Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
Main
g
greta brawner
cspan17:23
Appearances
chuck schumer
sen/d01:09
donald j trump
admin02:26
hakeem jeffries
rep/d02:13
mike johnson
rep/r02:22
?
Voice
Speaker
Time
Text
Transitioning from Tariffs00:07:29
unidentified
2017, including the withdrawal from a Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement and construction of a border wall between the United States and Mexico.
And at 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures in History, Santa Clara University history professor Sonia Gomez on the intimate relationships between people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds that occurred in Hawaii and Japan during and immediately after World War II.
Exploring the American story.
Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
We'll talk about the president's plan for the budget, including those 2017 tax cuts, increasing spending on his deportation and immigration policies while also trying to find spending cuts.
as well as the president's tariffs policies.
Take a look at news out of China this morning.
Here's the New York Times.
China now raising their tariffs on U.S. imports to 125%.
That's up from 84%.
Beijing's retaliation today came after the White House had raised its tariff on Chinese goods to 125% on top of an existing 20% tax.
So the tip for tax with China continues this morning, and we can get your thoughts on that as well.
Take a look at a recent poll done by Quinnett Piak on whether or not people approve of the president's trade policies.
55% said they disapprove, while 39% said they approve.
On the overall economy from the Quinnet PIAC poll, this is what they found.
55% of those surveyed disapprove of the president's handling of the economy, while 40% approve.
The president held a cabinet meeting yesterday and he talked to reporters about the transition problems.
That's a quote from him when it comes to his tariff actions.
President Trump in the cabinet room on Thursday talking about the economy.
Do you support or oppose the president and Republicans' economic policies?
As he said, inflation did cool.
This is Axios' headline.
Consumer prices fall in March with much cooler inflation.
Axios says, why does it matter?
Inflation moved down as President Trump began ratcheting up the global trade war last month, a relief after warnings that inflation progress had stalled out.
But concerns about inflation remain.
Trump 10% across-the-board tariff that took effect this month could hit consumer prices as well as the higher levy of 125% on imports from China.
Related to that from the Wall Street Journal this morning, Trump inherited a solid economy and labor market.
But recent data and corporate announcements have presented a gloomy picture going forward.
Walmart on Wednesday cited tariff risks as a reason for backing away from its previous target, according to the Wall Street Journal report, for first quarter profit growth.
Delta Airlines pulled its earnings forecast for the year because of broad economic uncertainty around global trade.
Let's get to calls.
Tom in Frederick, Maryland, Republican.
Tom, support or oppose the Republicans, including President Trump's economic policies.
unidentified
Well, thank you for taking my call.
I just want to say I absolutely approve.
I think everything he's doing is great.
I just wish some of these, you know, the left, if we could just sit back, let him do his thing.
He's a businessman.
He's going to help this country out tremendously.
Just give him a little bit more time.
Some of the things I've proved with, some of the things, eh.
I mean, I'm asking because of the headlines in the papers this morning just talking about how much we import from China versus how much we export to China.
And the difference is, as you know, pretty startling.
unidentified
Yeah, well, I mean, why can't we just bring back manufacturing here to America and just have American-based things again?
So take a look at these numbers from the U.S. Census.
Nearly $582 billion worth of goods are traded between the United States and China.
These are 2024 numbers.
U.S. imported around $438 billion worth of goods and services from China.
China imported $143 billion from the United States.
So $438 billion versus $143 billion.
Let's go to Dave in Wilmington, Delaware, Independent.
Dave, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
A couple of points.
On China, it was Besson or Lutnick was talking about how America holds all the cards in this.
China has way more to lose.
And I think there are a couple of problems with that.
One, yes, there's a huge deficit, but China also holds 9% of America's debt in Treasury securities.
That's something that they can retaliate with.
If they decide to dump that debt, it's going to lose value just like stocks lose value when people start to sell them.
And that is going to cost the United States a lot more if those notes depreciate and we can't sell them anymore.
The Republicans are still talking about a budget that is going to have a huge deficit, and we're going to have to sell more debt to fund it.
And rates are going to go up.
So just servicing the debt is going to become even more than it is now.
Second, on China, Americans rely on all of our consumer goods, which contribute to the nice lifestyle that we have for all of our TVs and clothing and all of that.
Now, yes, that's discretionary spending, but it's still something that Americans want.
It's part of our lifestyle.
So if we cut all of that off, are we going to be happy about that?
No.
I don't approve of the way that Trump is doing this because it is rash.
It is unsophisticated.
We need to take a more reasonable approach, look at specific industries and go from there.
And even Democrats who are generally favorable to the idea of protecting our businesses and manufacturing more here because of abuses in the international trade system and what it does to people who are actually producing those goods overseas will say,
Dave, I just want to share this headline with you because you said the United States is not in a good position when it comes to China.
However, there is this story in the international section of the New York Times of China not being in a great place either.
There is some leverage here.
Here's a headline: China expects to shop itself out of a bind.
It'll be tough.
Consumers were skittish even before this tariff war.
That's Chinese consumers.
So if the United States is not going to purchase, import all these goods from China, this is the strategy, according to the New York Times, from the Chinese government, is that they'll encourage their own citizens to start buying up these goods and services.
Can they shop their way out of this, Dave?
unidentified
I agree.
I mean, China also has a lot to lose.
If we were to stop buying their products, yeah, it's going to kill their economy.
Now, as a state-controlled economy, you know, that doesn't really entirely follow free trade policies.
Maybe they're going to make a way around that.
But my point is that we're not holding all the cards in this country.
Yeah, Dave, I'm going to pick up on that point that we don't hold all the cards.
This is the Wall Street Journal this morning.
After tariff climb down, the world asks: is it a method or madness?
And not just with the negotiations with China.
Because from the Wall Street Journal reporting this morning, some economists said the swift climb down after the market convulsions of the past few days provided world leaders with valuable information about Trump's pain threshold, which could lead them to take a tougher stance when negotiations start in earnest.
And you've heard it from the Trump administration officials, the Treasury Secretary Steve Besson from Howard Luttnick, the Commerce Secretary, saying countries are lining up now to talk and negotiate.
Ronald, in Kaplan, Louisiana, Republican Ronald, let's hear from you.
unidentified
I like what you're doing.
I want to make a couple of comments.
First of all, everybody keeps saying that we're in a recession.
False, false thoughts.
Maybe we win a recession in 1924 because it takes three things to make a recession.
Economy, we went 19% higher than we are right now.
Okay.
The next thing: unemployment.
Unemployment stayed the same throughout 24.
Mark On Economic Tariffs00:14:15
unidentified
And then the amount of people that work.
Come to find out was 850,000 people that were falsely working.
Yeah, I got one comment, and that is they did all this at one time with no strategy, it looks like to me, except for to tear down our economy, period.
It's the way it looks with the tariffs.
You have, and then they sacked a lot of different parts of the government.
These are the people they're going to need to find the waste and abuse.
And after all that, then they're going to add another seven, eight trillion dollars to the national debt.
Already put 8 trillion last time he was here when they're going to start worrying about the national Charter, national debt and Mark, you're talking about this plan to increase or extend, make permanent some of those 2017 tax cuts.
Yesterday, the speaker and his counterpart in the Senate, Senate majority leader, John Thune.
They had a news conference in the morning saying that uh, that the Senate would agree to 1.5 trillion in in tax cuts, that they think they were confident they could find that and that the two sides should move forward.
Um, with the a budget blueprint for the president.
That was just before a vote on the floor and, as we said, at the top 216 to 214, this budget blueprint was approved.
Two Republicans joined with all the Democrats to oppose it.
There were 20 holdouts the day before on voting for this budget blueprint.
After it was approved in november, the American people delivered unified government to the Republican party.
They returned president Donald Jump to the White House.
They gave us UH control of the House and the Senate and we are going to make good by that.
We have a big responsibility in the budget Uh Reconciliation bill the reason we call it the One Big, Beautiful Bill everybody in this crowd of journalists knows that all the components that will be in that.
We're talking about ensuring that the border is secure, having the resources that are necessary to do that.
We're talking about getting the American economy going again by reducing regulations.
We're talking about restoring peace through strength and and making sure we have the measures in place to properly fund those priorities.
We we have a lot of things, American energy dominance, all the, all the components that will make uh things better for Americans, drive down the cost of living and get our economy really going again.
And, of course, not the least of which the big components of the One Big, Beautiful bill is to ensure that we don't have the largest tax increase in U.s history all at once, which is what would happen at the end of this year if we didn't accomplish this mission, because the Tax Cuts And Jobs Act the tax cuts from the first Trump administration, as we know, would expire.
So a big day for us.
We will now get the committees operating on all cylinders.
They'll be working over the two-week district work period that encompasses Passover and Easter.
They'll take a couple days off for those those holy uh celebrations, and then uh, keep their sleeves rolled up and get right back to work.
The, the committees in the Senate and the House will be working in a collaborative fashion.
We've explained this, that this really is a one-team approach by Republicans in both chambers.
I'm so grateful uh, to leader Thune and his steady hand of leadership.
We had a joint press conference this morning making our commitments known of what we're going to try to do, and that is ensure real savings for the American people, because we have to do that.
We have a responsibility to get our country back on a sound fiscal trajectory and also make sure that we ensure and Protect those essential programs.
The Democrats, as I noted this morning, have said that we're going to gut Medicaid.
It is not true.
We're going to protect the benefits that everyone is legally entitled to.
The beneficiaries who have a legal right to that, it will be preserved.
Those are essential safety net programs that Republicans support.
The president has made clear, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid will not take a hit.
So you can count on that and you can watch it develop as we go.
Speaker Mike Johnson, after House Republicans approved the budget blueprint to move forward on President Trump's tax and spending proposal.
From the Washington Post, their headline, Congress approves agreement to implement Trump's legislative agenda.
And from their reporting about that joint news conference with the Speaker and the majority leader, it was seen as an effort of good faith by roughly 20 holdouts, budget hawks, and members of the House Freedom Caucus who delayed a planned vote Wednesday until they received a firm commitment from the Senate on spending cuts.
But the chambers remain sharply divided over how to find the savings and whether it will truly reduce the federal deficit as House hardliners have demanded.
So more to come in inter-party squabbles for the Republicans and whether or not they can move forward with President Trump's quote, big beautiful bill.
The Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in the House also talked to reporters yesterday after that vote and reacting to the budget framework by Republicans.
Here in the Capitol, the battle lines with respect to Democratic values and Republican values have once again been clearly drawn.
House and Senate Democrats are standing on the side of the American people and we continue to be committed to building an economy that's affordable and that works for everyday Americans and drives down the high cost of living while protecting health care, nutritional assistance, and the social security of the American people.
Donald Trump and extreme MAGA Republicans are doing everything they can to tank our economy, drive us toward a recession, and gut the health care of the American people by visiting upon them the largest Medicaid cut in history,
along with the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history, all in service of enacting massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors like Elon Musk.
It's a toxic scheme that they cannot hide from because it continues to be on full display on the House floor and on the Senate floor for the American people.
The budget resolution that passed the House today will set in motion some of the most extreme cuts to health care, nutritional assistance, and the things that matter to everyday Americans in our nation's nearly 250-year history.
It's a disgrace.
This is just the beginning.
And House Democrats are going to aggressively push back every day, every week, every month, until we bury this reckless Republican budget resolution in the ground, never to rise again.
But I'll tell you what, it's not the nation's economy, but it's our economy.
If you have a 401k and you've lost a large amount of it because the careless talk and the careless actions of the president, then yeah, it's your economy.
Dow tumbled a thousand points, wiping out a chunk of Wednesday's historic rally.
And then here is that CNBC from the same outlet this morning.
Their headlines about futures, stock futures rise as traders assess latest tariff-related developments.
And as we told you at the top, China announcing today on this Friday that they had retaliated again against the United States, raising tariffs above that 84% to now over 100%.
We'll see what President Trump does today.
Steve, let's go to you in Tampa, Florida, Republican.
My feeling is that good leadership has to make tough decisions.
If you look back, Nancy Pelosi, Schumer, Obama all suggested that we were being taken advantage of by China, that we were paying big tariffs and we needed to do something about it.
Trump is doing that.
Trump has spent the last four years trying to decide how he can help America.
I think one of the problems that the public has is there's a saying from the Amish proverb: when you're looking for something, you find what you want to see.
And I think that's true.
People on one side, on the Republican side, look at Fox and Newsmax.
People on the Democratic side look for CNN and MSNBC.
When they hear what they want to hear, they're happy.
Not enough people focus on the truth.
The other thing is earlier this week, you had a show called About Financial Literacy.
Unfortunately, a lot of America is not financially literate, and they don't understand what's going on.
When they hear what they want to hear, they're happy.
The man that goes to work every day and hopes that he can put a roof over his family's head and pay his bills on time and have groceries on the table and maybe have a little bit to put in the bank.
Well, Patrick, there is an effort bipartisan in both the House and the Senate to take back the power over trade from the President of the United States.
And it is bipartisan in the House and the Senate.
We'll see as these negotiations with countries take place in the coming weeks whether or not Congress has momentum to take that power back from the president.
Related to that, front page of the Washington Post headline, a scramble to make progress in trade talks.
As negotiations begin, one Trump official vows results within weeks.
Let's listen to Kevin Hassett.
He's the director of the National Economic Council for the President, served in the first administration as well.
He was talking with reporters outside the White House in the driveway on Thursday, making the case that the president's tariff approach is already yielding results.
unidentified
And USTR has informed us that there are maybe 15 countries now that have made explicit offers that we're studying and considering and deciding whether they're good enough to present to the president.
And we're setting up with the chief of staff's office a very orderly process to prioritize countries and to make sure that the countries that are most important for getting this finished line are the countries that we bring in first.
We could do negotiations a number of ways.
We would expect that there'll be quite a bit of movement of world leaders into the White House in the next three to four weeks.
But yeah, this is a really, really fast process now that's not beginning today or yesterday.
It began long before.
One of the options that the president was considering before he decided to go the way he did yesterday was to announce some deals that are already so far along that we could pretty much finish them up and make them public.
But in the end, he decided that a more general announcement, the one that he made yesterday, was the best way to let everybody understand that he's 100% serious about putting American workers first and making the trade deals happen as fast as possible.
First thing I want to say is what Trump is doing as far as a tariff goes is absolutely necessary.
I just wish it would have happened 50 years ago.
When that was when our government voted to put China in the World Trade Organization, a big mistake.
I wrote every card from the Senator I could recommend that.
But in our naivety, we thought that if China came into the capital trading system, they would learn from us and they would smooth up their ways and be more accountable of freedoms.
Not happen, did not happen, has not happened.
And this month, he just mentioned today that we have imported $500 billion worth of goods, while China has imported $100 billion worth of goods.
Don't tell me words.
I agree with them.
So what that means is, amazingly, in this madness that America is going through, we're spending $800 billion on our military, and we're financing and paying for $500 billion for China's military.
It's absolutely unconscionable and absurd, and it has to stop.
Yeah, let me give those numbers again that you were referencing.
This is from the Census Bureau.
This is the numbers for U.S.-Trina-China trade in 2024.
Nearly $582 billion worth of goods traded.
The U.S. imported around $438 billion worth of goods and services from China, while China imported from us $143 billion.
So you can see there the trade deficit.
The trade deficit is what the president has pointed to for his rationale of moving forward with these tariffs, not just on China, but other countries as well.
This was tried by the administration, by President Trump in his first administration as well.
From the New York Times reporting this morning, the first trade war with China, which lasted from 2018 to 2019, resulted in billions of dollars of lost revenue for American farmers.
To help offset the losses, Mr. Trump handed out $23 billion in subsidies from a fund that the Department of Agriculture created to stabilize the farm sector.
Large farm operations and farmers in the South benefited the most, fueling concerns about fairness and leaving some farmers feeling cheated.
Now, the headline on the front page of the papers this morning, this is the New York Times.
American farmers are bracing for the loss of major market for crops, soybeans being the first and corn as well.
That's from the New York Times.
Let's go to Lou in Highland Park, Illinois, Democratic Caller.
Hi, Lou.
unidentified
Morning.
Good morning.
I think the president is moving away too fast.
If he wanted to settle our deficit, he could have done this in a much slower and moderate way.
For example, he could have asked each depart of the government to reduce their expenditures by, let's say, one half percent every year for four years.
That would be a 2% reduction.
And he could ask for a much slower solution to what's happening.
And I think what's happening, America, Americans have become addicted to low prices.
If you go to Walmart and buy a screwdriver and it costs $4, we cannot tolerate going to Walmart and buying a screwdriver for triple or quadruple what the $4 would become.
Well, let's go to the Senate floor with the Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, who over his years in the Senate has talked extensively about U.S. competition with China.
And you can find it in our archives if you go to c-span.org, all the times that he has talked about his concerns with the Chinese.
But here he is on the Senate floor Thursday on the president's sudden pause on tariffs.
This was not a week of 3D chess, 4D chess, nor even checkers.
Again, to paraphrase a former Trump official, people think Trump is playing 3D chess, but most of the time, the staff is just trying to keep him from eating the pieces.
I have a problem with the overall communication of the economic strategy.
Of course, everyone wants to cut taxes.
Of course, everyone wants lower food, gas, housing costs.
Of course, everyone wants to maintain and contain the number of people who legally come into our country.
But I don't think the communication of the strategy and the subsequent strategic plans have been communicated so that people understand them and can go along and accept them.
I also think that there is a real lack of just being in touch with the common people.
The lady that called in earlier, the retiree, I'm also a retiree.
I agree 100% with everything she said.
No, things are not costing less.
And we know it's going to take time.
Prices didn't rise overnight.
We know they're not going to drop overnight.
But don't try to okey-doke us and tell us, oh, yeah, the prices are good.
Everything's good.
It's going to be good.
Most people I know have 401ks.
They're retired.
And their 401ks have been decimated, just absolutely decimated.
They don't know what to do.
And the last thing I want to say is this whole thing with Elon Musk and the whole thing about cutting waste in the government, we definitely do need to do that.
I saw that video of the Social Security Administration's records down in this cave-like environment with the rows and rows and rows of files.
That's totally unacceptable in today's world of technology and how that all should have been digitized.