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Economic Uncertainty as Trump Levies Widespread Tariffs; Dimensions of Trump's Deportations of Legal Residents for Political Speech. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired April 03, 2025 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR: All right. That's going to do it for us this morning. Thanks for being with us here on EARLY START. I'm Rahel Solomon, live in New York. CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fifteen seconds.
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: It is Thursday, April 3. Here's what's happening right now on CNN.
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DAVID KELLEHER, PRESIDENT, DAVID AUTO GROUP: That $86,000 car becomes a $103,000 car overnight.
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CORNISH: From cars to clothes and wine, even chocolate. Almost all imports socked with new tariffs. What it means for your wallet.
Plus, this.
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URSULA VON DER LEYN, PRESIDENT, EUROPEAN COMMISSION: The global economy will massively suffer.
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CORNISH: One hundred and eighty-five nations affected by the new tariffs. Now we're waiting to see when and if the world will retaliate.
Also --
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As soon as we drove up, we realized there -- we have nothing left.
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CORNISH: We're looking at destructive and violent tornadoes ripping across the Midwest, and now the threat is moving East.
And what would it mean to save TikTok? A big company is throwing its name in the hat as a potential buyer.
At 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at Nashville, one of the cities that is facing that dangerous weather right now.
Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with me.
So, are you feeling liberated? President Trump's sweeping new tariffs against the rest of the world are in effect this morning. Now, it's basically a waiting game to see how the world retaliates.
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BOB KUYLEN, FARMER/VP, NORTH DAKOTA FARMERS UNION: We don't know what to brace for. We're getting hit from all sides. He's picking on our best customers.
WENDY BRUGH, CO-OWNER, DRY RIDGE FARM: These tariffs are pouring salt in a wound that is just now beginning to heal.
BEN COLVIN, FOUNDER, DEVIL'S FOOT BEVERAGE: Aluminum. Aluminum. Steel, steel, steel. It's going to affect our prices, our customers.
MARY CARROLL DODD, OWNER, RED SCOUT FARM: We are looking at raising prices on most all of our items by 25 to -- to $0.50.
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CORNISH: In the end, the president slapped a blanket 10 percent tariff on almost all imports, as we said, from 185 countries; 25 percent on all imported cars.
China was hit with a 34 percent tariff. And of course, that's on top of the 20 percent that is already imposed.
Next is Japan with 24 percent and the E.U. with 20.
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DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history. It's our declaration of economic independence.
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CORNISH: I'm joined this morning by CNN politics senior reporter Stephen Collinson; senior contributor at Axios, Margaret Talev; and CNN anchor and chief domestic correspondent, Phil Mattingly.
Phil, welcome to the group chat.
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Like actual newspapers? CORNISH: Actual newspapers. We got you.
MATTINGLY: This is where it's at, man.
CORNISH: So, speaking of which, "The New York Post" calls it "World War Fee." Very clever. I see you, "New York Post."
Can you talk about what the White House, how he tried to present this? Because it's been liberation. It's been a negotiating tool. It's been so many different reasons for doing this. When he finally stepped out on the Rose Garden, what -- what did he say?
MATTINGLY: There were charts, and the charts, obviously, a critical component of any theatrical representation --
CORNISH: Yes.
MATTINGLY: -- of what happened here. And I think that's the way to frame what we saw in the Rose Garden yesterday, kind of the intentional messaging and theater behind something that I think people have not understood or fully grasped over the course of the last 75 days.
CORNISH: Well, they kind of have, right? They've been --
MATTINGLY: Now they have.
CORNISH: You heard all those people saying, like, it's expensive.
MATTINGLY: You make a really good point, because I think we have spent the better part of the last 70-plus days listening to market participants, listening to business executives, listening to Republican lawmakers after Republican lawmaker after Republican lawmaker say, in the first term, he would pull back. What part of this is threats? What he really wants is a negotiation. He's pragmatic and a dealmaker at his heart.
And they're wrong. Like, they're wrong.
CORNISH: Yes.
MATTINGLY: And I think what -- the reason why I say that, and I think I can say that definitively, is one, having spoken to the top economic officials in this White House a lot over the course of the last several weeks, what you realize is this idea of breaking the global trading system, reorienting --
CORNISH: Yes.
MATTINGLY: -- the system of commerce that's existed for the better part of the last 70 years is not a bug. It's a feature.
CORNISH: Yes, that's the point.
MATTINGLY: It's by design. CORNISH: So, Stephen, I want to bring you in here, because tariffs are
not bad in themselves. Right? They are an economic tool that all kinds of countries use, which is why we're in this position.
So, what is significant about today, as you said, because you you, too, agree with the president that this is going to be a day everyone remembers.
STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN POLITICS SENIOR REPORTER: Yes. So, tariffs, for example, if you want to protect your steel industry, which in a time of war is very important, it's a national security issue. Targeted smart use of tariffs can be a good thing to do.
[06:05:02]
The question here is that -- what we're asking here is -- this is a president who's now turned the United States against the world it made, to your point about the trading system of 70 years. He's doing the same thing on foreign policy.
In the short term, standing up for American industries, as he said, which -- and going against competitors who he said have plundered and pillaged our economy, that might be a politically popular thing to do.
The question is, when everybody starts paying more on everything. This was a president who got elected because he promised to get prices down. One of the most stunning things that he's done in his first two months is adopt a policy that's going to put, almost certainly, prices on everything up.
CORNISH: Yes. And he's also said that -- or the administration has said by different parts like, well, it'll be some short-term pain. There will be a disturbance.
And sometimes, when I get trapped in a conversation with someone who's really into tariffs, they start talking about Smoot-Hawley. And I'm just -- this is what happens in my brain --
MATTINGLY: You can say my name when you're talking about me.
CORNISH: I know. when you're talking. I feel I didn't want to say it. This is what I think when Phil starts talking about Smoot-Hawley.
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BEN STEIN, ACTOR/COMMENTATOR: The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which -- anyone? -- raised or lowered? -- raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government, did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work. And the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression.
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CORNISH: I mean, there's still facts in there.
MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I have to top that? Right? Throw up that quadratic equation from last night. We're in business.
I think the president has made his move, and now it's up to the rest of the world to react. And --
CORNISH: And they've been preparing.
TALEV: Yes.
CORNISH: God knows Canada has.
TALEV: We're talking about what are other countries going to do? We're talking about what are American voters going to do? And we're talking about what is the American Congress going to do?
And we began to see a very small fault line last night in a vote where four Republican senators crossed lines to vote with Democrats to make a statement of -- of rebuke, essentially, against this president for the premise of the tariffs with Canada.
CORNISH: The premise being a national emergency.
TALEV: An emergency --
CORNISH: Yes.
TALEV: -- as opposed to just the way life is these days.
And I think that tariffs are either a very short-term play. You put them out there, and the other countries are like, never mind, we'll -- we'll adjust.
Or, they're a very long-term play. And American politics works somewhere in the middle, with two-year midterm cycles and four-year presidential elections.
And what we don't know yet is whether we're going to look back six months, or a year, or two years back on today or yesterday and say that was the turning point, the end of the Trump honeymoon, as it were, and everything slid from there.
Or whether we're going to look back on it and say, wow, he really took a dip after that, and then came roaring back.
But what the polling is telling us right now is that something like six out of ten American voters think this is not a good idea.
CORNISH: They're not convinced just yet.
TALEV: A much smaller number --
CORNISH: Yes.
TALEV: -- think it's a really bad -- think it's a great idea. And then just a lot of people aren't sure what it's going to mean. And we are about to find out what it's going to mean.
CORNISH: Yes. You guys stay with us, because we're going to talk a lot more about this today.
And coming up on CNN this morning, a grad student arrested by ICE on the street. He claims he hasn't been told why. How he is fighting for his release.
Plus, Democratic Congressman Greg Landsman joins me to talk about the fallout from President Trumps new tariffs.
And dangerous tornadoes overnight. Right now, there's a big risk for even more.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Opened up the window, and there it was, so close to our house. So, then he told us all to get in the basement, and he went out on the front porch. And he saw it. It went straight through the neighbor's yard and everything. It ripped stuff off our house. But we are so lucky that our house is still standing.
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CORNISH: Hey! Get moving. It's almost 15 minutes past the hour. I want to give you your morning roundup, some of the stories you need to know to get your day going.
Right now, a line of deadly storms is targeting the South, and the National Weather Service calls some of those really dangerous.
Overnight, guests at a hotel in Nashville were forced to run to the basement. One person has been killed in Tennessee, another in Missouri.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, (EXPLETIVE DELETED)! Oh, (EXPLETIVE DELETED)!
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CORNISH: These images from Carmel, Indiana. There are reports that this large funnel cloud toppled a radio tower.
Several people had to be rescued from a collapsed warehouse near Indianapolis.
Ne this morning, Hungary withdraws from the International Criminal Court, and it's happening at the same time that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is there.
So, he has an arrest warrant out for him from that court over allegations of war crimes in Gaza. As a member of the ICC, Hungary would be obliged to -- would be obligated to arrest Netanyahu. And a University of Minnesota grad student being held by immigration
authorities is suing for his release. The Turkish student claims that two officers in plain clothes arrested him on the street last week. He says he's been given little explanation as to why.
Homeland Security claims he was arrested because he had a past DUI conviction.
And the rising cost of eggs may have cracked. The price fell to $3 a dozen last week. Now, back in February, that price, of course, was almost double that. That was mainly caused by the bird flu.
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And you've got to see this. Alex Ovechkin, one step closer to breaking Wayne Gretzky's NHL scoring record. He scored career goal number 892 last night. The record is 894.
His next chance to break that is tomorrow night when his Washington Capitals play the Chicago Blackhawks.
Still ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, we're going to talk about those foreign students targeted by the Trump administration. What legal challenges could mean, not just for the immigration, but for democracy itself.
Plus, time running out to save TikTok. But someone new might be interested in taking over.
And we want to say good morning to Indianapolis. We're talking about Indiana being hit hard by that tornado outbreak overnight. And at this point, that severe threat has passed.
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CORNISH: So, this week I've been thinking a lot about these students who, despite having legal status in the country, have been targeted or detained by the Trump administration or had their immigration status revoked.
So, just this week, our own Shimon Prokupecz actually spoke to a student who barely escaped that same fate. She's a former Ph.D. student at Columbia University, and she actually left the U.S. after ICE agents showed up at her New York City apartment while she was inside.
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SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Did you have any reason to understand why they were doing this?
RANJANI SRINIVASAN, FORMER COLUMBIA STUDENT: No. I was -- I was stunned and scared. I -- when she told me, she turned back and told me ICE is at the door. And I was just shivering. (END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: I wanted to know more about the legal arguments are here. How is this being justified? What's at stake if the Trump administration succeeds in the courts?
So, I went on assignment, spoke with Jameel Jaffer. He's a lawyer whose organization has actually filed some lawsuits challenging these arrests.
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JAMEEL JAFFER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, KNIGHT INSTITUTE: Once you let the government start putting people behind bars on the basis of their political views, it's not obvious why this would end with non- citizens, or why it would end with pro-Palestinian speech.
You know, the government has already started to revoke not just visas, but green cards, as well. So, even legal permanent residents have been rounded up.
The Trump administration has made clear they're going to go after naturalized citizens, as well.
So, you know, we've already made the leap from visa holders to green card holders. It seems like we're going to make the leap from green card holders to naturalized citizens. Not obvious why it stops there either.
And with respect to the substance of the speech, yes, these students are being rounded up on the basis of their pro-Palestinian advocacy.
But once you accept that the government can revoke somebody's visa on the basis of foreign policy considerations, why stop with pro- Palestinian advocacy? Why not go after people who are pro-Ukraine or, for that matter, pro-Greenland or pro-Canada?
You know, there's really no limit to what the Trump administration could do with this power if the courts endorse it.
People need to understand that this is not just a bad policy. This is a policy. It's the kind of policy that ends democracies.
You know, once you give the government the authority to put people behind bars on the basis of their political viewpoints, you have said goodbye to most of what we value about our democracy.
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CORNISH: Bringing this back to the group chat, Stephen, I want to talk with you, because he also talked about this idea of ideological deportation.
But when you listen to the State Department, to Marco Rubio, they put it far more simply. They say these people do have some kind of ties to supporting Hamas or terrorism. They're vague about that term. And that they shouldn't be allowed to come to the U.S. and quote, unquote, "raise a ruckus."
COLLINSON: Well, that's what's causing this culture of fear that is growing among many immigrant and student communities.
It's not just that officials in the administration are tweeting deportations or singling out individual people. It's this idea that someone can get taken off the streets, get sent to Louisiana, or deported, and no one really tells them why.
And the administration will argue, yes, they have links to terrorists. They're supporting radicalism, but no one actually comes out and shows it publicly.
CORNISH: Right.
COLLINSON: Even in the courts. So, there's this -- now, this record, not just of stretching laws like the green card situation to its -- to novel lengths, which Congress arguably never intended it to be stretched to. There's this erosion of due process.
Things are happening behind the scenes that not even judges or the lawyers that are representing these people know about.
CORNISH: Right. And once their visas have been revoked --
COLLINSON: Yes.
CORNISH: -- now you're in another world.
People have been talking. This is where the Trump administration actually polls well, immigration, even though it's a hardline policy. I don't know which one of you wants to take this. But as more stories trickle out about the people who get caught up.
MATTINGLY: Yes.
CORNISH: Does that have an effect?
MATTINGLY: I mean, what's fascinating right now is, if you watch Democrats on Capitol Hill, who in the first term, from the jump, everything immigration related was an uproar, driven by kind of the political leaders of the Democratic Party and the advocacy base, as well.
Now, there's just such a stark divide in terms of what we're seeing publicly, action-wise. Now, that may change. I think it should change, based on the kind of base influence on some level.
But I think you're hitting a critical point here. The Overton Window has shifted dramatically on this issue. And that has allowed, in many ways, the Trump administration to pursue policies that past administrations would have never even considered, not because they didn't think it would help whatever they were trying to do.
[06:25:11]
They never thought possible, pushing statutes to this limit.
CORNISH: Right, right.
MATTINGLY: And so --
CORNISH: Which is why this -- these lawsuits are sort of so significant.
MATTINGLY: Because the courts and judges and what we see and find out and how judges start to set precedent on things that have never been done before. That's not a now moment. That's not a Trump administration moment. That's a, for the remainder of U.S. history moment.
CORNISH: Yes.
MATTINGLY: And so that's the -- like, the essential nature of these moments, I think, is not lost.
CORNISH: Margaret, for you?
TALEV: Stunning statistic. There's something like more than a million international students who, in the last year, have attended a U.S. college or university.
These are not people who snuck across the border and are living in the shadows. These are people who have been invited here and secured passage here to learn.
CORNISH: But if some of them have been vandalizing or part of protests or whatever, should the government be able to say, like, sorry, that's not an option for you.
TALEV: So, we're going to see where the courts come down on this. There -- there is a question that is now going to be pending in court, which is that are -- are -- do foreign nationals have free speech rights in the United States, the same way that Americans have free speech rights?
But clearly, there's a difference between being someone who's in the United States and commits a crime or someone in the United States and actively supports a terror organization; versus somebody who's protesting political policies or making their voice heard in what --
CORNISH: Or wrote an op-ed once.
TALEV: -- have for decades been, you know, an appropriate and accepted and embraced way. And it may have a chilling effect on students willing to come here and learn.
CORNISH: This is also one of those stories where, like the Venezuelan gang members, if you try and make an argument to say there should be due process, someone will look at you and say, well, then you're for Venezuelan gang members, right?
Like, it becomes this -- and in this case, it's wading into the territory of last year, of antisemitism and the real and serious concerns people had about what was happening on campus. It becomes this kind of indefensible argument, right?
MATTINGLY: There's -- there's a little bit of an echo of like, post, like global war on terror, 2001 terrorism.
CORNISH: Yes. Jaffer was an ACLU lawyer during that time.
MATTINGLY: Yes, exactly. We were willing to push the bounds of the legal argument and difficulty on the political side and the advocacy side of fighting it, because they didn't want to be portrayed or smeared as anti-patriotic or anti-American.
Just to make a critical point here that I think people need to understand. They don't need to do this. They're doing it to make the point, not because this is a critical piece of their immigration process or -- or policy, not because this is massively moving out illegal immigrants or undocumented immigrants that committed crimes. They're doing this purely to make the point.
And because they think they can, with a resource-stretched bureaucracy that they desperately are asking Congress for more money to do what they need to do at the border.
CORNISH: Yes.
MATTINGLY: And I think that -- people need to understand the voluntary nature of the pursuit of this by the Trump administration.
CORNISH: And it is making its intended targets heard in terms of the chilling effect on campuses.
TALEV: It's terrifying to students.
CORNISH: We heard from a lot of students who are afraid to travel, afraid to have their names in stories, afraid to post anything online. They came to school to sort of experiment in this world, and --
MATTINGLY: Deterrence is not unintentional --
CORNISH: Yes.
MATTINGLY: -- when it comes to issues like this.
CORNISH: All right, you guys, thanks for talking with me about this.
And if you want to know more, new episodes of "The Assignment" drop every Thursday.
Up next on CNN THIS MORNING, President Trump's aggressive new tariffs are now in effect. We're going to talk about how markets are reacting.
Plus, why the FDA has pressed pause on a new COVID shot.
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