these tariffs are going to be good for business, good for the American people and good for prices. Take a listen to trade adviser Peter Navarro on what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

: Trust in Trump. We have the example from the first term. We know that we imposed historically high tariffs on China. We imposed aluminum and steel tariffs. We imposed on washing machines, on solar. All we got out of that was prosperity and price stability. And the reason why we're not going to see inflation is because the foreigners are going to eat most of it. They have to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YURKEVICH: So, John, just a little bit of a fact check there on what Peter Navarro said.

In 2018, when President Trump imposed steel and aluminum tariffs, 25 percent on steel, 10 percent on aluminum, GM and Ford both reported that they saw increased costs of $1 billion each. So, we are hearing from the companies on what happened a few years ago.

Of course, that was just steel and aluminum. Now we're talking about reciprocal tariffs. We're talking about auto specific tariffs.

And it's not just GM, Ford, Stellantis the big three that will be impacted. It's all of the automakers that are going to be impacted by this because the auto industry, yes, it's a North American sort of trade industry.

[09:35:01]

But it's global. It's global. And so they'll all be impacted. As you can see, just some parts suppliers, people who work in the parts industry here in the U.S., more than half a million, two times what it is for assembly workers. These are people that could see impacts as this goes into effect.

BERMAN: Look, the mayor of Rochester Hills in Michigan told me, you know, when I asked him what he thought about the president's comments, that he couldn't care less if the price of foreign cars went up. He said, basically, what's a foreign car? You know, the GM cars are getting made, half of them are made with foreign parts here. So, prices are going to go up across the board here. We're seeing with those markets going down, we could probably put that back up again, the markets going down.

YURKEVICH: Yes.

BERMAN: You can see the Nasdaq down now 2.3 percent. The S&P way down also. This is on top of just major falls on Friday. Going to be a tough week.

Vanessa Yurkevich, thanks so much.

All right, this morning, investigation is underway after a bus driver was accused of shooting and killing two passengers. And health experts sounding the alarm after the top vaccine official at the FDA resigned.

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[09:40:35]

BOLDUAN: This morning, health experts are raising alarm once again over moves happening at America's public health agency. And the FDA's top vaccine official begins his final week of work after being forced out of his job. We're talking about Doctor Peter Marks, a man who played a key role in Operation Warp Speed during the first Trump administration to develop Covid-19 vaccines. He's long steered the FDA's regulation of vaccines. A widely respected scientist. But he was just given an ultimatum by the new HHS secretary, RFK Jr., resign or be fired. He resigned effective April 5th. And in a letter to the acting FDA commissioner, Marks says this in part as he's about to head to the door, saying, "it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies."

Joining us right now is former White House Covid response coordinator, Doctor Ashish Jha. He's the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

It's good to see you again, Doctor Jha.

HHS responded to questions about Marks' firing, forced resignation, and said this in part, "if Peter Marks does not want to get behind restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency, then he has no place at FDA."

What do you think of this?

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Well, first of all, thanks for having me back.

This is all very unfortunate. Peter Marks is one of our country's leading scientists and one of our leading public servants, has worked admirably across multiple administrations, Republicans and Democrats, as you said, led was really the scientific architect behind Operation Warp Speed, President Trump's signature initiative that saved millions. He just couldn't do it anymore was my understanding. That he basically - he's a guy who promotes science and evidence and not quack vitamins and other things that we've heard about coming out of the current HHS. And my understanding and sense is that he just couldn't do it anymore. And it's very sad to see HHS then go after him. He is a huge loss for our country.

BOLDUAN: And plain and simply, I mean, what's going to happen now when it comes to vaccine approval and FDA leadership when it comes to vaccines going forward? Because, I mean, Peter Marks has been around and been well respected in how he has led vaccine approval for a very long time.

JHA: Yes. And one thing to understand, it's just vaccines that he oversees.

BOLDUAN: Right.

JHA: He oversees all biologics. A lot of the cancer therapies. A lot of immunologic therapies. They're going to have a hard time finding someone of his scientific stature. And what that means to me is, we're going to see a slowdown in approvals of these new treatments and new vaccines. We're going to probably not have the same quality of rigorous review that has been standard for FDA. It's a tough moment for our country.

I, obviously, hope they do find somebody else terrific. But one has to worry that they're going to struggle to do that.

BOLDUAN: Add into this now, late last week RFK Jr. said that he plans to create a vaccine injury agency within CDC. Let me play how he talked about it.

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ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., HHS SECRETARY: We already have a division at NIH that is devoted to studying long Covid and to figuring out cures and to study. And we're incorporating a - an agency within CDC that is going to specialize in vaccine injuries.

We are committed to having gold standard science to make sure that we can figure out what the treatments are and that we can deliver the best treatments possible to the American people.

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BOLDUAN: What is this going to do other than elevate - elevate a fraction of what we know are vaccine - injuries related to vaccines in comparison to, obviously, the benefit that we've seen over decades and decades and decades of what vaccines can do?

JHA: Yes. So, let's first agree that we all agree with the secretary that we need to have gold standard science drive the decision making. Completely agree with that.

BOLDUAN: But doesn't that already happen?

JHA: We - well, that's what I was going to say.

BOLDUAN: Sorry.

JHA: Is we actually had a very robust vaccine surveillance system that looks for injuries, identifies them. We've actually used that when we pulled the J&J vaccine off the market. It was exactly built on that system. It was quite robust.

[09:45:03]

The real problem here is not only are you making - you know, elevating this issue in a way that's not appropriate, but you have to look at who he's appointing. So, he just appointed a guy to study the link between - the debunked link between vaccines and autism. And the guy has no scientific training, has had his - has been actually brought up on charges for fraudulent medical behavior. And so, it's who he's appointing. These are not gold standard scientists. This is really all an attempt to spread more bad information. We wish that we could rely on science. That's not what we're seeing out of this White House - out of this HHS.

BOLDUAN: Really quickly, an example of what misinformation can do. The ongoing measles outbreak that we've been tracking. This latest count is more than 450 confirmed cases. You've got now concerns over vitamin a toxicity, because that is one treatment that RFK had been explicitly pushing. How do you grade the federal government's response to this outbreak so far?

JHA: Yes, I think about what would have happened under any other administration. The previous Trump administration, under the Biden administration. What you would have had is a secretary out there unequivocally telling people that they need to get vaccinated because that's how we're going to stop this. That is not what we're getting from this secretary. It's very unusual.

And what it means is, we are on track to have probably the worst measles outbreak of this century, over the last 25 years. And, unfortunately, what it means is we're going to have more kids get sick. And I'm - sadly, probably more kids die. It's all preventable. It's all unnecessary. And it's heartbreaking.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely.

Doctor Ashish Jha, thank you so much.

Coming up still for us, South Korean authorities making a surprising discovery, the unprecedented wildfires that the country has been battling and struggling with, they may - it may have started by a man tending a family grave. That investigation, an update on that.

And a foul turns into an all-out brawl at an NBA game. Five players, two coaches and a partridge in a pear tree ejected after the fight spilled into the stands.

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[09:51:33]

BERMAN: All right, this morning, an investigation is underway in Miami after a city bus driver shot and killed two passengers. Police say a fight broke out between the driver and the passengers. And moments later, the driver pulled out a gun and started shooting. A Miami-Dade Department of Transportation spokesperson says bus drivers are not allowed to carry weapons. The driver was detained. No charges have been filed yet.

Police in South Korea now believe a man tending to a family grave may have sparked a wildfire in the southeastern part of the country. The man, in his 50s, is being questioned but has not been arrested. Officials say multiple fires have killed 30 people and destroyed thousands of structures, including a centuries old Buddhist temple.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Big time brawl now in the front row.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to take a lot to break this up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: A brawl at the Timberwolves/Pistons game. A hard foul about eight minutes before halftime escalated quickly. You can say that. It spilled into the first row of the crowd. Refs and security finally able to calm the situation. Five players and two coaches were tossed. Some of the names you might know, Ron Holland, Naz Reid, Donte DiVincenzo. Again, pretty, pretty ugly there.

BOLDUAN: Pretty, pretty ugly. JB, would you like to join us? Saunter over, my friend.

BERMAN: I will saunter over.

CARI CHAMPION, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Saunter.

BOLDUAN: Because joining us here -

CHAMPION: Yes, he is. Nice saunter.

BERMAN: Speed walking.

BOLDUAN: Or speed walking.

Cari Champion is here.

That video is wild.

CHAMPION: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Not only, like, there's a brawl. But then it like took out fans.

CHAMPION: Yes. Actually, you know, A-rod just bought the Minnesota Timberwolves. At least he's part owner. And they said after it was all said and done, he ran over because there was someone in the crowd, one of the fans, it spilled over and actually, not necessarily injured one of the fans -

BOLDUAN: Yes.

CHAMPION: But he wanted to make sure they were OK.

I want to say, Detroit Pistons are going back to old school Pistons. I don't know if you ever saw that -

BERMAN: Bad boys.

CHAMPION: Yes, the bad boys. And so they've been playing very aggressively. They've been doing well. This is the first game for them of a three-game road stretch which they ended up losing. But the reality is, is that, I hate to say this because you don't want anyone injured, but they're playing that aggressive ball because it's helping them play better.

BERMAN: Yes, this is - this is, I think, the result of what they've been doing to teams. But as soon as it spills into a crowd, that's -

CHAMPION: Trouble.

BERMAN: I mean after everything that happened way long ago with Ron Artest, right -

CHAMPION: Yes, Malice in the palace you're referring to.

BERMAN: I am. I mean they're not going to - the NBA is going to step in. I have to believe there will be suspensions.

CHAMPION: Oh, of course. I was surprised that the coach actually got kicked out of the game, but that was because he was so angry about how the game was being played.

But the reality is this. They have this theory, and he talked about it today, Coach Bickerstaff, he said, our players take care of our players. You don't want to take it. That was not the intention to fall into the crowd, right?

BERMAN: No.

BOLDUAN: Right. Right.

CHAMPION: And it could have been a lot worse. I'm glad that no one was injured in a sense that they had to go to the hospital. But this is the time. It's getting to playoffs. And they're playing hard.

BOLDUAN: March Madness.

CHAMPION: OK, let's go to that.

BOLDUAN: OK. So, first time since 2008.

BERMAN: 2008. And second time ever.

BOLDUAN: Yes. That the number one seeds - so, to me, that seems like, ah, it's boring.

CHAMPION: Yes.

BOLDUAN: But it actually is pretty - it's still pretty exciting.

CHAMPION: Look, I don't think it's boring. I think it's fair. It's good to see it.

I don't think - this is a - this is a great question. Are all the number one seeds created equal? I was talking to your producer -

BOLDUAN: Yes.

CHAMPION: And he said - he asked - said that would be the question he would ask. They are not created equal.

I'm just going to say this. You have Duke winning it all. I could be caught up in the hype. They are the tallest team in D1 basketball. Their shortest player in the lineup is 6'6".

BOLDUAN: No way. Really?

BERMAN: Geez. CHAMPION: The shortest player in the lineup is 6'6". They have a trio of freshmen that include that - that superstar Cooper Flagg.

BERMAN: Cooper Flagg.

BOLDUAN: That's cra-cra (ph).

[09:55:01]

CHAMPION: That are playing so amazing.

BOLDUAN: That's crazy.

CHAMPION: It's crazy. The short - I'm short at 6'6", right? Could you imagine?

So, I think that they are actually going to do really well. I know Auburn has been the best team since the regular season in college ball. But the way that they've been playing in this tournament to me has shown them coming from behind. And I don't think, if you're the best team, I think you should be dominant throughout, you know what I mean? And they've been coming from behind to get these wins in. So, I'm still going with Duke.

BERMAN: And quickly, on the women's side here, UCLA, your team!

CHAMPION: We did it. I just - I would like to just - I'm sorry, I'm going to take off my reporter hat here -

BOLDUAN: That's fine. We'll let you.

CHAMPION: And tell you how - I'm just going to say, it's an emotion.

BOLDUAN: You are allowed here.

BERMAN: I was going to say, you're allowed.

BOLDUAN: This is an emotional safe space.

BERMAN: Yes.

CHAMPION: Can I do that here?

BERMAN: Yes, you can.

BOLDUAN: Yes, you are allowed.

CHAMPION: Because Wolf - Wolf doesn't allow that in D.C.

BERMAN: Right.

CHAMPION: So, the women - UCLA made their very first Final Four in program history for the women. This is an historic moment. You all know that John Wooden was the coach there. And there's a huge legacy. To see this for Coach Close right now, Cori Close, I'm so excited for her. Up next for them I would assume would be UConn, but we have two more games this afternoon to set the women's Final Four.

BOLDUAN: Seriously good ball on both sides.

It's great to have -

CHAMPION: Yes, I love talking basketball with you all.

BERMAN: Cari Champion, great to see you.

BOLDUAN: We love having you here. Thank you, Cari.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

BERMAN: Thank you for being here.

BOLDUAN: Thank you for being here.

BERMAN: All right.

BOLDUAN: It would a long three hours without you, JB.

This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. "THE SITUATION ROOM" is up next.

BERMAN: No emotion.

BOLDUAN: No emotion.

CHAMPION: No emotion.

BOLDUAN: Stone cold.

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