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Trump Gambles World Economy On Biggest Tariffs In 100 Plus Years; 3 National Security Staff Fired After Trump Meets With Right- Wing Activist; Today: High-Stakes Hearing In Disputed Deportation Case. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 03, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:34:20]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: We want to now take a deep dive into what the President was holding up in the Rose Garden. It's a list of countries and the tariffs he is imposing on those countries. There are questions about how the Trump administration arrived at those tariffs on said countries in the first place. So let's try to explain.

Phil Mattingly is here. Walk us through. I have to say just looking at that, I get a little bit of a stomach ache because this whole situation, as if somebody --

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Yes, no.

BASH: -- who hates math cares me.

MATTINGLY: Just the visual itself is not helping us out --

BASH: But this is the formula that they use to get to the list that they have --

MATTINGLY: Yes.

BASH: -- and the tariffs that are happening now.

MATTINGLY: And by the way, if you're watching and looking -- you're not supposed to understand what this means. In fact, that's kind of part of the play here.

[12:35:04]

But let me explain what it actually means because I think, as Dana was pointing out, the critical question yesterday when we were looking at the chart and when we were actually looking at the numbers, like the 34 percent number is the actual tariff that the U.S. is putting on China, adding others on top of it, stacking them together.

And how they got there, given the fact it didn't correlate with the actual tariffs we know China has on the U.S. or any other country has in the U.S., was a real question everybody's trying to figure out, particularly because they are so high and they are so dramatic. So let's take Vietnam. You mentioned Vietnam earlier in the show, which is obviously a huge exporter to the United States because U.S. people buy Vietnamese goods. What does it actually mean? Trading between the U.S. and Vietnam is based on 2024 census data, which is the data that was utilized to come up with the calculation.

Vietnam exports $136.6 billion in goods to the U.S. The U.S. exports $13.1 billion in goods to Vietnam. Now, how did they get to the 90 percent, which they cut in half to 46 percent? What they did is they subtracted the Vietnamese goods bought by the U.S., $136.6 billion, total U.S. goods bought by Vietnam, and ended up with $123.5 billion.

Now, the way they actually got to the 90 percent number is they did 123.5 divided by 136.6, which equals 0.90 or 90 percent.

BASH: And then half of that.

MATTINGLY: And then because of the benevolence of President Trump, as he kind of laid it out, then they cut that in half. Now, the big question, of course, is that's not necessarily a number or a methodology that economists could identify with.

In fact, the most interesting moment of the night throughout the course of the night last night was economists of all sides, all ideologies, Republican and Democrat, staring at the methodology and saying that's not how this is supposed to work.

It underscores, though, trade deficits in the mind of the President, but also in the mind of his team, are absolutely essential to how they view things and the view that they don't think any of those economists. Republican or Democrat, have gotten it right up to this point, and they're going a different route.

BASH: And that's what this, first of all -- don't get rid of that yet, because I'm not going to --

MATTINGLY: You want the script (ph) handwriting?

BASH: -- let call -- have to call you out on this.

MATTINGLY: Yes, what did I do?

BASH: Because I have terrible handwriting. What is this?

MATTINGLY: That's a 9.

BASH: OK.

MATTINGLY: Obviously.

BASH: And what's happening over here?

MATTINGLY: It's a 0.9 --

BASH: OK.

MATTINGLY: -- which then goes to, in my head --

BASH: Sorry.

MATTINGLY: -- it made a lot of sense.

BASH: I couldn't help myself.

MATTINGLY: That's fine. That's fair.

BASH: But the fairness question --

MATTINGLY: Yes.

BASH: -- that is, we talked about this earlier in the show, that is the kind of North Star for Donald Trump that is driving all of this trade policy --

MATTINGLY: Right.

BASH: -- that he has wanted to do and now he is doing. And that helps answer the why to this formula that you just laid out for our viewers?

MATTINGLY: What's most important is when the President said he loves reciprocity and would say it over and over again, sometimes say it in hushed tones, he framed things as if it was a tariff-for-tariff type of deal. What he wanted to do is if Vietnam has X tariff on X product to the -- that the U.S. is exporting to them, we are going to match that one-to-one. That's not what happened.

And I think this is important to note here, because in the executive order that laid out the pathway where we landed yesterday, they made clear it wasn't just about tariffs. It was about non-tariff barriers. In fact, when you talk to Trump's economic team, they focus on that far more than they focus on the actual tariffs themselves by product.

Here's the other issue. Doing tariff-by-tariff calculations, product- by-product for any nation, particularly 185, almost impossible given the timeline they were working with, and they got at that last night. The USTR in the statement laying out the methodology said, while individually computing the trade deficit effects of tens of thousands of tariff, regulatory, tax, and other policies in each country is complex, if not impossible, they thought this was the best way to get at the most central issue for them in their minds.

The reality is no one could really identify with a linear methodology how to define non-tariff barriers for every single country in different regions that do different products. They also need a lot of staff to do something like this. That's why I say, if not impossible, you saw the methodology. Economists scoff at it, but it is the reality, and it's now the basis for the 60 countries that are being hit with reciprocal tariffs.

BASH: Absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for explaining that, Phil. Great to see you, even though you do need help with your handwriting. Coming up, what happens when President Trump reportedly takes advice from a right-wing conspiracy theorist? We have breaking news on that after a break.

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[12:44:09]

BASH: We're following more breaking news now. Sources tell CNN the White House fired at least three National Security Council staffers after a right-wing, far right-wing conspiracy theorist told the President they are, quote, "disloyal".

One source says these terminations were a direct result of Laura Loomer's meeting with President Trump yesterday. Now, it is important to note that Loomer is a far-right activist who has gone deep into conspiracy theory land. Just one example, she claimed that 9/11 was an inside job. Now, she told CNN that she wouldn't comment on the meeting.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins and Katie Bo Lillis are part of the CNN team that is reporting on this story. So, Kaitlan, let me first start with you. People who watch a show called Inside Politics are probably very familiar with Laura Loomer as an individual, also probably familiar with the fact that during the campaign there was controversy, and she was asked not to be back on Air Force One. How did this happen that she got back into the inner circle?

[12:45:19]

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, on the campaign trail, she actually had pretty good proximity to President Trump when he was outside of the White House. She traveled with him to the 9/11 memorial on the anniversary, even though, as you noted, she posted a video once that said that 9/11 was an inside job.

And she has been complaining publicly that she has not had nearly as much access. She's tried to get to the press briefing room. She's publicly tweeted at White House officials complaining they weren't letting her onto the grounds.

And, obviously, to get onto the White House campus, you have to be cleared in by a White House staffer. You give your Social Security number to the Secret Service. You can't just walk into the White House.

And we saw her walking out of the West Wing yesterday, and that was after she had a personal meeting with President Trump inside the Oval Office. And we've now confirmed details, first reported by The New York Times, that she met with President Trump.

Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, had just had a meeting with the President. He stayed behind and was in that meeting with Laura Loomer, where she was attacking several members of his staff at the National Security Council, saying that they were not sufficiently loyal to President Trump. That includes his principal deputy right underneath him, his name is Alex Wong, and several others, and was essentially arguing that President Trump should fire them. And then she left shortly before that tariff announcement came out yesterday afternoon.

And so now, what we're witnessing right now is a purge is underway at the NSC with several of the names that she brought to President Trump, arguing that they should not work for him.

BASH: And this is the key, and I want you to talk about who these people are in one second. But the key here is, people hear NSC, they work for Mike Waltz, they might think, oh, this is about Signalgate. It's not.

COLLINS: No. None of these people are --

BASH: Nothing to do with it. It's about loyalty.

COLLINS: -- are related to that, from what we understand.

BASH: Alleged loyalty.

COLLINS: Right, it's alleged loyalty, or the argument is that they're too hawkish, that they don't actually share the President's views on that. I mean, you can look at the Signalgate chat, and there were even disagreements with the Vice President saying that he didn't believe that they should strike.

And so, anyway, but on this, it is important to note that Laura Loomer is driving this. She is a far-right activist. She is someone who said that if Vice President Harris won the White House during the election, that it would smell like curry. Those were comments that were denounced by Republican allies of the President, including Vance --

BASH: Yes.

COLLINS: -- at the time said he disagreed with it. And so she is the one who's really driving this, and it speaks to the level of influence that she has.

BASH: And let's talk about the impact on national security, who they are, and why this matters so much for how the national security of the United States of America is run, and who's doing it.

KATIE BO LILLIS, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, what's fascinating about this is that the three staffers that have been fired here are outside of Washington Beltway national security circles. These are pretty anonymous people. They are foreign policy minds that have serious resumes, that have worked serious jobs on Capitol Hill, in the State Department, in think tanks.

You know, these are people that are well-known in national security circles because they are longtime practitioners of foreign policy, experienced in making that kind of policy. These are the people that are sort of engaged in the nitty-gritty of actually designing national security policy for the President. But they're not big public figures. You know, they're people like Brian Walsh, who was the -- who ran intelligence programs for the White House, who formerly worked for Senator Marco Rubio when he was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. You had a senior director who worked on technology issues for the National Security Council. And you had the head of legislative affairs for the National Security Council.

So, again, not people that are sort of big public names that you're hearing on cable news all day long. And I think it really speaks to this kind of lesson that the President felt that he learned out of his first administration of being managed up by these faceless bureaucrats.

BASH: Thank you both for your reporting. Appreciate you being here, getting up and in a little earlier.

We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere.

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[12:53:32]

BASH: Did the Trump administration deliberately violate a court order? Justice Department lawyers will try to convince a judge they didn't intentionally defy him when the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador after he told them not to. It's all set for just under -- just over two hours from now, 3:00 p.m. Eastern. And it is the first step in seeing possible consequences for those Trump officials.

CNN's Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid joins me now. Paula, what do we know?

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Dana, this is incredibly significant because while we've covered dozens of hearings about the legality of various executive orders, this is the closest that a federal judge has gotten to deciding whether the administration may have defied a court order, something many people have been concerned that they might try to do.

And as you noted, at the center of this controversy was the President's sweeping use of a wartime authority to speed up deportations. And after lawyers for some Venezuelan migrants filed a challenge, Judge James Boasberg ruled from the bench that this had to stop and that planes carrying migrants had to be turned around.

But two of those planes continued to El Salvador, and today the judge said he wants to get to the bottom of whether his order was intentionally defied. Now the administration has argued that since this order came from the bench, it was an oral order, but it did not have the same weight, the same binding nature as his eventual written order. That's not a great argument.

But there are other serious legal questions about whether this judge had the authority to order these planes over international waters to turn around.

[12:55:05]

The administration has also said it will invoke state secret privilege to keep some key details from this judge, and that may come up at today's hearing. But the lawyer arguing this, the lawyers involved with this, I mean, they face possible contempt or even sanctions, but they know that they have the backing of the top leaders at the Justice Department.

They have done an unusual show of force, everyone from the attorney general on down, signing a lot of their filings. And we'll be looking to see, Dana, if any of them show up, because it's just a few blocks away from Maine Justice, where they work, where they'll be holding this hearing.

BASH: OK. I know that you will be all over it, as always. Paula, thank you so much. Appreciate your reporting.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central will start after the break.

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