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President's Peace Push00:15:12
unidentified
Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, your calls and comments live.
And then we'll talk with Cliff Young, President of Polling and Societal Trends for Ipsos, about his organization's new polling on President Trump's first 100 days in office.
And CNBC senior markets reporter Dominic Chu discusses the drivers of the continued volatility of the U.S. financial markets.
President Trump issues a rare rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin after the Russian leader sent 70 missiles and 145 drones toward Kiev on Thursday, striking 13 locations, killing at least 12 and wounding another 90.
This morning, we want to get your take on President Trump's handling of the Ukraine-Russian peace talks.
If you're a Republican, dial in at 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can also text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003.
Just include your first name, city, and state.
You can also post on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ.
We'll get to your thoughts on the president's handling of the Ukraine-Russia peace talks in just a minute here, but let's start with what the president had to say in that rare rebuke, as it's being called by news observers this morning.
Here he is in a Truth Social Post yesterday morning.
I'm not happy with the Russian strikes on Kiev.
Not necessary and very bad timing.
Vladimir, stop.
A personal appeal to the Russian leader.
5,000 soldiers a week are dying.
Let's get the peace deal done.
Here's a little bit more from the president in the Oval Office yesterday.
unidentified
Mr. President, this morning in a Truth Social Post, you used the words, Vladimir, stop.
Well, let me share with you from the Washington Post.
They're reporting this morning, U.S. officials have proposed freezing current battle lines, which would give Russia 20% of the country.
Ukraine has also been told it will not be allowed to join NATO.
The alliance Kiev has long seen as the fastest, cheapest, and safest way to protect the country from future attacks.
And to your point, Teresa, Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the United States would walk away from the peace process if progress were not achieved soon.
Duane in Jamaica, New York, an independent.
Dwayne, let's get your take on this.
What do you think?
unidentified
Good morning.
Good morning, Greta.
This is the very same man while on the campaign trail.
President Trump promised us that he would get this problem solved even before he officially took office.
And that has not happened.
So my question out there to people who support President Trump: when you have an employee that's not delivering on their promises, what do you do with them?
Well, I know in the businesses that I've worked in, if you can't do your job and meet your expectations, you get fired.
So for all those people who say President Trump is doing such a great job, I just asked them, well, is he delivering on his promises?
All right, two calls, noting what the president had to say before he took office.
New York Times does the same this morning.
The Russian-Ukraine war, which Mr. Trump had previously said he could resolve in 24 hours, was now, he suggested, a matter of great difficulty and complexity.
Quote, this isn't my war, Mr. Trump said during Thursday during an Oval Office meeting with Norway's prime minister.
It's Biden's war.
Your reaction to the president saying that.
This morning, Barbara in Tennessee, an independent, good morning to you.
How do you think the president is handling peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine?
unidentified
I think he sucks at it, actually.
I hate to say that, but we promise to have Ukraine's back, which, you know, as long as it takes.
We're America.
We're not like, well, one president comes in, we have a whole country to protect or help.
And then another president comes in and we walk away.
I want to show for you the seven-point plan that the president has put together.
And this is a Telegraph's headline this morning in the Telegraph newspaper out of the UK with the headline, Trump to let Putin keep land seized from Ukraine.
From the president's plan, and this is reported by Axios, this proposed peace framework, how it would benefit Russia, a formal U.S. recognition of Russian control in Crimea, a de facto recognition of the Russians' occupation of four regions in eastern Ukraine, a promise that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO, and the lifting of sanctions imposed since 2014,
plus enhanced economic cooperation with the United States, specifically in the energy and industrial sectors.
What does this proposed framework mean for Ukraine?
It means assistance from European military forces as a robust security guarantee, return of the small part of a small part of what Russia has occupied.
This is the fourth largest region in Ukraine, by the way.
An unimpeded passage of the Dnieper River and compensation and assistance for rebuilding.
So this is the president's peace plan for Russia and Ukraine.
Those are the points, how it would benefit Russia, how it would benefit Ukraine.
Your thoughts on it this morning and the president's handling of it.
Loretta in Cleveland, Ohio, Democratic Caller, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, Greta.
Good morning, America.
I don't think too much of any of that helps Ukraine.
And I am upset.
I'm upset at the very first call you had.
That lady sounded like she'd been listening to Trump sitting directly next to him, talking about he scared wake away.
Listen, I'm going to tell you what Trump is doing.
Loretta wants to know for the Republicans out there.
So we want to include you all in the conversation this morning, getting your different perspectives on how the president is handling peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Here's the President Moore from the Oval Office yesterday talking about concessions Russia has offered to achieve peace with Ukraine.
unidentified
My question is, is Russia the obstacle to peace based upon that?
You know, if you think we're just in there because we're nice people and we are nice people, but we're using a lot of pressure on both.
unidentified
What concessions, Mr. President, and to your national security team, what concessions has Russia offered up thus far to get to the point where you're closer to peace?
Do you agree with the president that it's a pretty big concession by Russia to stop the war and stop taking the rest of Ukraine?
His handling of these peace negotiations with Russia and Ukraine.
That is our conversation with all of you this morning.
NATO Secretary General Rute was out at the White House yesterday in the Oval Office there with the President, and he spoke to reporters then outside in the White House driveway.
The NATO Secretary General at the White House yesterday is saying he believes the Ukrainians are playing ball and that the ball is now in the court of the Russians.
What do all of you think?
Join in in the debate here on the Washington Journal here this morning.
Another headline to share with you out of the UK.
This is from the Mir.
Russian attack prompts NATO nation to be in highest state of readiness as tensions spike in the region.
John, let's go to you.
And Sykesville, Maryland, a Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I think he's doing a wonderful job.
I think he needs to continue what he's doing.
He's cleaning up Joe Biden's mess.
If Joe Biden has done his job as a president, he would have kept energy prices down, which would have cut Vladimir Putin's ability to buy more weapons, which Biden sold in record numbers.
And we all know that's true.
Look at the hundreds of billions of dollars we gave him, just a blank check to Democrats.
Here you go, take what you want.
You know, so we could have kept energy prices down, just like Trump had when Biden, first thing he did, first thing he did, let's shut down that pipeline That could have saved, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars for our economy and would have cut the legs out from that war effort from Ukraine from Russia.
Hands On Putin's Red Line00:06:43
unidentified
He could have done that, but no, he didn't do that.
He wanted to give away more.
He wanted to put money in the hands of the arms dealers.
And that's exactly what Joe Biden did.
The blood's on his hands.
You know, Barack Obama and Biden are the biggest warmongers that have ever been, and nobody holds them accountable.
Republican in Sykesville, Maryland, to the New York Times and their headline this morning: red line for Zelensky and Ukraine.
It's Crimea.
From their reporting, in peace talks mentioned by the United States, Ukraine had hoped to leave control of Crimea out of the discussion.
It has sought an immediate ceasefire, freezing the conflict along the existing front line, as well as security guarantees against renewed attacks, such as the deployment of a European peacemaking force or eventual membership into NATO.
But the Trump administration rejected that approach this week.
The proposal included an acceptance of Russia's role in Crimea and a prohibition on Ukraine joining NATO.
In return, hostilities would be halted along the current front lines.
So for the Ukrainian leader, Zelensky, this Crimea proposal is a red line and not something that he would agree to from the newspapers this morning.
The Ukrainian people also behind that are also behind his rejection of that point.
Kate in Columbia, Missouri, and Independent.
Hi, Kate.
unidentified
Hi.
I think we should not be part of these negotiations.
I think Trump certainly needs to be out of it because I don't think he's neutral.
I think he is, quite frankly, out to police Ukraine.
And they are the victims in this.
I think he's on the side of Russia and would like to see Russia get as much as they want out of this.
I think Trump is also after, I don't know how else to put it, real estate, whether it's rare earth minerals or whatever.
He's out to fleece Ukraine.
He sees an opportunity here.
So I don't think Trump is neutral.
I think we could be neutral as a country, the United States, but I don't think Trump is that person.
I think there needs to be someone else, some other country who steps in to negotiate peace between Ukraine and Russia.
James in Campton, New Hampshire, Democratic caller, what do you think?
unidentified
Yes, as a former residing in Ukraine, I look at historical perspective.
I don't have the information that any of these high-level people would have.
However, following the long-term Russian Soviet domination, they were given the opportunity about 1988 to 92 to explore their own independence, various nations in Eastern Europe.
Russia has announced to their leader their aspirations and rejection of what occurred back in 91.
All these nations became independent, both Romania and, well, all the others.
I won't mention them.
We know who they are.
And they ultimately joined the Western NATO.
Now, Russia has, under Putin, reversed the policy under Mikhail Gorbachev.
He was trying to reach an agreement with the West.
He is interested in expanding Russia's footprint.
And that hasn't changed.
Now, the people now know the present balance of power of what's going on far better than I do.
I'm just a person with not technical knowledge.
But my view is historically, going forward, we might best support NATO and the other countries that are threatened by this expansion and hopefully put an end to Russians' expansion in the Eastern countries.
And the Western European countries are very concerned about this.
I think Trump is doing a pretty good job with the mess that he was handled, that he was handed to.
I think he is trying to stop the killing.
I know when he was president last time, we didn't get our boys involved in any wars and get them killed.
I don't want to see one drop of American blood shed for this mess.
This is almost like a civil war between the Ukrainians and the Russians.
Those people have been involved in one another for a long time.
And as far as America backing out of allies, look, America, the Yankee government there in Washington broke every treaty they ever made with the Indians.
We left the people behind in Vietnam that supported us, and we left them to the mercies of the North Vietnamese.
When we pulled out of there, America has betrayed a whole lot of allies.
World War I got started over one country, and then with all the alliances, got to be very careful.
But I don't want to see any more American money sent to Ukraine.
I don't want to see one drop of American blood shed in Ukraine.
And Zelensky, he ain't exactly the best example of a democracy either.
Yeah, I think Trump is not doing a good job with this thing.
He seems to side toward Russia.
He never really acknowledges that Russia invaded Ukraine.
And then when you listen to him, he says things like he talks to Putin, just like he talks to China, and he knows him very well.
But he never tells us what does Putin say.
They had a ceasefire agreement.
Putin kept on bombing Ukraine during the ceasefire.
Ukraine agreed to it, and Russia did not.
And then he sends Marco over there, and they're acting like Ukraine is the bad guy.
You know, what is Putin doing?
If you can stop the war, you said you could stop it in a day.
So why haven't you got with Putin somewhere or had your delegates get with Putin and sit him down and tell us what he's saying?
You know, you got Zelensky here, and they beat him up.
So I don't think he's doing a good job because he seems to be saddened toward Russia.
He won't acknowledge that they invaded Ukraine.
He won't talk about them continuing the bomb.
And lately, he's been saying, you know, or the administration has been saying, hey, we're about to walk out of the peace talks.
You know, well, what are the peace talks?
What's happening?
Ukraine's agreeing to stuff.
So what is Russia doing?
They never say anything about Russia and Putin.
So I think he's saddened toward them.
Maybe he wants to build a hotel or golf course or something one of those days over there, but he just doesn't seem to live up to the Putin relationship that he claims that he has.
If he's tough, then tell Putin to come to the table, stop the bombing, and let's sit down and talk.
And they can stop the, and they can do something about this.
We'll continue here this morning on the Washington Journal in our first hour.
Your thoughts on the president's handling of Ukraine-Russia peace talks.
There are the lines on your screen.
Keep dialing in this morning.
Here's the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board's thoughts on this question this morning.
A moment of truth in Ukraine is what they write.
And they say that it's also that Vladimir Putin's overnight missile assault on civilians in Kiev is a grim moment that strips away the false pretenses and excuses about the Russian dictators' invasion of Ukraine.
It's also an opening for President Trump to rethink his strategy, which is failing to produce peace.
But the assault is clarifying about the war and its causes.
Mr. Putin didn't invade Ukraine because it might join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which the Trump administration has ruled out anyway.
Mr. Putin's war isn't about Russian ties to Crimea, which he swallowed up before he rolled tanks toward Kiev.
It isn't about a few provinces as Mr. Putin pummels civilians far from the front lines.
And it isn't about a lack of U.S. respect for Mr. Putin's security concerns.
Mr. Putin, an enemy of the United States, wants to subsume Ukraine as a free nation.
Readers may think this states the obvious, but this basic truth is the starting point for any productive negotiation with Mr. Putin.
That's the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board this morning.
Do you agree or disagree?
Donald, in Michigan, Democratic caller, let's hear from you.
unidentified
Good morning, CPAN.
Good morning, Greta, and the American people.
Trump and his administration of forced slingers do not have a clue of what they're doing.
We made a deal with Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons.
And if they did, the world countries would come in and help if they were invaded.
So we made this bargain with them, and now we're backing out of it.
And then we have Donald Trump, a taxi for Putin, doing everything he can to help him win this war.
We should be giving Ukraine everything they need to win.
And we have Trump in there just kissing Putin behind every chance he gets.
And these Republicans who support him, they are not supporting the Constitution, and the Republican leadership should be dismantled in this next midterm election.
Donald, in Michigan, Democratic caller from the Associated Press.
Ukraine says another Russian drone attack kills three after the president's rebuke of Putin.
From the Kiev in Kiev in the Associated Press, a Russian drone struck an apartment building in a southeastern Ukraine city, killing three people and injuring 10 others.
Officials said on Friday, a day after the president rebuked Vladimir Putin for that deadly missile and drone attack on Kiev.
From the Associated Press this morning, it says a child and a 76-year-old woman were among the civilians killed in the nighttime drone attack in this Ukrainian region.
Back to calls.
Luis in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Republican.
Luis, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Why do you keep referring this as a peace talk?
It is not peace talks.
This is a negotiation for a ceasefire.
That's all this is.
And then if they show something that they're willing to then talk peace, this is not peace negotiations.
And Ukraine is so full of it.
Zelensky is so full of it that it's just, I mean, he's absurd.
He is a comedian.
And as President Trump said, he's a sub-par comedian.
You know, if you think we're just in there because we're nice people and we are nice people, but we're using a lot of pressure on both.
unidentified
What concessions, Mr. President, and to your national security team, what concessions has Russia offered up thus far to get to the point where you're closer to peace?
The Oval Office, yesterday, if you missed the conversation, you can go to our website, c-span.org, and you can watch it in its entirety.
The president, they are taking questions from reporters about negotiations with Russia and Ukraine to stop the war.
You heard the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, say that the president is a peacemaker.
Here's the headline in USA Today.
Russia wields nuclear threat as it attacks Ukraine, and Trump says Zelensky inflammatory.
From their reporting, the Kremlin's top security officials said his country reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if it faces aggression by Western countries, as overnight Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukraine's capital killed at least eight people and injuring more than 70 others.
Russian officials routinely make saber-rattling remarks about Moscow's nuclear posture.
The former defense minister who now heads Russia's powerful National Security Council made his comments in an April 24th interview to a Russian state news agency.
He said Russia might consider a nuclear strike in response to a conventional attack on Russia or its ally Belarus that, quote, created a critical threat to their sovereignty or territorial integrity.
Brian in Zanesville, Ohio, and Independent.
Hi, Brian.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
My whole thing is, as the Donald always says, if he was the president of the United States, the war would never start it.
Well, first of all, the war is still going on, and it is a pass day one, and he hadn't done a daggone thing about it.
Second of all, what if he invited, say, Putin to Mar-a-Lago and he refuses to leave and he invaded Florida?
So all these Republicans think that it would be okay and that he would think that Donald was doing a good job because Putin took over Florida now and Mar-a-Lago.
The bottom line is: Russia started this war over in Ukraine, and Ukraine is defending themselves.
And Putin is making a mockery out of the United States and Donald Trump.
And every one of these Republicans that's calling in and supporting Trumble, Trump, Putin is laughing in your face, and you guys are too silly to see that Putin is the one that's the aggressor.
And the Donald, he hasn't done a daggone thing to stop the war.
Let's say if Ukraine goes to China and asks China to start helping them and just refuse to do business with the United States, what would the Donald or the Republicans do then?
And Brian, do you support the money spent in Ukraine, the money sent to Ukraine from the United States?
Oh, we lost that caller.
We'll go to Alex, who's in Brooklyn, Democratic College.
Alex, it's your turn.
unidentified
Yes, hello.
Good morning.
I wish I could honestly reply to all of these Republicans calling about every single point.
There's just not enough time.
But if you go back, Bush started two wars that cost us trillions and cost us the faith of the world in Bowling, North Korea.
That was Republicans, and Biden had to pull out of Afghanistan, which cost them the election and cost him his presidency.
This president now is saying that the concession is that Russia is not going to take the rest of Ukraine.
Right now, Russia is conscripting over 160,000 young men in the next year, 160,000 young men in Russia.
What do you think he's going to do with those young men once they are able to go on the front lines?
Do you think Russia is making any plans to somehow just extract themselves from Ukraine?
It is a failure of the United States not to take this matter seriously because unfortunately we have a president that is creating chaos.
Germany is arming itself with over a trillion dollars worth of defense.
Europe is rearming itself.
That never bodes well for anyone.
And the only thing that I called for is for all of these ignorant, stupid people and people that are mindful and understand what's going on to just listen to the podcast, Ukraine the latest.
I repeat, it's called Ukraine the Latest.
They have a podcast almost every day, and you can hear everything that is actually happening in this war so people can understand.
They take sources directly from soldiers on the ground.
They talk to children that have been misplaced that are living in England now.
They talk to reporters that are actually in Ukraine.
It is direct information from people that are living through this war.
And they are actually talking to people that are trying to understand how to get out of this conflict, how to be able to make sense of it in Europe, in Ukraine, talking to even Russian children that are living in England, working and talking with kids from Ukraine.
Every day, they have something to give more light to the human factor of what this war is actually doing.
When you're here in the United States and hearing all these talking points of people that don't have anything to do with it, it's easy for you to say, it's not our war.
Let's walk away.
Well, if Russia takes over Ukraine, they're not going to stop there.
And they're talking about a nuclear.
I mean, all I am saying is that people should be more mindful of the fact that there are human beings dying, not just soldiers, and their lives are being destroyed.
And it's easy for you from the comfort of your own home to make all of these opinions.
You and others may be interested in this headline from the Telegraph this morning out of the UK revealed how China is fueling Putin's war beyond the detained soldiers.
Beijing is sustaining Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine with military supplies.
This is the first time in my life I've ever felt embarrassed to be an American.
I have to put this really on Joe Biden and on Barack Obama because Barack Obama drew the line in the sand that they couldn't take Crimea then let them have it.
Joe Biden, he drug his feet.
He wouldn't give Ukraine what they needed to fight the invasion.
I'm calling it an invasion because that's what it was.
It is.
It's not a war.
Shame on any news channel that says war instead of invasion.
And I am totally tired of the way the Russian Republicans are attacking Ukraine when they're a sovereign country trying to defend themselves from an invasion.
And they didn't start this war.
And Donald Trump should be ashamed of himself for saying that he's going to even leave Ukraine out in space.
Because as soon as the United States leaves Ukraine and stops helping Ukraine, then they're going to start using weapons to attack cities inside Russia.
This war will escalate unbelievably when the United States says they're done.
Then the United States keeping Ukraine from using long-range weapons in Russia will end.
And Ukraine will start attacking cities in Russia, and then there goes the whole deal altogether.
Mike there, an independent in Oak Grove, Missouri, with criticism for not just this administration, but the ones before as well in the handling of Russia-Ukraine.
That is our conversation here.
This morning, I want to share with you from the Council on Foreign Relations.
How much money has the United States provided Ukraine?
The U.S. Congress has voted through five bills that have provided Ukraine with aid since the war began, doing so mostly, most recently in April of 2024.
The total budget authority under these bills, the headline figure often cited by news media, is $175 billion.
This historic sums have helped a broad set of Ukrainian people and institutions, including refugees, law enforcement, and independent radio broadcasters through most of the aid, though most of the aid has been military related.
Dozens of other countries, including most members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union, are also providing large aid packages to Ukraine.
In late 2024, the United States also provided the Ukrainian government with a $20 billion loan funded by interest generated from frozen Russian assets.
George in Circleville, Ohio, Republican.
George, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, Greta.
Thanks.
And I want to compliment you.
You did such a great job.
I really like listening to you.
Well, I hear these callers wouldn't call some Republican supporters, but actually what they meant was ludicrous, but they called him ignorant.
A gentleman from Michigan said Trump was a patsy.
That's THS, the Trump hate syndrome.
That's all it is.
Biden should never have been president, but the Democrats put him in there.
He was the stoo for someone else so that he didn't reign the country.
He let Russia, this is a fact, he let Russia build up their military at the Ukraine border for at least three months.
This is during the last Winter Olympics.
No one's reporting on that, but that's a fact.
Why would Russia build up a military for three months?
Common sense people, they were going to attack.
That's why they built that up.
And President Trump is doing everything.
What did Joe Biden do in the last four years to try to end the war?
Absolutely nothing.
And President Trump hasn't been in office 100 days, but on day one, he began this process.
Now, if Putin wants to play games and stabs and tries to stab President Trump in the back, I'd beware.
Because, you know, just like we can take out terrorists, we can consider Putin a terrorist.
So Putin's walking a very narrow line, and he better realize it.
Because, you know, President Trump, he knows how to work the art of the deal, but he has other options as well.
All right, George, there's a prediction there from Circleville, Ohio.
More from that Pew Research poll.
The majority of Republicans and Democrats see the Russia-Ukraine war as important to U.S. national interests.
This is the percentage who say the war between Russia and Ukraine is very or somewhat important to U.S. national interests.
And you can see the numbers.
A majority of Republicans and Democrats see it as important.
We're asking all of you to give us your thoughts this morning on how the Trump administration is handling peace talks with Ukraine and Russia.
Joshua in Illinois, a Democratic caller, we'll hear from you next.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi.
Good morning, Greta.
Just want to go back to that clip you played with the Trump president, you know, speaking in the Oval Office.
To me, it's just a clear reminder of how misinformed the Republicans are.
You had that caller accusing you, telling you that it was a ceasefire peace deal.
He clearly said that they're going to end the war, him and Mark Rubio, but they just continue to repeat what they hear from the pundits.
They don't even repeat what Trump says.
Even just like your last caller, he said that the Russians are closer to Americans than, I don't know, I guess Ukraine.
That's exactly a line from propaganda that's been spewed over here by Russia.
These people have zero memory.
Like, this is the Russia from the 80s at Reagan Flaw.
There's whole sections in the library that talk about how the KGB and how the FSD are infiltrating the United States government.
If you look at some of the actions the Trump administration did, like remove sanctions, remove protections from cybersecurity that were placed on Russia for invading our election and meddling in elections, the proof is there.
These people like Tim Poole, who sits in a press conference, he was given $100,000 a day by it's proven with evidence in an indictment that you can go read in a court where the truth is the only place that matters nowadays.
These people, your callers, are just an example of every day how they live in an alternate reality.
They can't read alternate sources and they have to accept what's been fat to them because otherwise they have to admit that they were wrong.
The cognitive dissonance will fall in front of their eyes.
Helen, before you go on, I want to ask you about the president's peace plan that he's put forth to both of these countries and get your reaction to the benefits for Russia from what the administration is putting forth.
Formal U.S. recognition of Russian control in Crimea, de facto recognition of Russia's occupation of four regions in eastern Ukraine, so the battle lines right now, and a promise that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.
Those are from Axios, as they're reporting.
The lifting of sanctions imposed since 2014 and enhanced economic cooperation with the United States.
Helen, do you think that the president is giving too much to Russia?
unidentified
Beginning under Stalin, millions of ethnic Russians have been moved into Ukraine.
And so millions of people in Ukraine are ethnic Russians who speak Russian and really don't want to be part of the Ukrainian community.
And that includes Crimea.
Remember the, you don't remember, but you remember the Crimean War?
I mean, it was a time when it was part of Russia.
So that area of Ukraine has gone back and forth like a pickleball contest.
So people have to realize that.
It's not a clear-cut and dry issue of whether Ukraine are the good guys and Russia's the bad guys.
And I have a couple of comments on your reporting regarding this issue.
You've had, well, what I would recommend is that you have two experts on that part of the world and on Russia and Ukraine with opposing views and then take questions because I think the discussion is rather one-sided and I can explain why.
But also, I wish you would also have something on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
You've had two people, I think, from the Council for Defense of Democracies, which is pro-Israel outfit.
And I wish you would have more balance and perhaps have a couple of experts on that issue as well.
If you'd like to come and I think if you go to our website, cspan.org, and go to the Washington Journal's page, you'll find the conversations that we've had here on the journal on both of those disputes, those conflicts that are happening in Russia-Ukraine and Palestinians and Hamas and Israel.
We've had conversations, and we've done what you've talked about, which is having experts here at the table to experts on the regions to talk about it.
So, again, go to our website, cspan.org.
We're going to take a short break when we come back.
Clifford Young will be with us, President of Polling and Societal Trends at Ipsos.
He'll discuss his organization's recent polling on President Trump as we near his first 100 days in office.
And then later, CNBC senior markets reporter Dominic Chu discusses what's driving the ongoing volatility in the U.S. financial markets.
Stay with us.
unidentified
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
This weekend, the 2025 White House Correspondents Association dinner is Saturday.
Over the years, former presidents have attended the annual event.
American History TV will feature many of those past speeches beginning at noon Eastern.
Then at 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures in History, American University Professor Laura Beers on Winston Churchill and the special relationship between Great Britain and the U.S. during World War II and the Cold War.
At 9.30 on The Presidency, a discussion about John Adams' political philosophy and his influence on the U.S. Constitution, especially on the separation of powers and checks and balances.
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Back at our table this morning, Cliff Young, polling and societal trends president of Ipsos, here to talk about public interest and public opinions in President Trump's first 100 days.
So let's talk about his overall approval rating as we approach 100 days.
A lot of, depending on the indicator, if you look at his handling of the economy as one, people's opinion of tariffs as another, thwarting court orders, these are just examples of a variety of specific issues that America is a little bit standoffish about.
They're negative towards.
And that doesn't necessarily translate into the approval ratings right now.
It can, it might, but at this moment, it isn't.
But we can see on the edges this sort of noise friction unease.
Indeed, if we look at focus groups, that is not polling, which is quantitative, where we call you or knock on your door and talk to you, but when we basically sit down with you and have a conversation, Americans are saying the same thing.
When the president says the price of gas has gone down, the price of eggs has gone down, the price of groceries has gone down, and then Americans go to the store and they see the price of things, or they go fill up their tank and they see the price of things.
What about that disconnect?
CNN did a segment this morning about how those claims by the president on gas prices and eggs and grocery prices isn't true.
So the president can say it, but then people don't see it.
Let's say the average American, just an individual living in my hometown, Elgin, Illinois, how are they thinking?
They're basically saying they're not thinking about inflation rates because inflation rates have come down.
They're thinking about how much things cost relative to a year ago, relative to two years ago, and how much money is left over at the end of the month.
That's the most important gauge for households determining whether they're in a good situation or not.
And they still aren't.
They still have problems making ends meet because income has not increased faster than the cost of living.
And that's what Americans are saying when they're saying that they're worried about inflation.
Yeah, the strongest place right now is immigration.
That obviously is his bailiwick.
He won in 2016 on that.
It was a very important issue in 2020.
Obviously, cost of living was more important, but that was an important issue.
He's still strong there.
He basically, that's his net positive.
He doesn't have any other net positives across the issues.
They're all net negatives at this point.
But immigration still is a strong place and really a place he can go if the tariff issue, if the economic policy issue becomes too difficult politically.
And then when you go down to ending protecting from deportation for immigrants who were children when they arrived in the U.S. illegally, 62% oppose that.
They can be in favor of certain policies of administration against other ones.
And I think that that's one of the reasons we put that in there to show that America is this mosaic.
It's not just red and blue.
I think we overstate the polarization, though it's very important today.
And ultimately, we see that.
But the caveat I would say is they do critique the way it's being done.
So this goes back to my point about friction.
Yeah, I'm in favor of deporting illegal immigrants who are criminals, but man, they deserve due process.
You can't sweep them up in the dead of night and take them out of here.
That's not America.
That's not fair.
That's not fundamentally fair.
By the way, that's a very foundational value in America.
It's a very foundational value in the world in general.
But this notion of fundamental fairness and Americans, red, blue, purple, or whatever, really hold that dear and are critical of the way the administration is going about doing things.
As we approach the president's first 100 days of his second term, we invite you to join us in this conversation.
Your perception of how the president and his administration is doing, the executive orders that he has signed, the other actions that the president and his cabinet have taken.
Here's how you can join us this morning.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
In Independence, 202-748-8002.
And remember, text with your first name, city, and state to 202-748-8003.
Jason is up first in Greensboro, North Carolina, Republican.
Hi, Jason.
unidentified
Hi.
Hi, Greta.
I think President Trump has had to take some very tough decisions in his first 100 days.
And some of those decisions were not popular.
And that's why I think his small numbers are slightly down.
But you have to remember, he inherited the inflation.
Because of all the free money we gave out for COVID, people just chose not to work.
And that's what drove up the employment and staffing costs for businesses.
I think people are forgetting that.
And I think he has done more than what President Biden did in four years.
What about the president, speaking of unconventional, the Doge committee set up, Elon Musk running that, the way that that commission committee went about trying to find ways to reduce the federal government?
And just kind of, you know, basically reflecting on what we've just said.
I mean, basically, there's a lot of friction.
People don't like change.
Trump is making very difficult decisions from his standpoint.
They're going against public opinion.
The huge question will be: will he be able to convince public opinion in the long term that these were the right decisions, or will the friction lead to his ultimate approval decline?
And we don't know.
The one point I wanted to make about not being interviewed, I just want to remind the caller that there's 330 million people in the United States.
Therefore, the likelihood of any one individual being interviewed is very, very low.
But I also want to say for those of you that have, we appreciate you doing that.
We see it as a civic duty.
Your ability, the ability, and we see it as an honor to hear your voice and being able to bring it to the table and talk about the constraints that ultimately public opinion is laying out and how the Trump administration is navigating that.
I think him cutting the programs without thinking about the American people and the impact of them, as opposed to just making them more efficient, is just deplorable.
He doesn't believe in due process, obviously, or the separation of powers and the separation of state.
I think he's a crook and a narcissist.
I think that what he said about John McCain, I'm appalled by fellow veterans who still support Donald Trump when he talks badly about our true heroes.
And I felt this way ever since the first debate, and I didn't vote for him, and I didn't vote Republican for the first time in my life.
Clifford Young, I mean, when you hear Republican, he says he's voted Republican his whole life, and then the first time doesn't vote Republican when the president is on the ticket for the first time in 2016.
Interesting, and how many people, how many Republicans are there like Leo?
First, I want to thank the people who prompted my point this morning.
There was a Facebook post by Professor Tribe from Harvard who was quoting an op-ed piece in the Times last Sunday about the relative benefits of the new major question doctrine by the Supreme Court as between Democrats and Republicans.
It was invoked for the first time in a major way a few years ago to slap down Biden's rules against carbon emissions under the EPA statutes, which seem to permit Biden to regulate carbon dioxide.
And the Supreme Court said, well, even if the law says you can do this, if it has a major impact, we want Congress to weigh in and really say they meant that by their statutes.
So the point of the op-ed piece by Aaron Tang last Sunday was that, well, the same rule could be used to help Democrats against some of the overreach of Republicans using executive power that wasn't clearly authorized in terms by the Congress.
And whether we're looking at Doge or excess deportation efforts or attempts to interfere with the free speech of law firms and media or reductions in health care administration, there's a lot of action by Trump here, which arguably should be blessed by the Congress, specifically because they're so vast and so radical.
So the question is, will the Supreme Court act under the major question doctrine as much to guard excesses by a Republican president as they did to guard against climate action by a Democratic president?
Well, I'll talk about it from the public opinion standpoint, which I know a little bit about.
But basically, the question is, where does it end, right?
One side goes really far one way, then the other side comes back and goes very far the other way.
That's not actually sustainable in the long term from a Democratic perspective, right?
But ultimately, what reinforces that from a public opinion standpoint, there's a widespread belief that the system is broken, that parties and politicians no longer care about the average person, that it's rigged by the elites, and there's a strong belief in America, not just America, all over the world we find this, a belief that strong leaders to take the country back need to break the rules.
And that's, we're talking supermajority levels in the United States, and like I said, we see it around the world.
I think a lot of the institutional creep, the fraying of institutions, is a function of this frustration, a deep-seated frustration that society is not working for the average person like them.
Dana, referring to our conversation earlier this morning, we were asking our viewers their perspective on how the president's handling the Russia-Ukraine war.
Democrats still showing support, though it's declined since the beginning of the conflict, and Republicans really reflecting the position of the administration today.
So extremely polarized at this point and sort of stuck in a way.
There isn't consensus right now in America about how to deal with it.
I would just, you know, I want to return to the caller's question about history repeating itself.
I'm no historian, right?
But what I would say is I think of it more like this.
Human beings are human beings.
And we were humans 2,000 years ago and we're humans today.
And we kind of behave the same way.
And so as a pollster, we use the past to predict the future.
And so there's a lot of behavioral traits and tendencies that are similar that we use.
Take advantage of to understand what will happen in the future.
So that's my mini tweaker riff on history repeating itself pieces.
You know, what's very frustrating is that we have people like this pollster on TV and we have a man in office who didn't get the approval of the American people, didn't get the approval of Congress, didn't get the approval of Senate, and then we have an entire Republican Party sitting back saying that he's not breaking the norms.
He's doing what a president should do.
I have never understood how one man can become a dictator.
Our Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, gives him absolute power over everything that he wants to do, and he cannot go to jail for nothing.
Why do you think he's doing what he's doing?
And then you have a pollster on here basically giving him credence and giving him an okay.
Instead of saying that, we could say that Trump is nothing better.
He's nothing more than average right now.
And so he's just like the average of what we've seen, which is the average decline is three points.
He's at five points, whether it be the Ipsus poll or all the polls together.
And so I say that because we have to separate the signal from the noise, right?
There's a lot of noise right now talking about how he's imploding.
That might happen.
Indeed, we see that noise.
We see the friction on the edges like we've already talked about.
But if we look at the most important number, the number that predicts his ability to push forward his agenda and the number that predicts his electoral likelihood or that of his successor, he's not doing that poorly.
Because you have an electoral coalition, plus, you have Americans that say, I'm going to give this individual the benefit of the doubt.
I might not have voted for him or her, but I'm going to, I'm going to basically support them.
But then when they start to make decisions, that coalition begins to break down.
And that's what we're seeing, right?
You know, I thought you were going to work on cost of living, but I'm seeing you doing all these things with the federal government.
Like, my cousin was just laid off.
She lives in Metro DC.
And so you lose people with that.
And that's natural.
That's what democracy shows.
That the trajectory for any administration, presidential, by the way, not just in the United States, but around the world, is that over time you lose support.
In Philadelphia, Bob is watching us there, an independent.
We'll hear from you.
unidentified
Okay, yeah.
Good morning.
I had some concerns about just polling.
I've noticed over some recent elections that some of the outcomes haven't matched the polls.
So I was curious about some challenges for pollsters just with the cell phone, old landline phones.
I was also interested in the idea of public opinion as a guardrail, as Cliff like Young talked about.
And one thing I noticed in this country is that the, you know, we talk about democracy, but it's not really a democracy.
It's a constitutional republic and there's a big difference.
And then in this constitutional republic, one thing that has been noted, there was a Princeton study where they looked at legislative outcomes.
And there's absolutely no relationship between voter preference and legislative outcomes.
But there is a very close relationship between moneyed interest and legislative outcomes.
And so I would almost think that the polling of the public is really superfluous or not very useful.
And that the pollster should actually talk to billionaires, K-Street, the think tanks that come onto this program if we wanted to understand outcomes legislatively in this country.
I'd be interested to hear what the pollster has to say.
How we communicate with each other is markedly different.
I think of my kids using TikTok.
I mean, they communicate that way.
I don't.
But so, you know, we've had to adapt our methods to try to get at people.
We're using increasingly multiple methods.
Never before in polling have we used so many methods together.
Telephone, online, maybe some knocking on the door a little bit, texting to bring people together.
If you look at our performance from an electoral perspective, it's not really so far out of the norm, out of the average.
I mean, we're kind of where we have been historically.
The problem is that we've been on the wrong side of the fence a couple times.
Maybe within that range, that's considerable from a scientific perspective, but from a political and sociological perspective, it seems like we're way off.
And what I would say is I just want to emphasize this point that, like, yes, being a pollster and polling is about the craft.
It's about the technique and the method.
And we have to take that seriously because a lot of our credibility rests on that.
But I believe that 2020 was about narrative failure.
We didn't do a good job as a profession painting a picture so people weren't surprised.
Right?
And I say that because I think we can do better.
We could especially do better there as a profession.
And that goes ultimately to the last point that the caller was making.
Yeah, so this notion of like constraints of the boundaries of public opinion, that's the other thing we do.
That's what I'm doing here.
I'm in a way, kind of in a qualitative way, talking about what public opinion thinks and what they are likely to give or not.
And if the political actor, in this case, the president crosses those boundaries, he's going to feel it, right, from an approval standpoint.
And so that's the other role we have is explaining that milieu to decision makers and more specifically to the people to people and gentlemen, people on C-SPAN.
Well, Goravania, only Maryland, Democratic caller.
You're next.
unidentified
Good morning, CISTAN.
Good morning, America.
So I'm listening to your guest, and I just had the phone in.
Basically, the polls are statistics.
And you know what they say about statistics?
It's not about numbers, it's about who is interpreting them.
So I would like to point out a few things.
When you're talking about Trump's overall job approval, your poll says it's about about average.
The fall in the pool.
Actually, it's not, it's almost double worse than it's average.
Second thing, Trump's current approval is 42%, which is the worst in God knows how many years, how long time.
I mean, comparing his last three presidents, he's over 10 points down, 20 points slower than Obama was in his first term.
Obama was 62% job approval.
Trump is 42%.
One more thing, when we are talking about economy, your guest is trying to show the current state of economy about anticipation just because Trump is thinking almost outside of the box.
The truth is, this is the worst start under the new president since 1932.
That's not something that he takes with a smile.
And then the last thing is, your guest was on for 20 minutes before even mentioning where is the worst job, which is threat to democracy.
I mean, if there is the worst job there, I would start with that.
But that was like, yeah, by the way, this is also happening.
The truth is what Deutsche currently doing, I have real-life examples.
I know how they're interviewing people in the federal government.
It comes down to two questions.
What do you think about 2020 elections and what you think about January 6th?
That's not going against the norm.
That's going against everything this country should be standing for.
Also, when they go against Supreme Court, when they take off the Senate and the House from any decision-making, that's not going against the norm.
I mean, we know kind of politically where he comes from.
There's a lot of Americans that think like him, that believe that Trump's a threat to democracy, that he's in a terrible place right now, that he's imploding.
I just don't think that if you take all the evidence put together, it's so simple, right?
There's evidence that things are fraying at the edges, but ultimately there's a degree of stability as well.
And what I would say is, like, our poll is 42.
The average right now is 40, is about 45, 46, the overall average.
The decline has been five points.
Historic is three.
And I don't, you know, basically that's, so he, yeah, he's outperforming in a negative way to decline, but nothing that's substantive in meaning.
But ultimately, I think the caller is representing a certain point of view that things are more dire than we have stated.
But I think there's more complexity and nuance in the situation than that.
And I also really appreciate you guys taking people's calls for opinions because you always wonder what other Americans across the country think and feel about what's going on.
And at least we get to hear it on your show.
As far as President Trump and what he's been doing the first hundred days, he's addressing a lot of issues that the Democrats wouldn't even go near.
Number one, auditing the different federal departments.
The way he goes about it, I think it could be done a little different.
I think it's kind of radical the way he's allowing Doge to just go in and kind of rip things apart and then have to piece it back together in some instances.
I have actually shown up here for eight straight years.
Looking back, that was probably a mistake.
unidentified
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Trade Rhetoric's Volatile Impact00:15:33
unidentified
Democracy in real time.
This is your government at work.
This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy, unfiltered.
This morning, we are joined by Dominique Chu, who's a senior markets correspondent with CNBC, here to talk about the financial markets.
Mr. Chu, the markets have been up and down, up and down for the past couple of weeks.
What is behind the volatility?
unidentified
There's no doubt about it.
It's certainly trade and tariff policy that's been driving a lot of the market volatility that we've seen as of late.
If you go back to just what we saw on that so-called Liberation Day, the day that the tariff policy was unveiled by the Trump administration, that was when you started to really see the real pickup, the roller coaster ride in markets.
And for the first at least few days or so, the first week or so of it, it was pretty much all to one side and that was to the downside.
Meanwhile, you've had a lot more of the kind of upside, downside swings since then.
And all of it has been due to either hard news or headlines or source reporting coming out of Washington, coming out of the White House with regard to possible changes, course corrections and whatnot in what that tariff and trade policy could be.
So if you're looking for the proximate cause, the primary driver, the catalyst, if you will, over the course of the last few weeks, it's definitely tariffs and trade policy.
Who's on the floor or who is doing the trading that we're seeing prices go up and down?
For those people who don't watch or follow this every single day.
unidentified
Sure.
At the end of the day, financial markets are driven by end demand.
And for a lot of those people out there, it is actually people like you and me and many of your audience out there who have either brokerage accounts or 401k plans, individual retirement accounts and whatnot.
There's institutional traders, mutual fund hedge fund types who all serve as clients.
But at the end of the day, what you're looking at are investors out there who are trying to take a view or protect themselves against downside.
And that's the reason why the markets behave the way that they do.
Now, when you talk about people, say, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange or people who work at your brokerage company or your investment manager and whatnot, many of those people are conducting activity, trades, right?
Doing transactions at the behest of clients.
So if I and thousands or millions of my counterparts and peers in the population of America who have, say, a 401k account are doing something with it, in aggregate, what that causes is somebody to have to place an order to buy or sell to fulfill my request for a trade.
If you do that across just every single market, every single corner of our economy or market, that's why you start to see the size, if you will, the dollar amounts being moved around.
So when you look at at the end of the day, if we have a lot of people out there who are either very worried or very bullish or optimistic, that is when you'll start to see some of the bigger swings that we've seen, both to the downside and to the upside, Greta.
So these same people are buying one day, selling the next?
unidentified
Yes, it is that simple.
And the reason why, by the way, it's not normally like this.
I would say that the evolution of technology from the Wall Street perspective has made it so that it's easier for people to transact or trade, to kind of call up their broker, or these days just hop on their smartphone or their computer to place a trade to buy or sell.
That speed is what's causing a lot of this right now.
And by the way, it's not just the speed at which you can do things at, it's also the idea that when you have potential catalysts that can either drive downside fright or upside bullishness coming out on a more regular and more frequent basis, that is what causes the volatility as well.
And just case in point, in the last couple of weeks, since Liberation Day, right, since the tariff policy was announced, there has been a lot of reporting with regard to whether or not it's as solid or as firm as some of the numbers would dictate.
There have been a lot of escalations and even de-escalations of those policies.
Escalations of those policies tend to be dampeners of the market.
People tend to get a little bit more pessimistic when trade rhetoric ramps up.
At the same time, when we hear about maybe deals possibly being cut, hypothetically being cut, if we hear about, hey, X number of countries have approached the U.S. about seeking a potential deal, there is then optimism that promotes people to want to get more bullish and buy things.
The problem right now is that because of the way that the news flow has evolved, there are not that many people out there who are saying, hey, I'm going to bet the farm that all of these trade policies are going to be resolved in the next few days or weeks.
At the same time, there are not that many people who are willing to bet the farm that there's just going to be continued downside in the market.
So what you have are people trying to stay nimble in these investing markets, buying and selling, which is the reason why some of these moves seem like they're massive to the upside and massive to the downside, but at the end of the day, they haven't really moved all that much.
Now, net net, we are still negative in the markets since the tariff policy was announced, but that's the reason why you're seeing such up and down movement to the degree that we're seeing.
And that's one of the reasons why there's at least a little bit more negative sentiment in the marketplace because of the way the markets are reacting right now.
So Dummy, to explain basing your decisions on rhetoric, and is that normal?
So basing your decision on buying and selling, and you're changing that based on the rhetoric coming out of Washington.
unidentified
It's not something that is, I don't believe that to the people I've spoken to, either on the retail investor side or the institutional investor side.
I'm not sure rhetoric is something that people like to focus on more.
If you are a long-term investor, like millions of Americans should be, what you want to know is that when you, say, buy a stock or buy an index fund or have your money put away for retirement, that in the next, say, three, five, 10, 15, 20 years, that the value of the money that you put into your account is going to be worth more than the money that you put in X number of years ago.
And if it's not going to be better, then we have bigger problems as a country than just kind of what we're talking about right now.
The idea of trading rhetoric is something that is not normal for many investors out there because there are only so many people who are tuned and watching the markets on a tick-by-tick, minute-by-minute type basis where they can see what those headlines are that are driving the volatility.
For the most part, many of us, and myself included, every couple of weeks have money raked out of my paycheck and then kind of put into a 401k.
That 401k invests in things like index funds or target date funds that plan for a certain retirement date down the line.
And I just need to know that by the year 2035, 40, 45, 50, that I'm going to have a good amount of money saved so that I can retire.
There are institutional investors out there who are paid and get paid to watch these things on a second-by-second basis.
You compound that with the idea that computers and technology have now made the speed of trading not just in minutes and hours, but in seconds and microseconds and milliseconds and whatnot.
That is what's at least driving some of the volatility that we're seeing right now.
To trade headlines, to trade rhetoric, is something that a lot of investors normally aren't in tune to, but this is a fundamental paradigm shift, at least for the last few months, with regard to how people are viewing these things.
Now, whether or not they should be trading rhetoric or not, that's a huge debate for a lot of investment advisors out there with their clients.
What overall net impact will it have on the trading of rhetoric when the rhetoric seems to be a reversal of itself from one day to the next?
unidentified
Well, the sense that I get from the sources I talk to, the people I talk to, the traders on Wall Street and whatnot about this are that with every subsequent move with regard to trading rhetoric, it has a lot of force in the beginning, right?
That kind of that big headline, that big trade policy, that big announcement.
The more and more you start to see kind of the fine-tuning, or I mentioned course correcting, if you will, right?
The rhetoric being not just one-sided.
If you have a certain trade policy, an escalation that happens, and then you have reports that maybe things could be tempered, and then reports contrary to that that say, no, no, no, things aren't going to be tempered.
This is very much something we're going to see through to the end.
And then you magnify it and amplify it by having multiple parties involved.
For instance, the Trump administration and the White House putting out their policies and saying one thing with regard to possible negotiations with China.
And then at the same time, having the Chinese Ministry of Commerce say, no, no, no, there are no ongoing talks between the U.S. and China.
All of these things tend to lead to a more dampening effect, meaning that it is a huge shock first off the bat, right off the bat.
At that point, every time you do it more often, you start to see a little bit less of that kind of effect because the traders who have traded on those headlines and have gotten burned or lost money on those are not willing to bank as much of it on any future bet or trade that they've placed.
If that continues in that way, in some ways it's a blessing because what you have is more dampened volatility.
There won't be as many of these massive wild swings.
Volatility will still be there, but like I said, nobody's willing to bet the farm that everything is going to be great on the trade front in the next several weeks or months.
And at the same time, because of that same headline risk, nobody wants to short the market, bet on the downside in the market because all it takes is one headline for all of those short bets or those negative bets to start losing money.
So in that way, what you might start to see is a little bit more dampened.
You may not see these massive thousand point swings in the Dow.
You could still see swings, but they won't be as big.
And by the way, if you look at it in that way, it's going to take something kind of big and something more solid in terms of policy in order for people to feel really good about not trading the rhetoric, but then trading the corporate and economic fundamentals as to where the economy is headed in the next one, two, three quarters and the next one, two, and three years.
And are you seeing those big indicators anywhere coming down the line?
unidentified
Well, no, I'm not seeing them at all right now.
And based upon a lot of the reporting that we have on our side from our reporters here in DC, based upon the reporting that we've seen from a lot of other big news agencies out there, there may be developments.
The wheels are turning, so to speak, but they're not turning in a way or quick enough where anybody's willing to say that, hey, we have a trade deal imminent.
Or yes, we have a massive de-escalation regime in global trade imminent.
Now, if that were to happen, hypothetically, Greta, if you could say that, hey, the administration thinks that we could be on the verge of something massive and groundbreaking, that could have a massive upside catalyst move, an upside catalyst effect for the markets.
At the same time, if there is rhetoric or indications coming from either the administration here in America or from other big trading partners around the world, like say in Europe or in China or elsewhere, that say that maybe no deal can be counted on anytime soon, then that could have the same effect to the downside.
We're not seeing any signs yet.
We do have public comments from folks like Treasury Secretary Scott Besant that, you know, 100 countries have approached the U.S. about trying to negotiate a deal.
We have comments coming from Trump himself, the president himself, about this notion that people are willing to negotiate or that we want to get a deal done.
All of those things are great, but until you start seeing some kind of a real solid framework, something that you can bank on, so to speak, I feel as though, based upon the conversations I've had with a lot of institutional investors and folks who kind of have watched these markets for years, that the volatility that we are seeing is going to continue.
It may not be as massively wide, but you are not going to find an environment where stocks are going to break out of their range, either to the downside or to the upside, without any big catalyst coming up.
And that's the thing that I think a lot of folks on Wall Street are still watching for, whether or not there is something from the administration with regard to some kind of a breakthrough or a real stalling out in those negotiations as well.
All right, Dominique Chu is our guest here this morning.
He'll take your questions, your comments on financial markets.
We'll get to those calls in a second.
But first, Mr. Chu, how long does it take to negotiate and get a trade deal agreed to?
unidentified
Well, we don't know.
I think that's the huge portion right now.
And by the way, there hasn't been a precedent for this kind of a thing, at least in recent economic or modern history, right?
The idea that you want to take a trade construct and policy that has been built up to the way that it is, at least up until the last couple of months, that has been built up over decades and maybe even arguably 50 plus years, certainly since the end of World War II.
Global trade policy and global geopolitical, I guess, constructs have been evolving over the course of the last 50 or 60 years to the way that we've seen it right now prior to the Trump administration coming in.
Many of those things, if it takes that long to put something like that together, to kind of build or evolve a global trade policy or construct the way that it is, it's hard to see a reality where you can just dissolve all of that and reshape global trade policy within a matter of days or weeks.
It seems as though if you're going to get a blanket groundbreaking change in the way that U.S. economic and trade policy fits into the global picture of things, it doesn't feel as though, it doesn't track as though it can happen in just days or weeks.
It's probably the reason why you're seeing a lot more of these talks take longer, because it's just not that simple.
It's hard work and it's not going to come without risk or sacrifice or any kind of pain at some point.
If that is the case, you can have perhaps indications from either this administration or other countries around the world that we're on the right path, that we have an agreement in principle, that we want to do things a different way, a certain way.
And that can happen within the, say, the matter of weeks or quarters.
But to actually execute and put those things into place and have the effects be felt, that could take years down the line.
Bond Market's Macro Focus00:15:36
unidentified
I'm pretty sure that right now, from a policy standpoint, it's not just corporate America and the politicians here and abroad that are trying to wrestle with that.
It's also the notion that the American public is going to have to figure out what their tolerance is for the kinds of volatility and the kinds of possible downside risk that we'll see in order to set up for a bigger and brighter future down the line.
That is where I think you're seeing a lot of this debate come to light right now to really see what exactly is the pain threshold that we can tolerate for us to be able to say, yes, we can set up global trade in a way that's more advantageous to America and for all of us as Americans going forward.
One last time for Charles, Fort Collins, Colorado, independent.
All right, Marshall, Nashville, Tennessee, Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Current, how are you doing?
I would like to put forth an analogy to you and ask your opinion afterwards.
I was outside and I got a mosquito bite, and of course it ish, and I scratched it.
And I'm talking about our national debt, and I scratched it.
And a couple days later, I noticed I was kind of getting infected.
And I stressed it a little bit more, and then I went off to the course.
But I never did anything to eradicate the infection.
All I ever did was just kind of wash over it.
Now here we are, I'm 65, and I worked for 65 years.
This has been going on.
And now we're at the point where the infection is so bad that we have to either go to the doctor and he says we have to amputate the arm or it's going to cost your life.
$36 trillion in the hole.
And we are actually questioning whether or not we want to go through the pain and the absolute feelings of that limb being gone or if we want to die.
So that's exactly what you're saying right now is exactly what millions of other Americans are feeling about the way that our financial and economic markets have evolved over the course of, like you said, the last 50 or 60 years.
There is, I don't believe, any real doubt that the path that this country is on is unsustainable, that you cannot keep doing things the way that you're doing in order to set yourself up for long-term success.
The issue right now that you're dealing with is whether or not there is going to be the feeling that people want to take and undertake that change.
What we've seen in the course of the last couple of just weeks, maybe even a couple of months by extension, is that you have a feeling that the economy in America was ripe for a bullish catalyst, a more positive catalyst, because of some of the things that the administration, that the Trump administration had made promises on with regard to its campaign and then after its election as well.
And that is for things like deregulation and that is for things like tax reform.
The one thing though that hasn't really been tackled as much and is still being tackled right now are things on the spending front to address your point about where the deficits are and where our spending has gotten to.
There has been highly publicized efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency, DOE, right, by Elon Musk to try to cut government spending.
There are also plans in place with regard to policy coming out of Congress with regard to how we can possibly cut spending down the line.
At the end of the day, though, this is still a democracy where people are going to vote based upon how they feel their lives have been impacted or how their own personal families and their small business or business well-beings can be impacted by that.
The downside volatility that we've seen has caused some folks to question whether or not the types of policies that are being talked about are right for them.
And that's not for me to say.
That's just everybody's individual takes are a little bit different.
We do know that spending has to change.
We do know that the way things are moving have to change.
But if you start telling people, and I'm saying hypothetically, if you start cutting certain programs that have benefited certain people at some points in their lives and you say, hey, we can't do this anymore, there are understandably going to be folks out there who feel as though, no, no, no, I deserve that.
I want that, but I've always had this.
We need to keep this in place.
I guess my point is that there are going to have to be hard choices.
I just don't know how people will actually respond and make those choices once they know that there's going to have to be some kind of a sacrifice at the end.
What I will say is that you will start to see some of those feelings manifest themselves in state and local elections later on this year.
You'll start to see a lot more of that impact, at least I'm watching for it, in the midterm elections and then certainly in the elections to come as to whether or not we feel as though as a country, as an electorate, as a citizenry, that this is the path that we want to go on.
But until then, no, there's no doubt that the spending and fiscal situation is something that a lot of people are watching closely, whether or not there's the will to change it.
There hasn't really been that will to change it over the decades now at this point.
Well, as you were alluding to, Republicans return to Washington next week and they're going to start right away on the president's tax and spending proposal, making permanent those 2017 tax cuts.
And then also Republicans disagree on how much, but they're looking at trillions in spending cuts.
What will determine how the market reacts to that piece of legislation if it passes through both chambers and the president signs it?
unidentified
So there's going to be a lot of debate and there's going to be a lot of folks out there making analyses on what future policy from the fiscal side of things could look like in terms of economic impact.
There are a lot of folks out there much smarter than I am with PhDs in economics and finance and everything else who are going to try to project based upon assumptions what those policies could do to things like inflation, to things like the jobs picture in America, and by extension,
what exactly our economic growth picture could look like in say the immediate one to two to three years after a policy or set of policies is enacted and then what the economic growth trajectory can look like say three, five or seven, ten years down the line.
Those are all assumptions driven projections.
Nobody knows the future.
What you can do is though, take the past and then try to see in your models, in your spreadsheets or whatever you use for projection, what that could look like.
The markets are going to be a little bit more in tune and react more solidly and more forcefully to ideas or policies that are going to lead to drastic changes in the economic trajectory down the line.
The markets are a leading indicator, meaning that the markets tend to price in what is expected already.
They're a forward-looking instrument.
So as people make projections over what this tax policy, what the spending policy and whatnot could look like, what is it going to do to the economic trajectory of this country, of the world, and then how exactly do companies operate in that new set of assumptions or forecasts?
Do they end up making more money?
Do their profit margins expand or get squeezed?
All of those things are things that are going to drive the way that markets perform.
If you look at markets from the stock market side of things, right?
Because those are companies.
If those companies are poised to do better, those stocks tend to go up in value because they discount the future optimism into a price today.
And those prices today can go higher.
At the same time, the flip side of the coin is, if we feel as though, or the assumptions are though, the companies don't fare as well on a relative basis.
It's not to say that they're going to go out of business, but if they don't do as well, then the value of those companies, the stocks themselves, and then by extension, say the Dow Jones Industrial Index or the S ⁇ P 500 or the NASDAQ Composite will start going lower.
Those are the things, I think, Greta, that are going to drive a lot more of the market reaction.
Now, the bond market is completely different.
Not completely, but the bond market's going to be focused a lot more on things like the macroeconomic, the bigger picture economic trajectory for this country and for the companies that operate in them.
So that's going to be, I think, what drives more of the Wall Street reaction.
The first one is, I read that the yield rates in the bond market went up, and I'm wondering what impact will that increase in the interest on bonds have on individual borrowers and lenders.
And by de facto, didn't that just increase the interest on our national debt?
And my second part question is, it seems like the Federal Reserve has been not raising or lowering interest rates the last two times the Board of Governors met.
It seems that President Trump wants to deliver some kind of relief to debt holders.
And do you think that that will be changing?
I know it's hard to say, but do you think that the Federal Reserve will ultimately lower interest rates in the next six to 12 months?
So she's absolutely correct with regard to the first point.
We did see a rise in interest rates.
The simple mechanics are interest rates rise when the value of bonds falls.
So if a bond is worth less, the interest rate that it gives you or interest rates in general tend to go higher.
We have seen that play out a little bit more.
And yes, it is absolutely correct that if interest rates rise, especially on things like benchmark treasury securities, our sovereign bond market, that the interest that we pay on our national debt also goes higher.
By extension, those benchmark interest rates that happen at the treasury security level, treasury bonds, treasury notes and bills, those are benchmark items.
And the things that are benchmarked to those treasury rates are things like credit card rates, are things like auto loan rates, are things like home mortgage borrowing rates.
So as those treasury rates go higher and the value of our treasury securities goes lower, you will start to see the effects of higher interest rates take their toll on consumers because anybody who borrows to do anything, whether it be for a car or house or anything else credit card-wise, will see their interest costs expand and go higher.
So that's the first part of your question.
The second part of your question or the second question with regard to whether or not there's any kind of relief down the line.
The simple construct right now is that we live in a world where central banks are operating or are supposed to operate independently of any kind of political influence.
The president, President Trump, has been one of the first, as far as I can remember, and certainly in kind of more modern market history, to actively take an interventionist type role in trying to influence policy from the Federal Reserve.
The reality right now is there's a reason why the Federal Reserve has not done anything with regard to interest policy just yet.
And it's because they're waiting to see what real market effects these kinds of policies coming from the White House will have on the broader economy.
The reason why I say that is because the general economic consensus is that tariff policy will have a negative impact on the economy.
What is to be seen is how much of that impact is due to inflationary threats.
When you start to put import taxes on things that we consume on a regular basis, what that tends to do is have an upward effect on prices, causing inflation, right?
And inflation is something which I think is interesting from a journalist standpoint.
We were very, and I was one of them, very concerned about the effects of higher prices, 40-year high inflation rates, not longer than maybe a couple of years ago, two, three years ago, right?
So that threat is something that we all felt and we don't want to feel again.
The Fed has responsibility for that.
And there are those who blamed the Fed and other policies for stoking that inflation to begin with.
Understandably, the Federal Reserve might be a little bit more gun-shy about lowering interest rates if they feel as though that inflationary threat has not been snuffed out and could be in play back again.
Nobody wants to go through that high, high inflation again, all over again.
At the same time, if you do see a situation where these current economic policies that have been laid out start to really have a downward effect on the economy, and most importantly, by one of the Fed's primary responsibilities, which is to try to create the maximum sustainable employment picture in America, if you start to see job losses hypothetically start to accelerate, more layoffs, more widespread industry furloughs and job losses,
that is when the Fed will start to have to step in and lower interest rates to keep the economy higher.
But there has been no hard economic data so far, at least notably so, that has said that we are due for an imminent job loss recession or sky-high inflation.
Hence the kind of stay still, wait, see what happens.
They are data dependent.
You'll hear that term a lot.
That's the reason why the Fed is kind of doing what it's doing right now.
Tony Chu, coming up here on the Washington Journal, we're going to ask our viewers how the economy has impacted their housing plans.
Front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning, home sales see steepest decline in two years.
Set up this conversation for us.
unidentified
Sure, the conversation around real estate is nuanced and not so at the same time.
And what I mean by that is I think most Americans who are out there, Greta, who are in the market for a home, either to buy one or sell one, understand the big picture macro headwinds and tailwinds that are at play.
For the most part, what we have seen are at least issues with supply, and that has been keeping prices up.
There's just not enough houses out there for people to buy.
Bidding Wars and Higher Rates00:02:19
unidentified
And if those houses come to market, there tend to be bidding wars around them.
At the same time, one of the things that's putting a damper on some of those purchases is the idea that you're seeing at least higher interest rates.
They're not nearly as high.
I remember hearing stories from my parents about the 19, 20% 30-year fixed rate mortgages they had when they first bought a house when I was a young child.
Meanwhile, there are still millions of Americans out there who are living in homes that might have a 2.5% to 3.5% or 3.3 quarter percent 30-year fixed rate mortgage.
There is no incentive for those people to leave those homes because their costs of borrowing and financing those homes are so low.
Those are those so-called silver or golden handcuffs that you'll hear talk about in the real estate market.
That being said, Home buyers are trying to find ways either to get in on the existing homes that come to supply right off the bat and putting bids and accelerated bids and outbidding or putting multiple bids in for homes or trying to find new home construction that can help ease some of that supply concern.
All of these things are in play because the dynamic that's developed over the last 10, 15 years on interest rates has kind of led us to where we are now.
And by the way, I remember in college, I took a real estate course one time and they said, you know, real estate is the most fixed of fixed assets.
There's only so much land out there.
So as we talk about the housing dynamic, it's not just about interest rate policy.
It's also about supply.
And by the way, supply is impacted by things like regulatory issues, who can build homes where, all of those things become in play at this point, Greta.
When we come back, we're going to take another look at the economy, looking at housing, as you just heard Dominique Chu talking about amid market volatility and falling consumer confidence.
The National Association of Realtors reported yesterday March home sales dropped to their slowest pace since 2009.
We want to hear what that all means for you.
Has this economic outlook impacted your housing plans?
Join us by dialing in in the eastern central part of the country at 202-748-8000.
If you live in the Mountain Pacific area, 202-748-8001.
If you're looking for a new home, your line, 202-748-8002.
And remember, you can text instead of calling at 202-748-8003.
That conversation coming up next on The Washington Journal.
unidentified
Saturday, watch the White House Correspondents Association dinner live on C-SPAN from the Washington Hilton Hotel.
First, join us online for exclusive red carpet arrivals at 6 p.m. Eastern at c-SPAN.org.
Then our live coverage of the White House Correspondents Dinner starts at 8 p.m.
Former Trump White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and veteran journalist Frank Cesno will join us in studio during the dinner to discuss the annual event, the role of the Press Corps, and its relationship with the Trump administration.
And we'll take your calls to get your thoughts on the president's decision not to attend this year.
Watch C-SPAN's live coverage of the White House Correspondents Association dinner Saturday, starting at 6 p.m. Eastern with arrivals online.
Then at 8 p.m. Eastern, live dinner coverage on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app and online at c-span.org.
Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A.
Sports journalist Jane McManus, author of The Fast Track, discusses the rise in popularity of women's sports since the early 1970s and the challenges female athletes have faced since then, including unequal pay and lack of media coverage.
What you do have now are women who see themselves as athletes first, and they aren't looking to be pleasing to anyone else.
And I think that is where things have changed quite a bit.
They see today's athletes see sports as their birthright, not just their brothers.
And I think, honestly, their brothers would say the same thing for the most part.
unidentified
Jane McManus with her book, The Fast Track, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
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We'll turn our attention now to housing and how the economic outlook is impacting your plans for housing.
We told you how you can dial in this morning, lines divided by region, but also if you're out there looking for a new home, your line this morning is 202-748-8002.
We want to hear about your experience in the market.
The conversation prompted by a new report released yesterday showing that March home sales dropped to their slowest pace since 2009.
From the report, what they found is overall, the number fell 5.9% in March, the slowest pace for the month since 2009.
Inventory up nearly 20% from a year earlier, and median price climbed to $403,700.
That's up 2.7% from a year earlier.
So that is from CNBC's reporting.
There's also this from MarketWatch: this headline to share with you: Spooked house hunters are dropping out of the real estate market as they confront economic uncertainty on many fronts.
Stock market turbulence, recession fears, and the specter of job loss have nervous homebuyers calling off their plans.
Are you one of them?
Let's go to Jerry in Bronxville, New York.
Good morning to you, Jerry.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Good morning.
How are you?
Doing well.
I have a couple of things to say about this.
I am not looking for a house.
I am a senior, but my children had and are looking for housing.
Where we are is a very expensive area, and housing has always been high.
And I really do not hold as much credence into CNBC reports as I do other types of trending reports.
I could tell you that my son and my daughter-in-law, when they went house hunting six years ago, when they would show up at a house, there would be 10 other people at the house.
People would be offering cash for at least $100,000 over asking.
And it had nothing to do what's going on economically today.
So this is something that's been going on for a very long time.
And I don't think that framing it that the causal, that the cause of this is what's going on now.
So six years ago, inflation or interest rates were down.
You're entering the market with an interest rate maybe at five.
I mean, in recent years, it was low as three.
So people want to get in then at that point.
And now interest rates are six, seven percent.
So, you know, people are reluctant.
But so you have a seller's market six years ago, and now you're starting to look like you have a buyer's market.
Is that what your family is telling you?
unidentified
Well, not really.
I think that at least in this region of the country and the in Westchester County where I live, which is a very, if you look at all of the lists of the most expensive places, it's always in the top five.
I still think it's a seller's market.
I can tell you that my daughter and my son-in-law, who are looking for housing, they've stopped because the prices are so high.
So the president was asked about this report that showed home sales slowing and people saying it's due to uncertainties in the economy, turbulence in the market, recession fears, as you were just talking about.
Here's what the president had to say to the reporter.
unidentified
Mr. President, on the economy, there was a slowdown as it relates to home sales in the month of March, the slowest pace since 2009.
Is that an economic indicator, and perhaps the Treasury Secretary can weigh in on this as well.
Is that an economic indicator that concerns you about the broader U.S. economy?
President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday, when asked about the economy and the impact of it on housing, you heard his response there.
The economy is doing great.
CNN has a fact check on what he said.
If you're interested, you can find it on CNN.com.
Trump lies about the price of eggs, groceries, and gas.
We're talking about housing and if the economy outlook is having an impact on your housing decisions.
Listen to the Federal Reserve Cherry's at a conference earlier this month, and he outlined a range of forces shaping the housing market today, from the low mortgage rates that emerged during the pandemic to President Trump's new tariffs.
The first is we just haven't built enough housing, and we haven't kept up with the demand for housing.
So there's an underlying shortage.
Before the pandemic, there was a real housing shortage.
And by the way, that's happening in many comparable democracies around the world.
The second thing is, lock-in, as you say.
There were very, very low mortgage rates during COVID, and people are kind of locked in.
It would be very expensive to move.
And that'll, of course, wear off over time.
You also mentioned the costs of materials that might be imported, lumber and nails and things like that.
And yeah, and also labor.
A lot of labor in the homebuilding business has been traditionally immigrant labor.
So yeah, the housing, the new, the sort of new build market may face some cost pressures as well.
That may very well be the case.
That's what we're hearing from homebuilders, for example, both on the labor side and on the materials side.
But even once these short-term things happen, we're still going to have not enough houses.
And so it's all, you know, I think for a long time, we're still going to see upward pressure on housing prices, you know, maybe until population growth slows or until we catch up.
Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair at a conference earlier this month, talking about the housing market and what are the factors that are contributing to what we are seeing in prices right now.
Let's go to Bob, who's in Spencervania, Virginia.
Bob, how is all this impacting you?
unidentified
Well, let's put it this way.
I am a former journalist and I don't jump to conclusions.
I look at patterns.
My wife and I have been looking for a house now almost 10 months.
And one of the consistent problems that we've had is with realtors.
The realtors, they post pictures on various websites that are totally inaccurate.
The descriptions meticulously maintained.
The adjectives used are most of the time inaccurate.
Virginia happens to be a caveat emptor state, which I loosely translate as sucker beware.
So that is the biggest problem with basically price fix.
They tell the sellers that they can get so much for houses that are damaged, they're moldy, they have water damage.
This is a consistent problem.
And we've looked over 80 homes.
And I think we've only seen less than a handful that the description matches the reality.
These realtors are the biggest problem because they only care about their commissions.
They don't care about how they screw over the buyers.
And until there is some kind of regulation, I mean, there are truths in advertising laws, but they don't seem to apply to homes.
And people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As my wife put it, there are more protections at buying a used car for $10,000 than there are for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a house that is damaged.
I had an electrical guy come in, and he's going to fix that.
I have a leak in the tub upstairs.
I have a bucket, catch your water.
The plumber is going to fix that.
The roof, we put a hot coat on it.
Long and short, there's money to maintain your home, to keep your home.
My mortgage, we pay that, but I'm behind a month or so because I have to fix a home up.
I can pay the mortgage and have a roof over my head, and we can have no electric, don't pay the electric bill, don't pay the gas, water, a phone, like I'm calling on today.
America, Kamala had good plans to help us.
And you guys chose to put this guy in office.
And now we're all paying a price for this guy.
Please, people, we're in the streets.
We're in the streets and trying to tell our congresspeople to stop this foolish man deporting people, snatching people out.
This is what everybody has to pay for y'all's choices.
Well, you know, I've bought and sold homes for 40 years now.
And until the federal government gets involved in what way?
Well, the federal government has to enact some new bills that has to do with real estate agents, how they perform in their duties, the real estate brokers, the local city, and the taxes, and the title companies.
Buying a home today is a big scam.
That's the way it is.
And until there's federal actions and federal laws on the books and start putting some of these criminals in jail, the real estate is going to continue as it always has, and people are going to get ripped off.
Well, I mean, every part's a scam from the listing agent showing listings that are all fraudulent listings, and you go to the house, it doesn't even look like the pictures in their listings.
And then when you go there, the prices change.
Or when you call these new home builders, when you look at HOA and CDD and closing costs, if you go in with intentions of financing, they say, well, you got to use our loan department.
Renting vs. Buying00:05:21
unidentified
And then if you pay cash, you got to pay more in closing.
A new study showed that renting is increasingly more affordable than buying in most large U.S. metro areas.
unidentified
More than closure.
Well, when you look at renting, it's really not much than difference as far as the approach from the very first process of getting approved to rent.
I mean, and if you have a rental management company, if you're not making, you know, $4,000 a month, you can hardly even rent something for $1,000 a month if the rental management company is involved.
And then if, see, renting, if you rent something and you get sued, you're not going to lose your house because you don't own that house as rented.
A lot of people who have a lot of money, they'll rent a house because they're afraid of getting sued because if you get sued, you're going to lose your house and your car.
But if you rent something or if you have something financed, you know, they're not going to go after your car or your rental house.
But if you own a house, especially outright, and nobody's, you don't have a lien, you know, a mortgage on it, you're going to lose your house if you get sued.
On average, renting a home is cheaper than buying, paying a mortgage in all 50 of the largest U.S. metros in 2025, with the cost difference between the two growing in 38 metros since last year.
Nationally, an average mortgage payment costs 38% more per month compared to average rent.
And the metros with the smallest price gaps between renting and buying are mostly concentrated in the Rust Belt, including Detroit, Philadelphia, and Cleveland.
The biggest cost gaps between renting and buying are centered in the tech hubs of San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle.
I want to go to a hearing on Capitol Hill recently.
Harvard Economic Professor Edward Glasser testified about housing affordability last month and spoke about what's led to the rise in U.S. home prices.
unidentified
We did this to ourselves.
We did this to ourselves by stopping the natural genius of American builders, by restraining them over and over again, by making it impossible to figure out new ways to build.
Just look at what's happened to productivity in the construction industry.
Every other industry, right, it soars.
Construction has stagnated.
It has stagnated in part because our projects are tiny, which means that our firms are tiny.
And firms that have four people, six people, don't have research and development departments.
There was a time when construction was just as dynamic as every other industry, but because of this web of local land use regulations, it is no longer so.
The change in affordability reflects two things, right?
It reflects both the price of housing and the mortgage rates.
And I'm not a banking or a macroeconomist.
I study housing markets.
I study cities and other places.
So I'm not going to run down the litany of mistakes that my macroeconomist colleagues think that got us into the point where mortgage rates are currently what they are.
That's not my business, but that is a big part of it.
The other part of it that I am happy to talk about is the fact that housing is so much more expensive than it should be.
And I think this is an issue in which it used to be about coastal areas.
And now it is increasingly in Sunbelt cities where the inner ring areas have made it harder and harder to build.
And you used to see patterns in places like Atlanta where we built much more in the pricier parts of Atlanta in the 1970s and 1980s.
Now we don't.
Now we build in the lower density areas that are away from things.
And so I think this is no longer just a Massachusetts issue.
And that's in some sense what scares me about it: the places that were the escape valves for affordable housing in the U.S., the Houstons, the Atlantas, the Miamis, they're not turning into escape valves anymore.
And that just scares me.
And that's why I think having some national discussion, having some, even if it is largely symbolic, is just really important to recognize that we are going in the wrong direction as a country if we want to be a place where outsiders can come and forge a brighter future.
Economics professor from Harvard, they're testifying before Congress recently up on Capitol Hill.
And you can find that hearing on housing affordability if you go to our website, c-span.org.
We've got about 15 minutes left here in this conversation with all of you.
How has the economy impacted your housing plans?
We'll get back to calls here in just a minute, but first I want to let you know what's happening on the C-SPAN networks today.
At 10 a.m. Eastern Time, we'll have live coverage of a conversation with the European Central Bank board chair about stabilizing the global banking system.
And then at 10 a.m. Eastern Time today, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt joins Axios in a conversation on the new media landscape.
And we'll have coverage of that on C-SPAN 2, C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app, and online at c-span.org.
And then later today, we continue our coverage of congressional town halls.
Well, this afternoon, Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts will give an update on his work on Capitol Hill to his constituents and talk about the president's agenda.
We'll have live coverage from Scotts Bluff for Nebraska at 4 p.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, and our free video, that's our free video mobile app and online at c-span.org.
Back to your calls.
Ted in Raymond, New Hampshire.
Ted, what are your housing plans right now?
unidentified
Well, my housing plans is I bought an old trailer on my land, and as the age of the trailer gets up, the value of the trailer doesn't because of the age.
You can't get a loan on a mobile home that as it ages.
But my point is that all the housing, especially for renters, I'm thinking everything should be based on minimum wage.
If somebody at McDonald's or somebody makes a minimum wage should be able to afford an apartment, maybe not a home, but an apartment.
I know people right now that if they don't live with kids or something, they're homeless.
And if you want a good indicator what the economy's doing, watch your homeless population grow.
It will grow faster than you can blink an eye.
And you need to make more mobile home parks, co-ops, where people may own their trailer, but they own the park.
Not everything has to be a five-story building with government rules and regulations.
Mobile home parks are fast to put up.
They can maintain them easier.
They can have their own water supply and sewer systems.
I would like to echo some of the comments about how hard it is to look for a home.
And my partner and I just found a nice, beautiful, brand new townhouse, but we have to move about 30 miles away because we can't afford the town that we live in.
It's a beautiful town.
We're only seven miles from Boston.
And I haven't found any what I would call a fraud, but I will say that when I did start to look at these townhouses at this development, I did see something online.
And when I went to look at it, you have to read the fine print on the bottom of the picture where it says the picture may not represent what you will be looking at.
So it was misleading, but I wouldn't call it outright fraud.
I just wanted to bring to everyone's attention a recent article from the New York Times.
I think it's been sped out all across the internet.
It's regarding boomers, baby boomers buying more houses than any other generation in the last, I think, two, three years, something like that, which is pretty surprising because, you know, I have a hard time imagining that baby boomers, you know, these individuals would be buying their first home at this point in time.
So my assumption is these are just rental homes, investments, and things like that.
So it's really difficult for newer generations like millennials, Gen Zs, to even afford a house with all this competition going on.
And then you've got all these investment firms that are just in the business for flipping houses, making houses into rentals.
So therefore, lowering the supply of actual houses that are available for sale and things like that.
So yeah, something has to be done about this because anyone who's trying to find their first home should be able to through any kind of means.
And that kind of reminds me of the discussion that you or the guest that you had yesterday talking about low fertility rates, how younger generations are not thinking about having kids.
And it's really because of that, because how can you think about kids by having a family if you can't even secure housing, a roof over your head?
So the headline that you were referring to, this is from the New York Times.
Boomers are buying the most homes again over most of the past decade.
Millennials have purchased more homes than other generational groups, but not in 2024.
According to the National Association of Realtors, baby boomers accounted for 42% of the U.S. home sales between July 2023 and July 2024.
This is a rare exception in recent years.
The only annual report since 2013 in which baby boomers were shown to have bought more homes than millennials was 2023.
How did millennials lose their rank to baby boomers?
One clue is that the percentage of first-time homebuyers, primarily millennials, now in their child-rearing years, dropped to a historical low, making up 24% of all buyers down from 32% the year before.
And that's no surprise.
First-time buyers are facing limited inventory, housing affordability challenges, and difficulty saving for a down payment.
Baby boomers, by and large, simply have more cash in the bank.
Marjorie, Oakland, California.
Hi, Marjorie.
unidentified
I wanted to add to the agenda, the affordability agenda, the issue of insurance and the cost of utilities.
So this is adding not to development costs, but to maintenance costs, which are making affordability a real challenge, particularly for people like myself on fixed income.
As many of you know, Pope Francis is lying in state at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican until his funeral early Saturday morning in St. Peter's Square.
President Trump and other world leaders are expected to attend.
The first pontiff from Latin America died Easter Monday at 88 years old.
We'll have live coverage that begins Saturday morning at 4 a.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN on the C-SPAN Now app and on our website at c-span.org.
Also happening this Saturday, C-SPAN will have live coverage from the Washington Hilton for this year's White House Correspondents Association dinner as various journalists are recognized with awards for their work in the field.
President Trump and members of administration will not be in attendance after declining an invitation from the association.
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and veteran journalist Frank Sezno will join us in the studio during the dinner to discuss the annual event, the role of the Press Corps, and its relationship with the Trump administration.
We'll also give viewers a chance to call in and share their thoughts on the dinner and the president's decision not to attend, as well as his relationship with the media.
Our live coverage begins at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
You can also watch on C-SPAN Now, the free video mobile app, or online at c-span.org.
Jason in Perlin, Texas, we're talking about the housing market.
What are your thoughts?
unidentified
My thoughts are keeping a home in the current economy.
That if you look at what's going on, especially in the IT sector, a lot of our jobs are being offshored overseas.
There was a recent Wall Street Journal article about the outsourcing, even in the oil industry down here in Texas.
So, I mean, there's a lot of outsourcing, and if you lose your job to that, then, I mean, how can you afford to keep a home that you've already purchased?