Trump Doubles Down on China
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It is Thursday, April 10th. Here's what's happening right now on CNN This Morning. Right now, everything's up in the air. We don't know what to expect.

So China's new tariffs are still going to kick in as the U.S. raises the stakes. Can this tit-for-tat trade war still lead to a recession? Plus, hope fades in the search for survivors in a nightclub collapse. The death toll climbs overnight in the Dominican Republic. Also, an American ballerina wrongfully detained in Russia heading home this morning. The new details just in about her release.

And we've seen this movie before, Powerful Tech and A Machine Takeover. I talked to Microsoft's head of AI to ask how do we keep humanity from becoming the plot twist?

It is 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. Here is a live look at Capitol Hill. Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with me. And we're going to start with the conversation on tariffs again, because China's 84 percent tariffs on all U.S. imports are officially in effect.

That's escalating the trade war between the U.S. and Beijing. China responded to President Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports. Now Trump is raising them again to 125%. And it's U.S. businesses and consumers who are, of course, caught in the middle of this. From HVAC systems to wedding gowns, almost everything could be impacted.

Even the stuff that's manufacturer, you know, put together here in the United States, lots of those things have parts that are coming from China. Even if it's manufactured in the United States, some of the fabrics are coming from other countries that have the tariffs. So it's such a trickle effect. While the trade war with China ramps up for other countries, you get a sigh of relief. President Trump abruptly pressing pause on what he called reciprocal tariffs for all other nations.

I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know? They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid. I did a 90-day pause for the people that didn't retaliate because I told them, if you retaliate, we're going to double it. And that's what I did with China because they did retaliate. So we'll see how it all works out. I think it's going to work out.

Sources tell CNN that mounting concerns inside the Treasury Department over the bond market played into that decision. Joining me now to discuss our group chat, CNN senior reporter Isaac Dover, Zolan Kano Young, White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Salaya Mohsen, senior Washington correspondent for Bloomberg.

So first of all, you guys welcome to the chat. Welcome to the morning. This is a strange day because we're talking about this massive amount of tariffs on China and but for everyone else they get this like reprieve for a moment. I mean it's a reprieve from a problem of the president's making arguably but can you talk about this decision because trade representatives

were on the Hill defending the across the board tariffs when this decision was public on, of course, Truth Social. Yeah, many of the president's advisers were really kept in the dark, you know, throughout this process. And throughout this process, you just had a lot of mixed messaging, inconsistent messaging coming from the White House here.

The tariffs come down. And initially, the message from Pete Navarro, from the president, is they are here to stay. He's digging his heels in. They are saying this is a commitment to realign the global economy. But also open to negotiation. But then... Not a negotiating table.

Right. Yeah. And also those aides may have been saying, dig the heels in. But then you've got others, you know, saying we're open to negotiations. Governments are coming over as well. The administration has tried to now spin this Trump's flip flop on this and the pause as sort of a an example of his negotiation tactics. Of brilliance, I think. Yeah.

Yeah, but in the, not just in this area, but when you get from a lot of people who work for the president and Republicans in Congress, this feeling of like Trumpian infallibility, that whatever he says at any given moment is the plan and was always the plan, even if it changes five minutes later or is completely reversed, right? He himself divulges, right? We saw yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Fessin, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying that, okay, we've

This was part of our strategy all along. Stephen Miller said the same thing. We had a strategy. The president is brilliant. Then the president comes out saying, yeah, I've just been thinking about this recently. We decided this morning. I was worried about the bond markets. I know. I mean, I think the messaging of it, it's like that's the inside baseball that's fascinating to watch when you've watched politics for a long time.

The part of me that got a letter from my 401k retirement place that was literally paragraphs long about the volatility and not to be concerned and not to be worried knows there are a lot of retirement age people who got more than the yips.

So like in the Bloomberg newsroom, for instance, I can imagine it has been very busy. Is it being reported out today as like great day for the market? Not really, because it's a 90 day pause. So, yes, markets have gone up stocks around the world. We saw when Besant was speaking yesterday outside the White House, all the green arrows pointing up. That's what we were watching on Bloomberg News. But yes,

We are also now seeing that futures are not holding steady because people don't know what the roadmap or the criteria is for negotiations and what happens after 90 days. Is there an extension? Is the 90 days rescinded? And

the U.S. and China are the world's two largest economies. When elephants fight, what happens? And then you were reporting out or I think taking a look at the fact that the president actually posted on Truth Social, this is a great time to buy before he made this decision. Is that drawing any attention? Oh, yeah, absolutely. When he...

After he basically posted that, then hours later you have the pause, which sends the market soaring. His trade representative is in Congress at the Capitol testifying, and immediately Stephen Horsford, the Democrat from Nevada, questions him and asks, is this market manipulation? Adam Schiff also repeats that, too, questioning, is this market manipulation? It's getting a lot of attention here as well. Republican Congressman Jeff Hurd was asked about this, about whether Congress might investigate.

Hearing that does give me some concern. I will tell you that I'm a member of Congress that does not believe we should be buying or selling individual securities as members of Congress. Me personally, I just own mutual funds, broad index-based funds. The success of the American economy is my personal success. It is something that causes some concern for me. We may want to look at that.

The reason why I'm playing that is because now we're going to survey damage. And there were winners and losers in this last couple of days. And that's what we're going to talk about for the rest of the show. I want the group chat to stay with me. We've got a lot more to discuss coming up on CNN this morning. Maybe you remember the alt band Weezer, why the wife of one of the band members was shot by police during a manhunt.

and arrested on attempted murder charges. Plus, King James or Ken James? How LeBron is making history off the basketball court. And we're going to continue that conversation about tariffs with Congresswoman Becca Ballant, what she's hearing from her constituents. With the tariffs paused, the U.S. now has three months to work out all of its relationship with all these countries. Basically, our economy now mimics the exact plot of 90 Day Fiancé.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. What we see is that people who sit on the ground, their 5k times get faster. Their backs stop hurting. That's Dr. Kelly Starrett, co-author of a really good book called Built to Move, to give all of us busy people some of the simple tools to improve our range of motion, our posture, decrease our pain, and yes, become more mobile. Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, time to get going. It's almost 15 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup, some of the stories you need to know to get your day going. The Trump administration preparing to send more migrants to El Salvador's mega prisons, this according to two U.S. officials. It's on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling allowing them to use a sweeping wartime authority for deportations. Next week, El Salvador's president will visit the White House to discuss the use of his prisons.

And a key hearing in the death penalty case of a suspected Idaho student killer, Brian Koberger. The judge is deciding what evidence jurors will be able to hear during his trial. He's already ordered prosecutors to stop using the words psychopath and sociopath to describe Koberger in front of jurors.

And the wife of Weezer bassist Scott Schreiner, shot by police and arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. Police say Jillian Schreiner pointed a handgun at officers as they were investigating an unrelated hidden run near her home. She was shot and she's also being treated for a non-life-threatening gunshot wound.

New this hour, a Russian-American ballerina is now free from a Russian prison. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the release of Zhenya Karolina just a few hours ago. She's been serving 12 years in prison for treason after donating $50,000 to a charity supporting Ukraine. And you gotta see this. You might need to do a little lifting. Legs look a little skinny, a little frail, a little fella.

LeBron James has a new title, Ken Basseter. The King is now the first male athlete to get his very own Ken doll. It's in LeBron's pregame fashion, of course, wearing a varsity jacket with the number 23 in the quote, just a kid from Akron. The doll is actually an inch taller than all other Kens.

ahead on CNN this morning. Addressing the rumors former First Lady Michelle Obama breaks her silence about why she's been missing from the spotlight and the whispers of a divorce. Plus this week's assignment, how can governments, companies, ordinary people live in harmony with AI? I'll ask the CEO of Microsoft AI. And a live look at U.S. futures markets on pace to sink sharply at the opening bell in a few hours.

What do you think he's going to be doing when artificial intelligence and robotics comes for your job? Guess what? The job you have today ain't going to be here in 10 or 15 years. And you think Musk and his friends are saying, oh my goodness, how do we protect American workers from the explosion in technology that we're seeing? They don't give a damn about you.

That's Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in a CNN town hall last night talking about the risks of AI. And I'm going to be honest, I actually use AI. I use it a ton at home, planning vacations, whenever, you know, it's like a thing now, right? You can download it in the App Store. Millions of people do as well.

Lately, I have been asking myself this question though that a lot of us are grappling with, which is if AI becomes indispensable, what does that make me? Two thumbs and expendable. The assignment this week, Microsoft's head of AI, Mustafa Suleiman, spoke to me about the roles that all of us should play in ensuring that we can live and work with this technology.

Is there any science fiction that comes close to your mind about where we are now or things to be concerned about? People keep bringing up the Terminator and you've said yourself, look, that's not going to happen unless someone develops it that way, which isn't that really much of a comfort because the odds are someone with the right financial incentive might. Yeah. When you put that kind of power in the hands of literally hundreds of millions of developers, the equation changes. And that gets me to the idea of guardrails. Yeah.

What kind of guardrails should there be? Because we are in a moment where we've literally seen them rolled back. Yeah. Yeah. This is a really tough one. I think this is a moment when, you know, we are going to need to believe and trust in our companies a lot and rely on them to do the right thing. I mean, we just had a decade or decade and a half where we witnessed unintended consequences take a toll on our democracy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that's the right approach, because it would be wrong to blindly trust. We're in a moment where it's a trust but verify. We all worried in 2022, 2021, when these models started to come out, that as they got bigger, they would be less controllable. Now we have three years of empirical data, and net-net, there have been some harms. Some people have clearly been hurt by it, right?

But the 99.999% number is quite staggering. So the questions around distribution, availability of access, ease of use, the fact that we now have knowledge at our fingertips, this is a remarkable number.

positive achievement, right? Now, again, I said trust but verify. But I don't know who's going to do the verifying. Most recently, we had J.D. Vance, the vice president, speaking about innovation and saying that needs to be basically the North Star of this conversation. I know what the tech industry is like when innovation is its North Star. And we're left in the dust of that in a lot of ways.

Look, the debate moves forward and then moves in another direction. And that is a natural, healthy balance in our democracies. Right. But it's moving really forward. Do you know what I mean? Like when you even talk about a few years ago, what AI could do a few years ago is not.

what it does today or where it's in use today. I mean, I'm biased. I'm asking you this because I'm in a building that might not exist in a few years if a large language model, if an AI or an AGI can do the job better. So it feels very literal to people because when they talk about job loss or things changing, it's across many different kinds of industries and people feel it.

Yeah. I mean, the nature of our work is going to fundamentally change. And every generation of technology changes where we work, how we work, who we interact with. But

I think this is also a moment where we will have to decide which parts of the science and technology we really introduce into our societies and at what rate. There will be moments when we have to collectively, as humanity, decide what we say no to. That is really the big challenge, is when do we think something no longer serves us collectively?

We spoke to Suleiman on the anniversary, 15th anniversary of Microsoft. I want you to hear more of that conversation at CNN.com. You can get your podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up on CNN this morning, can you really build an iPhone in America? The Trump administration wants tariffs to help re-industrialize the country. But how would that work?

plus Senator Bernie Sanders trying to set a path for Democrats in the era of Trump.

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.

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At this point, I think everybody is really holding their breath. It's a guessing game. Right now, everything's up in the air. We don't know what to expect. Uncertainty is the name of the game. And so we are playing that waiting game. Small businesses in the U.S. on edge, wondering what President Trump's tariff pause means moving forward. Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me on CNN this morning. If you're getting ready, it's half past the hour here on the East Coast. And here's what's happening right now.

President Trump backing down for 90 days at least on the tariffs that the White House insisted were not going anywhere. But he actually boosted tariffs on China. Later today, the president will hold another cabinet meeting, his first since announcing and then pausing this tariff war.

And the death toll rising to 184 from Tuesday's tragic roof collapse at a nightclub in the Dominican Republic. Dozens of family members still waiting for word about missing loved ones, including Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez, who said he had several family members inside. Confirmed dead in the disaster, merengue performer Ruby Perez and two former Major League Baseball players.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson facing a ticking clock. Today is his last day to get a budget resolution passed before the House leaves for a two-week recess. To do that, he needs to get several Republican holdouts on his side. What is the amount of a minimal number of cuts and savings that we can find in the budget that will satisfy everyone to move forward with this nation-shaping piece of legislation?

House Republicans are voting on a Senate-backed blueprint, one that President Trump supports.

All right, as those new tariffs take hold, small businesses in the U.S. are scrambling to make sense of what this all means for them. One owner of baby products told us that, told CNN that she's looking into making her products in America for the past two years, but ultimately said it wasn't feasible. Now she has $160,000 of products stuck in China, where her production facilities are located.

I am abandoning my products in China. I am leaving them there because I simply cannot afford to ship them here. And I'm terrified for my business.

Joining me now to talk about this, Cardiff Garcia, Editorial Director at the Economic Innovation Group. Cardiff, thanks for being here this morning. Great to be here. I want to talk about the winners and losers of this last week. Are there any winners? Winners? I'm not so sure. We're still in a situation that's radically different from the situation we were in last week. Things obviously changed quite a bit yesterday, as you've been pointing out.

The losers, the list right now is still pretty long, unfortunately. Give me top three. Yeah, sure. So first, small businesses are definitely there. I think low income and middle class Americans, in particular, if you look at the kinds of goods that they tend to buy, they're imported from abroad.

things like textiles, clothing, those make up a bigger share of the incomes of the paychecks of small, excuse me, lower income Americans than of higher income folks, small businesses, and I would say workers, right? Because the longer this goes on, if it starts to affect too many American businesses, the people that tend to get laid off first

are those lower income middle class workers. Not to mention that actually I think Gallup was saying more than 60% of Americans actually own some form of stock at this point. More of us, whether it's 401ks, your Robin Hoods, your pensions, whatever it is, you are touched by the situation.

Yeah, people definitely feel it in the stock market. And if they see that their wealth is going down, they're going to be less likely to spend into the economy as well. And that further slows things down. Okay, so you just brought up an interesting point, which is about the decision-making we're all doing in this environment. One of the things we have heard from the White House as a stated goal is to help reorient...

the re-industrialization of America. So translation, there should be more stuff built and made here so that like that small business owner does not have a bunch of product in China that she has to bring back to the US. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick laid out his vision for this this weekend.

The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America. It's going to be automated. And great Americans, the tradecraft of America, is going to fix them, is going to work on them. They're going to be mechanics.

Economic Innovation Group, where you're from, is bipartisan. Can you talk about what do people think in that world about whether this is possible and what it would look like? Look, when people start talking about re-industrializing America, they're really talking about two different things.

One is, do we want to make more high tech, sophisticated goods in the country? That's possible. There are things you can do to do that. A tariff strategy doesn't necessarily get you there, but you can use targeted subsidies to make more things like semiconductors, EVs, other kinds of high tech goods. So that's what we saw the Biden administration attempt with their bills and investment in that area. Right. What Howard Lutnick and some other folks usually are talking about, though, is

re-employing a big share of the American labor force in manufacturing. And that's a very complicated thing, right? And very unlikely, by the way. It is normal for a country as it gets richer and more technologically sophisticated to employ a smaller share of workers in manufacturing because the sector has gotten so much more efficient, so much more innovative.

And when you say efficient, that often means robots in the factory. It's fewer people necessary to make the same thing. Right, fewer jobs that are higher paying, and people end up working in other higher paying services, high tech sectors in the economy. That's just the way an economy evolves, right? So if you want to re-employ a big share of American workers in manufacturing, you almost have to drag the economy back into the past so that now in America we're making the kinds of

lower tech, lower value goods that we tend to import from abroad. But those jobs are way lower paying, and it turns out that those products would end up being higher cost for American consumers. So everybody ends up poor. So as a goal, it's a kind of a monkey's paw situation if they succeed.

It's going to make everybody worse off. One more thing. If you were an investor right now looking at this market, would you be able to get the money for capitalization to build said factory? Would you be able to make those investments? Would you be able to hire people based on these up and down arrows of the market? I'd be so nervous about investing over the course of the next few months. Any new money, I think.

is going to be frozen because people have no idea what the outcome of the next three months is going to look like. And in the meantime, the de-escalation strategy turns out to be the world's two biggest economies continue to escalate their part of the trade war. So even though there's a pause on all our friends and allies, the two biggest economies are still going at it. Absolutely. Cardiff Garcia, thank you for explaining this. I really appreciate your time. Cardiff is editorial director of the Economic Innovation Group.

Meanwhile, a Russian-American woman imprisoned in Russia for treason released overnight heading home. Zhenya Karina is on a plane right now, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The 33-year-old was sentenced last year because she donated $50. And earlier I said $50,000. I want to be clear. It was just $50,000.

$50 to a charity supporting Ukraine. We just learned that this was all part of a prisoner swap, her coming home. CNN's Nick Robertson joins us from London. Nick, can you tell us how this all came to pass?

It appears to be a confidence building measure between the White House and the Kremlin. And of course, it comes on a day when representatives of both White House and Kremlin are meeting in Istanbul in Turkey to kind of hammer out a better diplomatic relationship, hammer out how their embassies are going to function. So here we have.

this prisoner swap that happened in Abu Dhabi. We understand that CIA Director John Radcliffe was involved in it. We don't have any video yet, but we can expect it. Both the Russian intelligence service FSB

could be expected to release video from their side and quite possibly images of Zhenya on her way back home to the United States could be released pretty soon. The last U.S. national to be released in this way from Russian captivity was Mark Fogel and he ended up pretty quickly in the White House meeting with President Trump. This is something President Trump has been working towards, as is said, bring Americans home from wrongful detention overseas.

Zhenya was one of those wrongfully detained. The U.S. is tracking about six other half a dozen U.S. nationals wrongfully detained in Russia at this time. But it does speak to this moment of thawing of relationships between President Trump and President Putin at a time when President Putin is resisting President Trump's efforts to get a ceasefire in Ukraine.

But of course, Virginia, who lives in California, an amateur ballerina is how we understand her to be described. This is huge, huge for her family. And on the other side of this, the German-Russian national, Arthur Petrov, being released.

He was charged in the United States after being picked up in Cyprus with supplying sensitive electronic components to Russian companies to put in weapons to strike Ukraine. This is the bargain that appears to have been worked out. CNN's Nick Robertson.

I want to turn back to domestic politics for a second. The Democratic Party is trying to find its footing. Vermont's independent senator, Bernie Sanders, has a message for voters. So what I would say to young people and all people, go outside your zone of comfort. It's easy to talk to people who agree with you every day. But you're going to have to listen to other people who may disagree with you. Maybe they disagree with you on abortion or gay rights or whatever it may be. Sit down and talk to them.

Sanders participated in a CNN town hall last night. He rejected President Trump's policies on everything from trade wars to foreign affairs, suggesting that Americans come together and put politics aside. We want to talk about his approach, whether it is a path forward for Democrats. Welcome back, group chat. Isaac, you and I used to talk about Kamala Harris because you followed her very closely.

After a candidate loses, there is a vacuum, right, where people scramble again. Where is Bernie Sanders in that spectrum? Well, he is the best known leader among Democrats who is currently still in office. Draws a crowd, raises money. Pretty successful presidential campaigns, even though obviously he didn't win the nomination that he ran, has had a big impact on the party.

and is still drawing big crowds. I think the question that people have about his politics is how much it's influenced where the Democratic Party is and will be and how much it will define it. Yeah, how does it get carried forward? And so some of that answer may be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's been appearing with him all over the place. We'll be with him in California this weekend when he does some more rallies.

she may be the future of it in a presidential campaign way. There's some speculation about that. She will certainly be the future of it as continuing to carry that torch. Interestingly, another name we used to hear a lot about during the Democrats, which we had a primary phase, was Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan governor. She visited the White House and then apparently

I can't understand how this went down. Zolan, do you know? Was she there to talk to President Trump? Was this a photo op? What message are people reading out of this? My sense thus far from the reporting is that this isn't just a photo op.

It's not a matter of like appearing with President Trump for political reasons or to gain political edge. I think state like state leaders and local leaders right now are watching universities get their funding revoked, watching federal grants get threatened going to states and are wondering how do we how do we

how do we handle this? And one of the options is engaging with the person who's threatening that federal funding. I think it more speaks to the need of the state and the community than politics. I can tell you what happened. Oh, yeah, please tell me. She was in Washington yesterday to give a speech. She was talking about manufacturing. It was a speech that was very much in her effort to talk about reaching across the aisle. She was talking about building

manufacturing in Michigan and purple areas. She talked about a county that she won twice in her governor's races that Trump won three times in his presidential campaigns. And then she was meeting with cabinet members. She had a meeting scheduled with the president. It's not the first time that she's met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office since he's been back in office.

But people are paying attention because this does not look like the politics of resistance. No, it definitely doesn't. And in the speech, she said that we should have, as President Trump says, a golden age of manufacturing, embracing the rhetoric of it, including, in addition to reaching across the aisle. And then she went for this meeting with the president, and he used her as a prop to be standing there. She was stuck at the end of the meeting. No, that's what happened. And

And he then praised her in the way that he does to people that he wants to kind of show a part of the fold. And there are these pictures of her on the side of the Oval Office that went around that were a huge embarrassment for her. And her spokesperson put out a statement saying it was a surprise. She doesn't endorse any of this. This is not...

what she wanted out of the day. - Okay, this is some insight, Isaac. I'm loving this. This is helpful. - That's the first time that happened either. You remember weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch had a meeting with President too and then President made him stay as well? - Yes, he does it all the time.

Part of the confusion for people here is not that it happened, but that it wasn't foreseeable. That when you go into that, Trump does it all the time. He used to do it with reporters his first time as president. And you can't say no, because then that turns into a thing. Yeah, you would have reporters stand behind the desk and take a picture with him, which is not really something that a reporter who's there to interview him should do.

The reason why I'm talking about this is because Democrats say they plan to use tariffs as part of their reelection conversation in 2026. So here's one congresswoman from Washington speaking to Semaphore saying that it's important that we continue to talk not only about the impact, what we could be doing instead. This is a very different strategy than a general kind of like he's bad for democracy.

So, Salia, what do you see in this management, both of Trump policies, but also the expectations of the base? Look, Trump changed not only the world, he's changing the world right now with what he's doing with tariffs, but as soon as he arrived on the scene and as soon as he became president, he changed the Democratic Party. All of a sudden, the Democratic Party had to become a populist party too. By America, the Biden administration kept on Trump's tariffs. Joe Biden's first speech

State of the Union speech, the first few minutes sounded a lot like something Trump might have said in a different way. - Right, even as they wrestle with their own legacy with NAFTA, et cetera. - Yeah, so what we're seeing is a need for Democratic candidates or potential candidates and the party to find an economic messaging. Where are they similar to Trump?

Where are they different with the new Republican Party? And what is the new Democratic Party? And where are they in terms of Main Street versus Wall Street, blue-collar workers versus everyone else? This is a great context. When I think about books like Abundance, Ezra Klein, it's all about an economic language, trying to find that new language. Stick around, you guys. We've got more to discuss. Still ahead on CNN this morning, Republicans are looking to get a budget through Congress as...

On again, off again, terrorists rock our economy. Democratic Congresswoman Becca Ballant joins us live for more on how Democrats are talking about all this. Plus, President Trump focusing on making showers great again as the global economy hangs in the balance. Group chats, stick around. There's no postponing. They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks. This is not a negotiation. President Trump.

has maximum negotiating leverage. I know what the hell I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. No negotiations. The tariffs are happening. That was the line we heard all weekend, even up until Tuesday from the president and his allies. Of course, now the majority of those tariffs are off at least for 90 days. According to those same White House officials, it turns out this was the plan all along.

Tonight you can definitively say this was not a walk back. This was not something that the bond markets were cratering and you were worried about it. This tariff strategy is embedded in this beautiful, huge other sets of strategies. He and I had a long talk on Sunday and this was his strategy all along. You have to have flexibility.

Joining me now to talk about all of this, Democratic Congresswoman Becca Valland of Vermont. Thank you for being here on CNN this morning. You had talked about this as an economic cliff, the potential. Now it's pulled back. So how does that affect things now? Do you see this as a moment to potentially reset? I don't. I don't. Because what I'm hearing from my businesses in Vermont is that

Is it good that there's a pause? Yes. Does this change materially what businesses are dealing with right now? No, because there's still incredible instability. They can't plan. It's on again. It's off again. There is this level of contempt

that the president and the administration is showing towards regular people that they can't trust their own eyes and their own ears to say that this was the plan all along. - But you had Vietnam step up and say, look, okay, let's adjust tariffs. It's a pretty important country. There are going to be countries that come forward and negotiate. Is that not a better situation to be in? - Well, the thing that,

I always say to constituents when they ask me this is that so much of what is happening with this administration is happening in secret. We never get the details. We never understand fully what

First of all, what the plan is, you got the trade representative in committee yesterday being questioned, and he didn't even know that it was happening. And so when you look at that- And he claimed he did, just to be clear, but you sound dubious. I do sound dubious because you have a master manipulator. That is what Trump is. He's a master manipulator of people.

and people come in and you know you were talking about it with the panel people come in they kiss the ring they bend the knee they think somehow we're going to get something different we don't ever get anything different it's chaos it's confusion and

Business needs stability, and they still don't have that. They can't plan. One of the reasons why I want to talk to Democrats about this is because when you think about the legacy of globalization of NAFTA, these were Democrat-led projects. At a CNN town hall last night, you had Bernie Sanders from your home state rejecting Trump's trade and foreign policy goals, but he did have this to say about these kinds of agreements.

What these trade agreements in essence said to corporate America, "Hey, no problem. You can throw American workers out on the street. You can go to Mexico, you can go to China and hire people for pennies an hour." And I thought that that was a horrible idea. It was a horrible idea. Tariffs used selectively are a good idea if they're going to protect American jobs.

This is the Democratic legacy that voters are upset about and responding to Trump with. So what is the message going forward? How should the party be talking about trade policy? So I agree with Senator Sanders that whenever we're talking about tariffs, there are times to protect industries, there are times to protect workers with strategic tactical tariffs. But this broad-based tariff regime, on again, off again, is not good for workers, it's not good for businesses.

Ultimately, what Senator Sanders has said for years, in which I absolutely agree with him, is that we have to bring working people

back into the center of our party. We have lost the confidence of working people across this country. We need a broad coalition of working people. And when you look at, when you juxtapose what's happening to workers right now and the loss of material wealth, and you juxtapose that with this constant refrain of trickle-down economics coming from

Trump and the Republicans, you know, we're going to talk about my work in the Budget Committee. It doesn't work. It hasn't worked. We know this. We have all the evidence that we need. American workers don't benefit from this. You mentioned the Budget Committee. Right now, Republicans are having a difficult time basically trying to pass a budget. Last night, the House Speaker actually had to cancel a vote because they didn't have support, realizing it would fail. And then sort of here were all the responses over the following hours.

We're going to find a requisite number of savings while also protecting essential programs. We're not going to cut Medicare, Social Security or Medicaid. Don't believe the lies about that. A mandate to do what? To take away health care? To enact the largest Medicaid cut in American history? They have no mandate for any of this. When they say they're not going to cut Medicaid, what do you say to them? They're lying.

Okay, here's the thing. When it comes to social safety net programs, Democrats can get a lot of political energy out of even talking about threats. Is there actually something in this budget that you actually just cannot support? Oh, so much. Look.

When you look at this mythical magic that they're doing right now, they say that they're going to deliver these tax cuts without ballooning the deficit. That is not true. The math doesn't work.

And they also talk about that somehow they're going to deliver these savings without touching Medicaid. It's not possible. We know where the money is in the federal government. So when you charge a committee with making cuts to a certain part of government and you say you're not going to cut $880 billion from Medicaid, again, it's mythical magic. It doesn't work. Is that why Republicans are reluctant here? I mean, as we said, this bill didn't go forward.

They're reluctant because the hawks on the deficit know that what's going to happen is that the tax cuts that are proposed that are going to the extremely wealthy and big corporations are going to be only partially paid for by the cuts. So, again, it is this sleight of hand that they're doing on paper. We know where the money has to come from and we know

when you look at what it is that they're building this budget, they are delivering massive tax cuts on the backs of working people.

And people can see through it. It's outrageous. Well, Congresswoman, thank you for your time. Thank you for the insight from the Budget Committee, actually. I appreciate that. It's 56 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Some more stories you need to know happening throughout the day. The Supreme Court will decide whether to take up Karen Reid's petition to drop some of the charges in her murder retrial. She's asking the justices to dismiss two charges, including second-degree murder.

Rita's accused of killing her Boston police officer boyfriend, and jury selection is ongoing. The pro-Trump network Newsmax defamed Dominion Voting Systems by falsely accusing the company of rigging the 2020 election. That is the ruling of a Delaware Superior Court judge who says it's now up to a jury to decide the damages and whether Newsmax intentionally smeared the company with "actual malice."

President Trump signing an executive order to make showers great again. The order lifts Obama-era restrictions on water pressure in shower heads. Trump says the action was needed to, quote, restore shower freedom. And former First Lady Michelle Obama addressing her recent absence from the spotlight and the divorce rumors that came along with it on the Work in Progress podcast. She said she's giving herself the freedom to do what's best for her.

We, as women, I think we struggle with like disappointing people. Yeah. You know, I mean, so much so that this year people were, you know, they couldn't even fathom that I was making a choice for myself, that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.

Mrs. Obama notably skipped President Trump's second inauguration and the funeral for former President Jimmy Carter. All right, it's time to talk about what we're keeping an eye on today. But before we do, can we leave this lady alone? Is it me? That's just like, let it go. She's not running for office. Is that what this is about? People hoping she'll run for office? Some, I think. And just the

continuing fascination with her. But also, it was an inauguration. It was a notable thing that the first... Yeah, but not a great relationship there. It's a big deal. Sure. Yeah. But she's a celebrity. Everyone wants to see a celebrity. Oh, so you're putting it in the column of tabloid obsession. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and as you noted, I mean, it's a notable absence when you, you know, miss a funeral and what have you. But the continued questions, I mean, this is something we've seen now since the Obamas have been in public life. Okay. You guys, what are you watching for?

I think everything that we've seen over the last week with the stock market is sort of magic numbers right now. It doesn't really mean anything to a lot of people. Let's see what happens with prices, with an impact on jobs and consumer confidence overall. We're going to see some official reports of that at the end of the month, but also just decisions that families are making. Last few to you guys. The White House has a cabinet meeting scheduled today. There was a pretty notable cabinet meeting earlier this year in which Elon Musk was standing above the cabinet

Does he almost go today? Seating arrangements today. Does he go? Is he there? I want to know if the American exceptionalism story is still a thing. Okay, that's a big one for the last word sleep. Yeah, but it's the last. I want to thank the group chat. I want to thank you for waking up with us. I'm Adi Cornish and CNN News Central starts right now.