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Inside Politics

World Bracing for Impact of New Trump Tariffs This Week; Trump Gambles Economy on New "Reciprocal" Tariffs; Trump: New Tariffs Coming Wednesday, Will Mark "Liberation Day"; Musk Gives Out 1$ Million Payments after Court Declines to Stop Him; Gov. Newsom: "The Democratic Brand is Toxic Right Now". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 31, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Today on "Inside Politics" flipping a tariff tarot card. The world and its economy are waiting with trepidation for President Trump to escalate his global trade war with new tariffs this week. The only thing certain is uncertainty which markets don't love.

Plus, campaign crunch time the political world is focused on Wisconsin and Florida with the first major elections since Donald Trump reclaimed the White House. A crucial question is what impact Elon Musk and his millions will have this time around? And toxic, problematic, elite this is how top Democrats are describing their own party. What's their plan to fix it? I'll speak to a top Democratic Senator this hour. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics".

We start with jittery global markets bracing for President Trump's new barrage of tariffs set to take effect this week. He dubbed Wednesday, April 2nd quote Liberation Day, claiming his new plan will free Americans from a dependence on foreign goods. But how is that going to happen? What kind of tariffs are actually coming? Which countries will take the biggest hit?

The answers to these questions and more, no one really knows. CNN's Jeff Zeleny is at the White House maybe Jeff Zeleny knows, Jeff?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Dana, there is no question that for all the whiplash that we have seen here at the White House in the first 66 or so days of this administration, the front and center to all that is the president's view on global trade and what these tariff policies have done.

We've seen an on again, off again, on again, off again. But the president and the White House are talking about Wednesday being the day for these reciprocal tariffs. That is essentially the U.S. charging what other countries are charging the U.S. for a tariff. So essentially, it's a tax, though, on goods that American consumers will pay.

The question, will this be across the board? Will this be sort of country by country, sector by sector? That is an open question. The president last night, flying back to Washington, offered little clarity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How many countries will be in that initial -

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You'd start with all countries. So, let's see what happens. There are many countries. I haven't heard a rumor about 15 countries, 10 or 15 countries.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, you're starting with all countries?

TRUMP: Essentially all of the countries that we're talking about would be talking about all countries and not a cut off.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So, even at this hour, there are frantic conversations with the White House underway from some countries, from some industries, trying to get exemptions to this that is why this uncertainty that you talked about Dana is such a central challenge to the financial markets.

But one thing does seem certain, and that is that the costs of things will go up. And the president acknowledged that in a weekend interview with NBC News. He acknowledged that Americans would likely pay more for certain things, like automobiles.

He said this, I couldn't care less if they raised prices, because people are going to start buying American cars. We shall see how that wears. Because there's no doubt that American consumers have already been paying a lot for a lot of things. It's one of the reasons this president was elected, because of high prices and inflation. So that quote is a central concern for many people watching the market and the fallout from this policy of tariff standard, Dana.

BASH: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for that report, Jeff. And President Trump's one of his top advisers on trade, is claiming tariffs will raise hundreds of billions of dollars. He denies there will be any short-term pain.

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PETER NAVARRO, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE COUNSELOR ON TRADE & MANUFACTURING: Trusted Trump, we have the example from the first term 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.

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BASH: I'm joined here by a talented group of reporters, CNN's Manu Raju, Seung Min Kim of "The Associated Press" and Susan Glasser of "The New Yorker". Happy Monday, one and all. Let's pick up where Peter Navarro left off. You know, he is one of the advisors that Donald Trump has. Who is about as consistent as Donald Trump is on tariffs.

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I mean, he is all gung-ho on tariffs always has been. So, it's not surprising that he is trying to downplay the side effects. But the side effects are quite real.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, they are quite real. And the question is, how long will the Republicans who, by and large despise tariffs? Donald Trump has actually been is really the minority when it comes to his party about whether they prove this tariff policy.

But a lot of them are just biting their tongue at the moment. They are deeply uneasy. They're hearing concerns from the agriculture sector people states that do significant amount of trade with Canada and with Mexico, and worries about the impacts in the auto markets.

They are allowing Donald Trump to move ahead because they're concerned about stepping out and getting backlash. But if these prices continue to rise, they're going to hear a lot of it back home, and will their posture change towards the president with his policies? That's going to be one of the key questions.

Because I put this question to a lot of Republicans say, how long are you willing to sustain this? They said, what will the president do what he's going to do? And our constituents agree, give the president some space, but that's going to be the question. Will Americans really be willing to pay higher prices for the long term? It seems unlikely.

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. Republicans are really hoping that this is a negotiating tactic by the president. Would you seen him make those threats a lot of times, especially in this first term and scale it back. And look -- and kind of paint that as a win.

We've seen tariff policies seesaw even this year, earlier this year, in terms of what he wanted to do. But Republicans are just as a party, they are fundamentally opposed to tariffs. This is not something that they support, and this is where there was a lot of friction in the first term between congressional Republicans and Donald Trump about his sort of tariff policy.

And right now, I think again, they're hoping that this is a negotiating tactic, that these higher prices won't stay permanent. But with Donald Trump, especially on this, we don't know what he's going to do right now.

BASH: So, you mentioned the seesaw. Let's paint that seesaw picture for our viewers. This is Donald Trump just starting March 4th, up through March 26th.

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TRUMP: April 2nd, reciprocal tariffs kick in, and whatever they tariff us other countries, we will tariff them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are not going -

TRUMP: No, no. Look we've been ripped off for years, and we're not going to be ripped off anymore. No, I'm not going to bend it all. I'll probably be more lenient than reciprocal, because if I was reciprocal, that would be -- that would be very tough for people. I think they'll be pleasantly surprised. I don't know. I think we're trying to keep it somewhat conservative.

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BASH: And Susan, I just want to add to that with a forecast from Goldman Sachs. And this is really critical, and they are raising recession questions, not so much, just generally about inflation and so forth, but specifically because of concerns about the impact of these tariffs.

Statements from the White House officials indicating greater willingness to tolerate near term economic weakness in pursuit of their policies. That is the reason they are so concerned about a potential recession, which goes to 35 precent?

SUSAN GLASSER, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Yeah, that's right. I mean, look, what are we seeing here? We're seeing the President of the United States is his own global risk factor. You know, he himself is generating an enormous amount of uncertainty across the entire global economy.

So that's something very different than the theory of the case, never mind Republican orthodoxy not being in favor of tariffs. Generally speaking, Americans have not preferred to have their president, whatever party he's from, be the agent of insecurity and instability around the globe. So that's first of all.

Second of all, I think you look at this uncertainty right now around tariffs, and you see Trump in sort of speeded up real time, engaging in many of the fights of his first term, but remember that opposition inside of his own cabinet and his own White House in Trump 1.0 led to years of debate around this.

It wasn't actually, until the spring of 2018 that there was a first major round of tariffs that caused actually Trump's first national economic adviser, Gary Cohen from Goldman Sachs formerly to leave his administration. Well, flash forward here we are. We're not even 100 days into Trump 2.0 so I think it shows the difference.

And then the third major thing is that it's not just inside American politics, where you're seeing the disruption of a Republican President who believes in beautiful tariffs. I think there's a real geopolitical element of this that's often missed. I noticed Xi Jinping, the Leader of China -

BASH: Yeah.

GLASSER: -- hosting business executives the other day and saying, the era of globalization is here to stay and cannot be undone. What is the opportunity for America's adversaries if we're going after our own allies in trade partners in a trade war?

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BASH: Yeah. I mean, that's why it's such a good point. It's one of the many concerns that people who are very skeptical of these tariffs have, which is, it's not as if the other countries who have companies who want to get into the U.S. markets are going to wait around and be patient. They're going to go somewhere else, like China, huge markets, which do exist around, around the globe.

You mentioned the fact that in the first Trump term, it took a while, because there was pushback internally, those people aren't there this time, they just don't exist. And that's obviously by design on Trump's part. There are some, and you mentioned this Manu, a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill who still believe in a global economy, and they are trying to find ways to support the president on this, because they don't really have a choice. I spoke with Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma yesterday. Listen to what he said.

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SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK): I feel like in some ways, in the economy, this is kind of like a kitchen remodel or a bath remodel. There's a bit of a mess at the beginning, but everybody has a long-term look of where we're headed. It's going to be noisy for a little while, but we all know where we're headed, trying to reduce the prices for Americans and increase jobs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So that's a worthy goal.

RAJU: Yeah.

BASH: That is assuming that that long term goal, or the -- to keep his metaphor in place, that bathroom is ever going to get done.

RAJU: We've seen those remodelling badgers last a long time go over budget.

BASH: Right. I mean, that's -- that's the question, and whether or not there actually is a market for the kind of manufacturing in the U.S. that Trump is banking on. That was certainly a thing in the last century, but it is still here.

RAJU: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, look, the one thing you hear from Republicans like James Lankford and to the Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who also is a free trade Republican, someone who opposes tariffs, someone who represents South Dakota that would get hammered by these tariffs, particularly on Canada.

He is opposed to these, but he keeps saying he's in a different place in the administration. But let's hope these are temporary. Are these temporary? Who knows, if this keeps going on the seesaw back and forth and it lasts for a long time, that's when these constituents will be hit particularly hard. BASH: All right. Everybody, stand by. Up next, Elon Musk, he's pulling out all the stops for Wisconsin's Supreme Court election. You see it there? He's throwing a lot of cheddar at voters. Sorry for the cheesy tease. We'll be right back.

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BASH: This week, Republicans face a critical test in three elections in Florida, two races have a direct impact on Republicans and their control of the House of Representatives. Elections to replace Congressman Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz. President Trump won both districts by more than 30 percentage points. Some Republicans are a bit worried that tomorrow's results could look different.

And in Wisconsin, a really high stakes State Supreme Court race between the Liberal Candidate, Judge Susan Crawford and the Conservative Judge Brad Schimel, the race has drawn attention, and the involvement of Elon Musk, the billionaire, and groups tied to him are spending more than $20 million. Again, just to emphasize, if you can distract yourself from the hat, this is a state Supreme Court race. He even went there over the weekend to rally voters, as you see personally.

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ELON MUSK, TRUMP PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: If the Supreme Court is able to redraw the districts they will -- they will gerrymander the districts and deprive Wisconsin of two-House seats on the Republican side. Yeah, exactly. This is one of those things that that may not seem that it's going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will.

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BASH: CNN's Arlette Saenz is in Wisconsin. Was at that rally we just played in Green Bay. So, Arlette, we just heard some of Elon Musk's argument for the conservative candidate. Talk a little bit more about his involvement.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well Dana, Elon Musk is going all in on this race for a single seat on Wisconsin Supreme Court. His ultimate goal is trying to drive out those voters who supported President Donald Trump in the November election, to have them now vote for Judge Schimel, the Conservative candidate running in tomorrow's race.

Now you heard there from Elon Musk himself talking about a main motivator in this race is the potential that a liberal majority on the court could revisit congressional maps which currently favor Republicans in the state. Democrats had initially crafted the Liberals campaign around the issue of abortion rights.

But after Musk got involved and spent so much money on this race, they've shifted their strategy a bit, hoping that they can motivate voters who are maybe turned off by Musk's big spending or his efforts through DOGE. Here's a bit of a sample of how both the Liberal Candidate Susan Crawford and the Conservative Candidate Brad Schimel are viewing the big money in this race.

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SUSAN CRAWFORD, WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT CANDIDATE: I think all voters in Wisconsin should be concerned about this, about somebody coming in and trying to buy a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

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BRAD SCHIMEL, WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT CANDIDATE: Four out of five of her donors don't vote in Wisconsin because they don't live here. Why isn't that the headline? Instead of Elon Musk, why aren't we worried about California donors buying the Wisconsin Supreme Court race?

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SAENZ: So, this is really shaping up to be the first major political test of President Trump's second term, and one that Democrats are hoping to turn into a referendum on Elon Musk as well.

BASH: So, we mentioned the 20 million that Elon Musk is pouring in, but that's just part of it. I mean there by the last account, by -- but our -- by our David Wright, $80 million coming in from both sides. I mean, that's astonishing Arlette?

SAENZ: Yeah, and it's already exceeded the amount that was spent in a 2023, Wisconsin Supreme Court Race. And this could potentially be on track to meet $100 million. We have seen the spending here ticking up as each day passes, and it's not just Elon Musk who is spending big in this race. There have been Democratic donors like George Soros and Jamie Pritzker, the Illinois Governor, who have given money to the Wisconsin Democratic Party.

They're also trying to mobilize national Democrats to give in this race. And it comes as really the State of Wisconsin is so pivotal, when you think about the way the role that it's had in these presidential elections. It was President Trump's narrowest margin of victory. President Biden won here back in 2020 so this is really a very divided state. It's attracting a lot of national attention in a race that's technically nonpartisan, but that's really just in name only.

BASH: Yeah, it sure is. I mean, Wisconsin is truly a purple state. Thank you so much. Appreciate that Arlette, we'll be certainly hearing a lot from you in the next 24 to 48 hours. And coming up is the next Presidential Primary shaping up to beat a battle of the Governors. We'll tell you which Democrats appear to have 2028 in mind. After a quick break.

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BASH: This weekend, we saw Democratic Governors who are toying with the idea of a 2028, Presidential Run wade further into the very muddy waters of what is wrong with the Democratic Party. California Governor Gavin Newsom was blunt.

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GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): These guys are crushing us. The Democratic brand is toxic right now. The problem with the Democratic brand, we talk down to people. We talk past people. We're in a panic. I get it for good reason. This guy is not screwing around, right? We need to own our mistakes. We need to own what's wrong with our party.

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BASH: When that interview, Newsom pumped up his bio, as did Maryland's Governor Wes Moore, when I spoke with him on State of the Union Yesterday, I asked him to respond to Newsom's diagnosis that the Democratic Party is toxic.

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GOV. WES MOORE (D-MD): I think that this is not a new thing, because people have policies that haven't worked for them. I mean, I'm a product of broken policies, right? One of my earliest memories was watching my father die in front of me because he didn't get the health care he needed. The thing that I know is that we've got to make sure that it's not about a talking point. It's not about what's the right slogan. It's about delivering results.

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BASH: A group of exceptional reporters are back. What do you make of this kind of early dynamic going on? Let's just start with the Governors, because they are obviously the chief executives of their states. They have the ability, unlike legislators, to talk about things that they have done, and they certainly have receipts to show, and they're not afraid to show them.

KIM: What's been really interesting to see, sort of Gavin Newsom and then everyone else. I mean, I think everyone agrees. Every Democrat agrees their party is not in a great state right now, but no one's really been as vocal about the shortcomings of the Democratic Party and really trying to reach out and reach out to sort of almost the MAGA right as Gavin Newsom has to them -- to the dismay of many in the party.

So that, to me, is obvious, clear positioning for something in the future. I just not sure how effective it would be, because, as we know, in politics, you got to get your base in your own party excited first before you start maybe having conversations with the Charlie Kirks of the world. But you know, you're right that Governors do have a platform to run on.

And you see, you know, people like Gretchen Whitmer Wes Moore touting there what they have been able to do in their own states. I mean, they've been touting it for the last several years, as they see kind of the bench beyond Biden, and we're certainly going to continue to see that going forward.

BASH: So, that's definitely one dynamic. I mean, you could take Gavin Morrison -- Gavin Newsom at his word, obviously coming back from spring break. Gavin Newsom at his word, that he genuinely does want to have conversations across the aisle.

There's also obviously a political question about whether or not Democratic voters are just so tired of losing that they'll just pick somebody who they think could win. Now that's, I think, a stretch. That's not always, and that's not usually how the Democratic primary process works. But another dynamic here is Governors talking about how they are working in their states.

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