Shownotes Transcript
It's Wednesday, April 2nd. Here's what's happening right now on CNN This Morning.
We always try to price out our parts and labor competitively, but it's definitely going to get passed on. So the world is bracing for President Trump's tariffs to go into effect today. How much is that going to impact you? Plus... I'm your huckleberry. Actor Val Kilmer has passed away. With decades of work in Hollywood from Tombstone to Top Gun, we're going to look back at the legacy he leaves behind. And then later... It's Trump country.
CNN projects that Republicans will hold on to their House seats in Florida. Some Democrats are celebrating, but is this still a win for them? And... You gotta get rid of the torpedo bat. If you have watched any baseball this year, even if you haven't, you've probably heard the words torpedo bat. What is that, and does it give teams an unfair advantage? It's now 6 a.m.,
It's 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. I want to give you a live look at New York City. We're the opening bell just a few hours away as Wall Street prepares and the world prepares for President Trump's tariffs. I want to say good morning to all of you. I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with me.
So President Trump has insisted on calling this Liberation Day. Most people just know it as the day he's going to announce the specifics of his plan for major tariffs that could be imposed on every nation in the world. We just don't know yet. The White House says they're going to go into effect immediately once they are announced. The lack of clarity, the lack of details is causing a lot of concern.
Our pastas, our olive oils, our tomatoes, all kinds of imported cheeses. We eat a little bit, but there's going to come a time where we can't. So it has to be passed on at that point. I can tell you, you know, our costs have gone up on our cans. There's nothing I can do about it. That would put us out of the market of buying this car.
Experts anticipating President Trump to announce these tariffs, and if they're anything like what he has teased, they're likely to be historic. One economist tells CNN, we've never seen anything like this, adding it could be something unprecedented and radical. Joining me now to discuss CNN contributor Kerry Champion, former Republican Pennsylvania Congressman Charlie Dent, and White House and Foreign Affairs correspondent for Politico, Eli Stoklas. You guys, welcome to the group chat.
I'm going to start with Carrie because we've been talking all week about whether things punch through. So are regular people calling it Liberation Day? Of course not. Well, I'm not going to say of course not. Not on your timeline? Of course not. Not on my timeline. Anyone else group chat says Liberation Day? Liberation from low prices? Yeah. Oh.
Well, we'll play Charlie Dent. Say more. Interesting. It's early. I'm ready. I know. You know Pennsylvania. You know a swing state. How do you think people, Republicans, can talk about this in a way? Because we've heard so many different explanations for these tariffs, and they're being announced. Yeah.
after Wall Street closes? Well, Republicans should talk about it the way old Republicans used to talk about it. These are taxes. And somebody who represented Pennsylvania, I represented Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is a great example of what tariffs would look like. If you had a 20% across-the-board tariff,
Cocoa. We don't grow that in North America. Hershey Park. Yeah, exactly. We don't grow that in North America, last I checked. Well, the price just went up 20%. Oh, aluminum tariffs. Every Hershey Kiss, $70 million a day, wrapped in a very fine aluminum foil. There's almost no domestic supply. It comes from Canada, Europe, South Korea, a little bit from China. Well, packaging prices go up. So,
Yes, it's going to impact manufacturing very negatively. And I didn't even get into the auto sector and in appliances, on steel and everything else. So I think these are very destructive. I mean, what did we not learn from Smoot-Hawley when Smoot-Hawley was enacted in 1930? Global trade dropped from $3 trillion to $1 trillion. Yes, the economic discussion around tariffs seems very straightforward. You talk to an economist, you kick a stone and hit an economist who says, eh, this is going to have adverse effects.
Eli, can you talk about how he's moving forward? Because I'm sure people have been beating down his door, lobbying for exemptions. This is building a lot of suspense into today. Why the delay? Why this building up? And does it reflect the fact that people have been fighting it?
Yeah, there has been a lot of internal discussion about how far to go, where to target, how precise to be in targeting the tariffs. But my reporting is that this is-- and this is obvious-- this is just what the president wants to do. He's always believed firmly in tariffs. And this is not an administration where the president's getting a ton of pushback. And actually, the Commerce Secretary, Howard Letnick, has been pinpointed as a person who, inside the administration, has really enabled and encouraged this push.
The concern is not just from Republicans in competitive seats on the Hill or from economists of different parties. It's also shared by some people around the president who are worried. And the president himself and other aides have said, look, there is going to be some short-term pain.
- The short-term pain phrase is one that I think most average people are like, "I've already been in short-term pain." - I don't wanna have to deal with that, yeah. - Right, he's not usually, Donald Trump is not a guy who's usually all about delayed gratification. He wants the payoff now.
And so this is a little out of character and an admission on his part to say, this is going to hurt. The question is, what's Donald Trump's political pain tolerance for this? Maybe it's a little higher than it was in his first term. But I don't know if it's as high as he wants everyone to think it is. And there are a lot of people out there who think, look, this is just sort of the starting-- So political pain versus economic pain.
This is the show and this is the sort of start of a negotiation. He says that and I'm thinking what about the pain for the everyday consumer and what we're dealing with and how people are. As you aptly put early at the top of the show, you see everyone saying there's so much anxiety about what they will, how that will affect them. And early on we always talked about well what about the eggs? What about the eggs? Wasn't this about the eggs? Wasn't this election about the eggs? And now in my mind I'm thinking for everyone at home, I'm just talking for everyday average citizen,
I know that they have to feel this anxiety. How will this affect me? Because earlier we were like, well, we don't even really know what these Liberation Day tariffs will look like. How will that affect me and my pocketbook? And I just don't think that people can anticipate that. - And they're also hearing, I think we're hearing about other countries, right? Like they're not-- - How they feel. - Yeah, they're not mobilizing to be like, yeah, we should figure this out to appease him. Like it feels like they're actually, I mean, you can tell me there was a meeting with Japan and South Korea and like,
the idea is fight it which means trade war oh yeah they're ready to retaliate yeah and and this will be ugly particularly for american farmers we all know that i tell you if i were sitting in congress right now i would have a bill introduced saying that no tariffs could be imposed in the name of national security or national emergency without a vote of the congress i don't feel like a republican would do that in this environment well they want to reclaim their taxing authority these are taxes
taxes on consumers paid for by the importer not the foreign country we're going to hear more details about this today and I want you guys to stick around because we're going to talk more still ahead on CNN this morning two elections in states won by President Trump two very different outcomes so how are Democrats feeling after the first real voter test two months into the new administration I'm going to ask Rhode Island Congressman Gabe Amo
Plus, more federal employees are getting an offer again to walk away. Some may not have that long to think about it. And he played everything from one of the most famous superheroes to a cocky fighter pilot. We are remembering the late Val Kilmer this morning. You guys really are cowboys. What's your problem, Kizanski? You're everyone's problem. That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous.
I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast, Terms of Service.
Millions of people use ring cameras. And they give some people peace of mind in the face of potential break-ins or theft. But with this popularity has come concerns about where that footage is going and what it's being used for. And a bigger question. Is it ethical to record video of your neighbors or package delivery folks in the first place? Follow CNN's Terms of Service wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're getting ready, it's 12 minutes past the hour. I'm gonna give you your morning roundup now. Some of the stories you need to know to get your day going. Breaking overnight, actor Val Kilmer, best known for his roles in "Top Gun," "The Doors," "Batman Forever," he has passed away at the age of 65. - You see, I'm both Bruce Wayne and Batman. Not because I have to be, because I choose to be. - His daughter said he died of pneumonia. Kilmer had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, but later recovered.
Also overnight, China's military conducting live fire drills in the East China Sea near Taiwan. They're practicing long-range strikes. This comes after surprise exercises around Taiwan involving China's Army, Navy, Air Force and Rocket Force. Federal employees now getting more deferred resignation offers. That's happening at the USDA and at least three other agencies. But they don't have long to make that decision. In fact, some only have a week to decide.
And I want you to see this. In Myanmar, a man survived 100 hours buried in the rubble from that earthquake. So in this video, this is the moment that rescue crews actually got him out from under the collapsed building. So how did he survive? Well, he found an air pocket between broken slabs of concrete. He had been there for five days.
Still coming up after the break, politics, of course, is a cutthroat sport. In fact, might be a combat sport. Maybe that's why President Trump has found a haven within the UFC community. Plus, the world is waiting to hear about aggressive new tariffs coming out today. In fact, how will other countries retaliate?
Good morning to Nashville, Tennessee. Part of your state is actually under high risk of severe storms. In fact, six states could see numerous long track, I guess they're called EF3 tornadoes. Keep an ear out for those warnings. Everyone stay safe.
Going off script for a second, because obviously we've been hearing a ton about Democrats sounding the alarm about not connecting with young men specifically. And frankly, there is a place where they could, and that's combat sports. The UFC have done a lot of reporting on this. And the thing is, the Octagon doesn't just host fights anymore.
It's a cultural battleground. And you've got some people who have moved into political office. So I'm bringing on combat sports analyst Luke Thomas to the group chat. Luke, welcome to the studio. We've talked before in the podcast.
I want to talk about the last couple of years in terms of the Trump relationship. We're at the point now where Dana White's very much the head of the UFC, a good friend of the president. And you even had FBI Director Kash Patel at one point saying he wanted to use the relationship with the UFC to train agents in martial arts, which was that kind of a surprise?
Surprising that it's just a bizarre idea. I don't know exactly how learning arm drags to the back is going to help any kind of field agent apprehend
ne'er-do-wells in the law-breaking community, so to speak. It seems like a bit of a waste. I mean, just yesterday there was scientists at the CDC and NIH being sent home and had their bags packed. And I'm like, how is that not a more suitable use for government funds versus just training field agents? And martial arts is always beneficial to use, but on the government dime, it doesn't exactly make a ton of sense.
But it is a pool of candidates, right? If you want to draw people into something like the armed services. And I think it gets to the point, law enforcement, I mean, and I think it gets to the point of the fan base, right? When I look at the demographics of MMA, it is predominantly male.
And these are the voters that helped swing the election, especially young men who came out of the pandemic more conservative leaning. How was the MMA and combat sports kind of a conduit for that?
Well, it was, I think, a concerted decision by the UFC leadership, in this case Dana White, to embrace Donald Trump. This went all the way back to 2016 when he spoke at the RNC at that time. Yeah, and they're friends. Like, that's nothing illegal about being friends. And listen, I should be clear. He has noted that in their struggling days when they first took over the company that Donald Trump provided them some place to hold their events.
in new jersey and that was quite beneficial to them that is actually quite true there's really no denying that i think it's somewhat oversold how exactly important that is but in any case they developed a relationship it kind of pers it maintained over time and then in 2016 it took a real turn and then i think it really ramped up into high gear
during the pandemic i think that was when things got turned into overdrive so to speak or at least at its highest point and then now you see the the results of this you they now are i mean listen young men through this mma conduit this is a important
constituency, to be quite honest with you. You can like that fact or you can hate that fact, but it's a reality. And it's now a substantial portion of a deciding factor of the electorate as well. So, I mean, this is a... And powerful voices like a Joe Rogan, right? Extremely powerful voices. He's very big in combat sports. And he was talking about Democrats. This was just in March. Here was his description of where they are. I just don't... I think they're lost. I mean, they're also lost in that they can't control the narrative anymore.
When you talk about control of the narrative, you have to be in the places that people are, right? And in dialogue with that community. Is there any presence whatsoever of left, liberal Democrats in the world of MMA or combat sports? I mean, I'm not a Democrat, but you're looking at it.
I'm like the sole representative. I mean, the reality is the left has almost no relationship whatsoever to this audience. It feels to me, this is just my personal observation, that they have punted on them. They feel like it's not important or they don't even, at this point, I would even argue, I'm not even sure if they know how to rebuild bridges back to them. And this is not an argument to be made that you have to find them where they are and just agree to everything. That's really not my point. But again, it's a very simple question.
does this constituency matter does this portion of the electorate matter and if you want to win elections going forward and i realize that there's a lot going on that is going to require a lot of different arms of the government to be focused on a number of issues but this is just this the right and the ufc they focused on young men look at the results if the democrats want to and again i
I cannot speak for them, but it just appears to me if they want to recapture anything, starting with a bit of self-reflection about why they lost this audience to begin with and what they can do to recapture it seems fairly essential.
All right, Luke Thomas, thank you for checking in with us. Luke Thomas, combat sports analyst. Also coming up on CNN this morning, an entertainment icon who passed away. Val Kilmer was a legend, of course, in his own right. He shared the screen with some of Hollywood's biggest names. We're going to take a look at his life and legacy. Plus, last night's elections featured some mixed results for Democrats. Representative Gabe Amo joins us with his take on what those results mean for the party.
The new season of United States of Scandal has bribery, fraud, undercover agents, and politicians suffering from a moral virus. You know, the usual. United States of Scandal with Jake Tapper, Sunday at 9 on CNN. Liberation Day, I'm reminded of the immortal words of Patrick Henry, give me liberty or charge me an extra $10,000 for a Hyundai Elantra.
All right, President Trump, of course, has been calling his tariffs announcement Liberation Day. That announcement is supposed to come later today. Good morning, everybody. I'm Adi Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me here on CNN this morning. It's half past the hour here on the East Coast, and here's what's happening right now.
U.S. futures back in the red as Wall Street braces for the president's tariffs. There are still a lot of unknowns right now about his plans, and that's fueling uncertainty for other countries, for businesses, and probably you.
The Pentagon is moving at least six B-2 stealth bombers to an island in the Indian Ocean. Analysts are calling this a massive show of force during the rising tensions between the U.S. and the Houthi rebels and Iran. Other aircraft will also go to the region.
Wisconsin's liberal majority on the state Supreme Court stays intact. CNN projects that the Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford has won in a high-profile election against a Trump-backed conservative judge. More than $90 million was spent on this race. The GOP effort to add a voter ID requirement to the state constitution was also passed.
And in Florida last night, CNN projects that Republicans swept two special elections that protect House Speaker Mike Johnson's super-thin majority. Republican Jimmy Petronas will replace Matt Gaetz after defeating Democrat Gaye Vallemont. And in Florida's 6th district, Randy Fine defeated Democrat Josh Wheal. This is even after Wheal raised 10 times more money for his campaign.
I want to start by thanking my opponent for investing $14 million into our local economy. Clearly it didn't work, but our local... Oh, all right. Hey, my family's here. All right, but our local businesses certainly appreciated it.
Joining me now to talk about this, Democratic Congressman Gabe Amo from Rhode Island. Congressman, thank you for joining us here on set. I want to talk about whether money talks, because in Wisconsin it didn't help Elon Musk so much. When we look at the big donors to that race, he of course was the top. George Soros was there, a little further down in the graph. But in Florida, it didn't help Democrats to have out-raised Republicans. So what do you take away from that?
Well, when you look at Wisconsin, we saw a resounding rejection of Elon Musk. He was literally buying votes, gave out $2 million checks, spent $25 million, and there was a 10-point victory. Resounding. Now, when you look at Florida, the important thing to note is that these were both deep Republican districts. We're talking in margins where we shouldn't have even been close, and those were effectively cut in half.
So we see very clearly that enthusiasm is on the Democratic side. People are rejecting
Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and their billionaire buddies in their attempts to shape an America where costs are high and they're running roughshod over our government. I want to challenge something you just said when you said Elon Musk was buying votes. Obviously, there were legal challenges there. The way he actually played this out was to have these various petitions, for example. You sign a petition, you get X amount of money. The people who he gave his big checks to, they had already cast their ballots.
The reason why I'm getting into the nitty gritty of this is because it's maybe about using money effectively. At the end of this election, Elon Musk will have a whole new list of names and a mailing list in a battleground state. Is there anything to take away from how he is operating? Well, look.
Winners win, losers lose. He lost in Wisconsin and invested a lot of his own capital tweeting nonstop, visiting and going on the stump. And it wasn't effective. So at the end of the day, there was an opportunity to progress.
paint a contrast what the Musk-Trump vision is and what the vision is when people are focused on working class issues. And that's what we saw at hand in Wisconsin and Elon Musk was on the losing end. - Later today, we are gonna be talking about tariffs because President Trump has been building this up, frankly, for months.
And now we're actually going to hear what those tariffs will be. But what I've been interested in is this kind of mixed signals coming from the unions, particularly in the auto worker community. So here's what President Sean Fain, no fan of Trump, said Monday at Harvard. We hear all this talk about tariffs are going to raise the car prices and it's going to cause the price to go up. The price of vehicles went up 35 percent.
the last four years. It wasn't because of anything that happened with bargaining or anything. It was just flat-out greed and consumer price gouging. But where were all those economists then? Why weren't they all raising a hell of a lot of 10? Why weren't they having meltdowns on Wall Street then? Because it benefited business. They didn't give a damn.
I've heard this argument extended to, and Democrats didn't give a damn, so to speak. But what's your response to how he sees this? Well, I think what Sean Fain puts forth is a broader argument about the thoughtfulness of our policies. And what we see and what we have experienced, certainly the market has suggested as much over March, the worst month we've seen in years, is that the lack of predictability
ability without giving the business owners, without giving consumers an ability to know what costs they're going to be experiencing. That makes a difference. But Keister started to lean towards Trump a bit, you heard, during the election. And so I'm wondering, is this Democrats not keeping an eye on a constituency that's very important to them? That actually is looking at the tariffs and thinking, maybe this benefits us and maybe you should be thinking about it differently.
We have to be thoughtful. I think there's a contrast here. The recklessness and the arbitrary nature of Donald Trump's approach and one that is more surgical. And at the end of the day, what we will see are costs go up for everyday consumers, energy costs, smartphones, cars. We will experience this and largely on the backs of working class people who are just trying to get by.
that's all he's done, raised costs over his time in office over the last 70 plus days, and it's unacceptable. The American people won't have it. All right, Congressman Amo, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you coming here. Thanks for having me. All right, news overnight. Actor Val Kilmer has passed away at the age of 65. With more than 40 years in Hollywood, he played dozens of roles, including a fighter pilot in Top Gun. He's played Batman. He's played Jim Morrison in The Doors. If I was to say to you
Roger Ebert called his performance as Morrison the best thing in the movie. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014. His daughter said, however, that his death was due to pneumonia. CNN's Stephanie Alam takes a look back at the legacy he leaves behind. From a quirky spy in the 1984 cult classic Top Secret...
You guys really are cowboys. to the intense fighter pilot in "Top Gun." You're everyone's problem.
That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe. Val Kilmer's film career took flight in the big 80s, but the slick performer trained at Juilliard honed his acting chops on the stage and saw his craft as a serious means of exploration. Have you ever turned down something you regretted? No, I don't really think that way. I just look forward. And also, in a personal way, what I gained from acting, the opportunity to experience things that certainly you'd never do in your own life.
♪ Oh baby, light my fire ♪ - In the 1990s, Kilmer explored the mind of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's "The Doors." Critics praised him for nailing both the look and the sound of the late singer. - I'm your huckleberry. - Two years later, he played the pasty yet poised gunslinger, Doc Holliday, in "Tombstone," and later, a desperate construction engineer hunting lions in "The Ghost and the Darkness."
Along the way, Kilmer co-starred with some of Hollywood's heavyweights like Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the bank robbery movie Heat and played the superhero.
It's the car, right? Chicks love the car. as Batman in 1995. But it was an earlier collaboration on the set of the 1988 movie Willow, where Kilmer met co-star Joanne Wally. They were married almost eight years and had two children. Later in his career, Kilmer returned to the stage, playing Moses in The Ten Commandments: The Musical. He also wrote and performed the one-man show Citizen Twain, taking on the persona of the great American storyteller.
But under the makeup, the actor was dealing with grave health concerns. Kilmer downplayed cancer rumors, but then later said he had beaten the disease, which required a tracheotomy, and left him with a raspy voice. In 2022, he reprised his role as Iceman in the Top Gun sequel, Maverick. Who's the better pilot, you or me? This is a nice moment. Let's not ruin it.
Like the actor himself, his once boisterous flyboy character, subdued by illness, still commanded respect and even awe on the silver screen.
Our thanks to Stephanie Elam for that report. The group chat is back. Charlie, we were talking about this off air. Do you have a favorite Val Kilmer film? Yeah, Top Gun, followed by the one with the lions. The one with the lions. Gary, Gary, you. Doc Holliday, obviously that character is one of his best to me, and that's Tombstone. He was amazing. Oh. He was amazing. It was mentioned in the package, Heat.
I was waiting for someone to talk extensively about 1995's Heat with De Niro and Pacino and some of the most romantic lines in film. And some of them came from him. He had a supporting role, but it was...
- Interesting character. - Yeah, he's also the kind of movie star who I feel like you can't have them today because we know so much about their lives. And he was very idiosyncratic and had a kind of way of dealing with fame that I think now would be hard to do under a microscope. - Yeah, he was a true artist. And you know what? You mentioned Heath.
favorite films of all time. We're friends now. Yeah, we're best friends now. It's one of my favorite films of all time. So many great actors in that. So may he rest in peace. We know that he's been struggling with so many different things, but he was really a true contribution in terms of theater. He really was. Thank you. Thank you for talking with me about that just for a little bit.
I want you guys to stay with us straight ahead on CNN this morning. We're of course going to be talking about those tariffs set to take effect today, what exactly they will be, how the rest of the world could retaliate. Plus, man the torpedoes, why the latest technology in baseball bats is all the rage. More from the group chat after this. We didn't start this trade war. The U.S. administration did. And they can reverse course. But they can only reverse course if the American people themselves say it's enough.
Canada's foreign minister declaring her country is prepared to fight back in a trade war with the US. So this all could escalate today as the president unveils sweeping new tariffs at the White House. In the meantime, the European Union is also vowing a united response. Europe holds a lot of cards from trade to technology to the size of our market. But this strength is also built on our readiness to take firm countermeasures if necessary.
All instruments are on the table. Also China, a long-time target of these kinds of terrorists by the Trump administration, well, they're going to work with Japan and South Korea to respond. So for more on that, we're going to bring in CNN's Mark Stewart in Beijing. Mark, again, we're talking about the retaliation. What more can China do? And how specific can this get in terms of hurting the American consumer?
Right. Hi, Adi. Really good to see you. First of all, let's not discount the fact that China could institute even more tariffs against the United States. And that would be felt by Americans when they go to buy things like electronics, like clothing.
like furniture. But China has a very big toolbox. It is the world's second largest economy. And one thing it could do is really influence and shift the global supply chain and perhaps
perhaps create this game of hard to get things like toys, like Christmas decorations, but also things like critical minerals, which are used in computer chips, perhaps even pharmaceuticals. That's a tool that China has at its disposal.
In addition, this is a market here in China of more than a billion people. And a lot of American companies do business here. They want to do business here. In fact, the Chinese government wants them to be part of its economic engine. But depending on how things unravel today,
China can make life very difficult for these American companies to do business here in China. We've already seen it happen with companies like Google, as well as the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. That's something that China also has on its list of
Okay, it looks like we lost Mark, but Mark gave us a lot of detail to talk about. And closer to home, we want to talk about some of those effects. U.S. car companies reported a spike in sales in March, people basically scrambling to buy new cars before the new tariffs. President Trump previously had announced a 25% tariff on imported cars.
Joining me now to talk more, Robin Farzad, business journalist and host of Full Disclosure podcast. Robin, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Mark was giving us great detail about how other countries are not fighting one-on-one trade wars with the U.S. They're kind of moving into little groups to have this back and forth. What are you going to be listening for from China?
in terms of their response? China has so many arrows in its quiver, but we cannot forget that China is struggling. It's in a bit of a banking crisis and a property crisis, and it has a social compact with its people to keep them employed, to keep this economy growing. It has not had an economic collapse in the modern World Trade Organization period. So if they are kind of at, you know, reservoir dogs, you know, gun pointing at gun,
it's like the United States has more clout than it has had in a long time because of China's weakness. So China is looking at its neighbors. It's looking at South Korea. It's looking at Japan, kind of enemy of my enemy. It's interesting. That's great context because we've been talking about so many goods that people perceive as being from China. I know after the last round of tariffs,
some people, manufacturers moved out of China, right? So it's not clear. But you've also said that this isn't just about raw goods, that when you look at a Walmart at a Target, they could be affected. And I'm like, how? Right. They're so enormous.
Look at-- Walmart by itself would be one of the largest trading partners in the world. The fact that it might be cold comfort to a lot of workers who've lost factory jobs, who've lost their jobs in the NAFTA period, the last 35 years of globalization. But you can go into a Walmart and ask this dad, buy a pair of sweatpants for $9. You can get three different kinds of mangoes. You could buy dragon fruit. You could buy things at certain price points that were never available to you, to say nothing of the $200 flat screen TV.
And that's a peace dividend. That's a dividend of globalization. So if suddenly China is a major trading partner of Walmart,
If it decides, well, you're going to feel it, immediately the Rust Belt, the Heartland is going to feel that at Walmart where it's an essential retailer. You know, I was thinking about something that the Treasury Secretary said a few weeks back in a speech where he said the American dream essentially is not to get cheap goods. Like that's not what we, the government, should be fighting for. Does that feel like a fundamental realignment? It's a different approach to tell Americans, look,
Maybe that sweatshirt shouldn't be $9. Yes, and I give them points for being bold where maybe the opposition wasn't. And you've covered this, I think, in the pod and with some of the guests you've had on. In this period of globalization where, yes, incredible stock market gains, incredible ability to go into a Walmart or Best Buy and buy things that our parents weren't able to buy. But what about the people who got left behind by that?
It's not even cold comfort that they can go and buy a cheap car. And you hear that in the UAW and Sean Fain's response about cars. Yes, the fact that they're saying prices were already up and you didn't turn around and castigate the industry for greedflation. And you know what? Car dealers with purely American cars see this and are anticipating tariffs and are hiking prices on it. And so there might yet be vindication for the worker who was forgotten.
- Is greedflation a threat here? Is price gouging a threat here? The Biden administration used to talk about that a lot when there were supply chain issues. Now that we have more data and understanding, are these industries taking advantage of news reports like this? - No doubt.
because it gives you cloud cover to hike prices. You as a fiduciary for shareholders, like I'm only doing what's responsible. I'm beholden to my shareholders. I mean, and this goes from Chipotle to GM. There was a great article on how Chipotle is trying to source avocados from Cartagena to protect itself from Mexico.
This is felt across the board, but we have seen opportunistic price hikes in this period of inflation. And I think this is only going to give companies more cover to do that. Yeah, and it makes it messy with the uncertainty, right? What should we read into this being announced after stocks close?
I don't think they care about the stock market, to be honest with you. I mean, that's another dividend that has been lost on his core base. And they're not feeling that. That's not the 401k class. That's the class, if anything, that's had their pensions dissolved. We're given all these promises. We're rope-a-doped over the last 35 years. And that's something fundamentally that I think the Democrats and the blue-collar Democrats have to understand. Or need to engage on. Robin Farzad, thank you so much. My pleasure. He's, of course, the host of Full Disclosure.
Now, it's 51 minutes past the hour. I want to give you a few more headlines, things you need to know to get your day going. Israel announced it's expanding its military operation in Gaza. This is going to involve large-scale evacuations and seizing land that Israel plans to incorporate into its security zones. The Israelis now ordering people in Gaza's southern Rafah area to leave their homes and move north.
and a senior Russian negotiator set to meet with envoy Steve Witkoff in D.C. There will be, this is going to be the first U.S. visit for a senior Russian official since the country invaded Ukraine in 2022. Sources tell CNN that U.S. sanctions against him are being temporarily lifted so that he can actually make the visit.
And Boeing aircraft have been involved in several significant safety incidents over the past few years. Today, the company's CEO set to appear on Capitol Hill to testify. In an email to employees, he said today's hearing is an important step in restoring trust with the company.
And the Justice Department plans to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione. He's of course accused of killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare back in December. This all comes as the Trump administration pledged to restart federal executions and expand crimes eligible for capital punishment under federal law.
I want to turn to something a little lighter now because it's spring, it's baseball season, it's Little League season. And if you've got a kid who likes to play, you might want to send them to their next game armed with a torpedo. It's the torpedo bat. The bat looks like a bowling pin. It has its widest portion positioned where the ball usually hits it, like the ones many New York Yankees have been using in recent days. I love my bat.
You know what I mean? I think you can tell. It's working pretty well for me. But, I mean, it doesn't feel like a different bat. It just helps you in a little way, I guess.
Group chat is back. Carrie, straight up, it's nice to have a baseball story about an advantage that is not medical. It's good that we're in that moment. And we should say, Charlie, please give us your credential on this. Oh, I'm all for the torpedo bat. No, no, your credential. You are an ex-player. I'm not a player. I'm not a baseball player. Oh, Eli's the ex-player. Sorry about that.
Eli, you're just being quiet over there. No, I'm just, I was waiting to hear. No, I was a pitcher in college, so I don't say this lightly as a pitcher because you normally want the hitters to have an advantage. But Major League Baseball now, every pitcher seems like they're throwing high 90s, 100 miles an hour. The batting averages have dropped. So...
If this helps sort of create a little offense. That's a take. So you're like, this is going to even the playing field. Have you heard this? Look, Gabe, look, if you're not cheating, not trying, this is what I'm saying, right? And I feel like it's giving an advantage, and I think it works. Like, no, seriously, that is a saying. I do believe that. I don't think you should, but that's what you hear all the time in sports. This is like when you were defending Duke earlier in the week. I know. You don't like that. And as someone from New York.
England, I feel like because of the Yankees element to this creation of the bat, there's a lot of people who have thought. So it's raising a lot of questions due to the buzz. And I think we have some sound about the physics of it from Neil deGrasse Tyson. Is that true? MIT. What they've decided and figured out is some players always hit the ball in a particular part of the bat.
And if that's the case, why don't you concentrate the sweet spot into that one place? Take the sweet spot wherever it would otherwise be spread and put it where that batter normally makes contact with the ball.
Thicker sweet spot. It makes it better. That's all. That's it. It's fine. Yankees are doing it. Other teams should do it. Other teams aren't doing it. Just like the tush push, you know. I knew the tush push was going to come up. Nothing wrong with the tush push. We decided that. Green Bay Packers whining about that. Oh, they can't beat the Eagles, so get rid of the tush push, brotherly shove. Yeah, yeah. Figure out how to defend.
I mean, yeah. All right. One more thing on the torpedo bat, because it was actually invented by a member of the Miami Marlins staff who also happened to be a physics grad from MIT. Here's him talking about all the attention.
A lot more cameras here today than I'm used to. I'm used to the one walking behind all of this and someone else is standing here. But there were definitely guys on the major league side and on the minor league side in 2023 that were definitely asking me questions and offering design advice and demoing them. And then it's a feedback loop, right? There's many different makes and models that have gone through this process, some of which never saw the field of play and some of which are obviously hitting a lot of home runs right now.
All right. So here's the thing. The top live sports viewing, actually live viewing TV is NFL. We are talking about the NCAA. People just don't talk about America's pastime anymore. So is this an opportunity to juice, so to speak, baseball and its ratings and like get us watching again?
It's so much better kind of juicing than we were talking about a couple decades ago. Yeah, that's left out from my childhood consciousness. There's a huge disparity between the big market teams, the small market teams. A lot of those smaller teams have lost their regional sports network deals, so the only way people can watch baseball is streaming the ESPN contract with
MLB is falling apart. I mean, the commissioner has a lot of problems. This is not a problem for MLB. I'm surprised they haven't gotten to it sooner given the physics. I think it's good. It makes people feel, first of all, you need storylines and you need characters. It makes people pay attention to what's happening. Yankees look really good. People love to hate the Yankees. They're like the Dodgers or the Lakers, if you will, because they've been so dominant. And I think there will be some who will complain. Either they get this bat or
But there'll be teams that'll start to complain if, in fact, they continue to play as well and have as many home runs. But like you said, the storyline. If the storyline is just they're still winning a lot. The Bruins were whining a whole lot that first series, but that's because they got swept. Yeah. Well, they did so well, too. Look, all I think is if you say it really simply, he just explained it, it expands the sweet spot. It makes it easier for people to hit the ball. It makes it feel more comfortable. They don't feel a difference right away. They're just like, OK, maybe there is something to it. OK. Well, the take from the Hawk group is evens the playing
field and let them play. More offense. More offense. Okay. Well, I want to talk about what you're keeping an eye on this week, the things you're looking at do. For me, actually, it's the response to Senator Cory Booker's long speech on the Senate floor. It's not an official filibuster, but what it did do was get a lot of attention, and it broke a record from a segregationist era.
senator and I you exactly what I was gonna say the response I think that some for so long people are saying what are democrats doing and while he was there for 25 hours and five minutes yeah to me listening to what he had to say the stories that he was sharing speaking for those who can speak for themselves that's exactly what we wanted to hear in that very very very sympathetic empathetic way in which he was ting I'm speaking for those who have no voice
I want to see what happens next. You were into it also, Charlie? Yeah, in the next few hours, I'm looking to see if these tariffs are going to be broad-based across the board or more targeted. Like a flat number. Yes, like 20% across the board. And the other, longer term, I want to see if the NFL revisits its tush-push decision in May. You're on it. How Congress of them.
to a table and then-- I'm changing your name in my phone to Eli. I'll be watching to see how allies in Europe especially react to the tariffs. And they've been talking about this. They've been gaming this out for a while. We'll see what the White House does.
and then we'll see how quickly and how strongly they react. - Yeah, and they can pinpoint, right? Whether it's China or the EU or Canada now, which is completely upset. You were talking about Pennsylvania, a swing state that could be hit in weird and unusual ways. Are there, I'm gonna be listening for, are there ways this affects our culture
that are unexpected, you know, the known unknowns. What do you think would be unexpected? I don't know. After Charlie mentioned the silver wrapping on the Hershey Kisses, I'm like, it's going to live rent-free in my head. Price of coffee, you know, we don't grow coffee. Which we talked about, yeah. Avocados, I mean, everybody's talking about that.
Every daily thing. The list is going to go on. All these congressmen are going to hear from their constituents, are going to go to their business and say, you know what, my cost just went up because I import this. It's my input to make X. Do something. All right, thank you all for waking up with us. Thanks to the group chat. I'm Adi Cornish, and CNN News Central starts right now.
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This week on The Assignment with me, Adi Cornish. Is there a place in the U.S. that Democrats can point to and say, see, this is the way forward? Well, first of all, let me just say it is truly an honor to represent the working people of the greatest city in the entire country, right? And that's the city of Chicago. Mayor Brandon Johnson is the leader of a city seen by many as the very symbol of Democratic dysfunction. But he says we should give Chicago a second look.
And that despite the blowback from the Trump White House, we shouldn't underestimate Democratic city leaders at the forefront of navigating the new political landscape. Listen to The Assignment with me, Audie Cornish, streaming now on your favorite podcast app.