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Due to Tariffs, Walmart Will Increase Prices This Month; Recession Still a Possibility, Says Jamie Dimon; Air Traffic Control Center Loses Communications for 90 Seconds; New Surgeon General Pick Praises Unproven Psychedelic Drugs. Aired 3:30-4p ET
Aired May 15, 2025 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:30:00]
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Tariffs are about to hit Walmart shoppers. During an investor's call today, the CEO of the company said that tariffs are forcing the world's largest retailer to raise prices for some items in more than 4,600 U.S. stores. The price hikes start later this month.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And while Walmart executives said they appreciated the U.S. and China recently lowering levies, the head of the nation's largest bank is still warning that a recession is possible. Here's Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMIE DIMON, CEO, JPMORGAN CHASE: I'm going to defer to economists who give it about a 50 percent chance. I think all these things are probably inflationary a little bit more and slowing it down the economy. If there's a recession, I don't know how big it will be or how long it will last. Hopefully we'll avoid it, but I wouldn't take it off the table at this point.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich is in New York for us. And Vanessa, several signals today that tariffs are really starting to impact retailers and consumers.
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, certainly. And the world's largest retailer, Walmart, saying they're going to have to raise prices by the end of this month on key products like toys, electronics, and food.
Earlier today, we heard from Walmart in their earnings call. This is the CEO Doug McMillon, here's what he said earlier.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOUG MCMILLON, CEO, WALMART: We will do our best to keep our prices as low as possible, but given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren't able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
YURKEVICH: And those retail margins are something that other businesses are feeling. And this is picked up in producer prices. Look at what happened last month in April, producer prices actually fell at the steepest rate since the pandemic, down 0.5 percent. And you can see that is a stark difference to what we've been seeing over the past, sort of, two years or so.
But what we see in this report is that trade services, this is a data point that suggest that businesses are taking home smaller revenues, profits, and margins are shrinking between what they pay and what they are charging consumers and that is because of tariffs.
Also on the consumer front, retail sales still coming in at 0.1 percent but very, very different from what we saw in the month of March when retail sales just shot up as consumers were frontloading on key items. But you can see that 0.1 percent is different than what we saw over the summer and different than we -- what we saw in 2024. And the retail sales categories that we saw declines in is what we actually saw increases in March.
So, we saw declines in people buying cars, declines in people buying clothing, apparel, a lot of that comes from China, and declines in sporting goods and other hobby equipment that we also get from abroad. A slight pickup though in electronics and appliances. Maybe a little bit of a hangover from people who realize that these tariffs were starting to work their way into the system a little bit.
We also heard from the head of the Federal Reserve who is warning that inflation could be even more volatile than what we saw in the financial crisis. And he's also warning about higher rates. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIR: Higher real rates may also reflect the possibility that inflation could be more volatile going forward than during the inner crisis period of the 2010s.
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We may be entering a period of more frequent and potentially more persistent supply shocks, a difficult challenge for the economy and for central banks.
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YURKEVICH: And this is also concerning for consumers because when you talk about higher interest rates, you talk about higher borrowing costs. So, car loans, student loans, mortgage rates. We know that a lot of Americans have been hoping that the Federal Reserve would cut rates soon to make borrowing more affordable, that has not happened yet. And the Federal Reserve Chair signaling that higher rates may actually be coming, not those cuts that Americans may be hoping for. Brianna, Boris.
KEILAR: Wow. All right. Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you for that reporting.
And coming up, an alarming revelation from the FAA which has its hands full with a crisis in Newark Airport. Another air traffic control center briefly lost communications earlier this week. We'll have that next.
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KEILAR: Breaking news, the Federal Aviation Administration reveals that a critical air traffic control center in Colorado suffered a communications outage for 90 seconds on Monday.
SANCHEZ: CNN's Pete Muntean, joins us now. Pete, do we know what happened?
PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, currently under investigation right now and really shows that Newark is not alone with all of these problems. Remember, the government accountability office has said repeatedly that aging FAA infrastructure needs urgent action nationwide.
We know from the FAA that this new outage happened Monday at a facility known as Denver Center, that's a radar facility responsible for traffic at higher altitudes in cruise flight. Controllers are responsible for about 285,000 square miles of airspace over nine states. Not the busiest section of airspace, but the FAA says, radio transmitters that cover an undisclosed section of airspace went down for about 90 seconds.
Remember, these transmitters are critical for controllers to communicate with pilots via voice. The FAA says that aircraft remains safely separated. There were no impacts to operations because controllers used a backup radio frequency.
Some of the details here sound a lot like the four outages at Newark Approach Control, and in those cases, controllers lost both radio comms and radar contact for about 90 seconds. An air traffic controller in that facility told me that's the worst possible situation that can happen to a controller. I want you to listen now to transportation Sean Duffy who is on Capitol Hill today, and insisted that members of a Senate Committee that there is no impact on safety.
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SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: I believe the system is safe. There are multiple redundancies throughout the system that keep people safe. Even the frustrations in Newark, when we've slowed traffic down, the key is not efficiency. The key is safety. And so, when we slow traffic, it's about keeping people safe. When they take off, we want them to land at their destination.
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MUNTEAN: Now, the big difference in that this new case at Denver Center does not sound like controllers lost radar contact with airplanes like in the Newark cases. Trump administration's really trying to tackle these issues by standing up a brand-new air traffic control system in the next two to three years.
On Newark, the FAA continued a meeting with airlines to solve the last piece in the puzzle of solving these chronic delays, getting flight schedules to a level that are reasonable. That meeting with airlines started yesterday, actually continued into today. I'm told it's been pretty productive so far.
SANCHEZ: Pete, as they're searching for reasons as to why this is happening at different airports, seemingly like on different parts of the country. Is there any indication that there might be some foreign meddling, some malicious actor doing this?
MUNTEAN: There's always been concern that there could be some sort of cyberattack or vulnerability in the air traffic control system. The good news is it's a relatively close system. And so, it seems like most of these are related to just the old and aging infrastructure. And in many cases, we know that in the Newark case it's copper wire that they're trying to replace with fiber cable which can be unstable sometime. And so, they're trying to get to the bottom of those issues there too.
SANCHEZ: I remember you showed us some of that equipment a couple weeks ago. It looks ancient.
KEILAR: It was the stuff, I think --
MUNTEAN: Older than I am.
KEILAR: -- we played Oregon Trail on in school. It's what it reminded me of.
MUNTEAN: Yes, you'd die of dysentery.
KEILAR: Exactly. Always, always.
SANCHEZ: Pete Muntean, live on your own. Pete Muntean, thank you so much.
MUNTEAN: You got it.
SANCHEZ: Still ahead, President Trump's new pick for Surgeon General is touting psychedelic drugs as a form of therapy after claiming they helped her find love. We're going to discuss with a psychedelics researcher when we come back.
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SANCHEZ: President Donald Trump's latest pick for Surgeon General wrote in a newsletter that psychedelic mushrooms helped her find love. And in a recent book said that people should consider using psychedelic mushrooms as a form of therapy. Dr. Casey Means writings are notable because psilocybin is currently illegal under federal law.
KEILAR: Means received her undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University and began a medical residency in Oregon but did not complete it. Her medical license is listed as inactive, and when contacted by phone by the Associated Press, Means declined to comment.
I want to bring in Dr. Josh Woolley, the director of the Translational Psychedelic Research at U.C. San Francisco. First off, can you just explain to us what psilocybin is? Why it is illegal, but also how things are changing and how it's perceived especially of late?
DR. JOSH WOOLLEY, DIRECTOR OF TRANSLATIONAL PSYCHEDELIC RESEARCH PROGRAM AT UCSF: Sure, thanks for having me on. Psilocybin is the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. There are several -- many different related species. And it's actually not a plant medicine, it's a fungal medicine, given the fungi or a different kingdom.
And people have been using hallucinogenic mushrooms or psilocybin for thousands of years for various religious and healing practices. And over the last, I would say decades, it's been increasingly studied as a potential treatment for many different neuropsychiatric disorders.
SANCHEZ: I wonder what you think about this recommendation, that it potentially be used for therapy, and especially coming from, you know, a potential Surgeon General as this is federally still something illegal.
DR. WOOLLEY: That's right. It is a schedule one drug, so no approved medical use. But we are in a situation where there is active research going on with psilocybin, including in my group. The way it's done in clinical trials is you -- the patient will meet with a therapist for what's called preparation, about six hours over a couple sessions to build rapport, set an intention, learn what might they might experience on the -- when they take the psilocybin.
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Then they come in and they take the psilocybin in a, you know, living room like environment with the therapist there, and they are there all day having their psychedelic experience with eye shades, laying on a couch. Then they go home and then they meet with a therapist again for another six hours over one to two weeks to, you know, integrate this experience.
And that's how basically it's been done in all the clinical trials. And in those trials, we are seeing really promising results of, you know, rapid and large decreases in depression that can last for weeks to months after this one treatment with the drug. So, it is a very exciting time, you know, so why I'm studying it. It's very exciting.
KEILAR: Yes, we've -- I've talked to a lot of veterans. We've had one on the program to talk about how hallucinogens are something that are increasingly groups that are high risk like veterans are turning to. Of course, a lot of times, you know, they're going out to the country to use it. Talk about the steps ahead that are required to make sure that it is safe. I mean, you're talking about supervising a patient for a long period of time and knowing that speak a little bit to the idea of Dr. Means recommending it when there really are some safeguards that still would need to be cleared.
DR. WOOLLEY: It's a great point and it's really a nexus between a lot of different aspects of our society and how we relate to drugs. So, what I was talking about earlier about this -- these trials, this is how new drugs get approved. We design clinical trials. We do those clinical trials in very rigorous settings where we know exactly who the people are in the trial. We follow them. We randomize them. And we get a good idea of the risks and benefits.
And there is a fair amount of work in psychedelics or psilocybin, but it's not enough. It's not FDA approved yet. Though there are multiple companies that are working towards that, and some people think it could be as soon as late 2026, depending on how things go with the studies.
At the same time, unlike most drugs, you know, psilocybin grows in mushrooms in the wild and, you know, it's in our environment. And, you know, the war on drugs has been, you know, a kind of a racist failure. And a lot of people are experimenting with these compounds. And people have been using them, as I said, for thousands of years.
That doesn't mean that you, you know, that as a physician, I would say go out and do this for your depression or insurance isn't going to pay for it, or even we totally know the risks and benefits. Many people say that it helps them but some people say that they have bad outcomes. And you know, right now, you know, the use is going way up in California and America and we're seeing the kind of outcomes.
Another really important thing to think about is that when people use psilocybin, say out in the world or in the community, people use it for all sorts of reasons, not just to cure their depression or their PTSD. Many people use it to have fun. Many people use it to connect with their friends.
And so, that intention or what people are trying to do and how the dosage and such makes it all kind of related, but distinct. And then you have the, sort of -- what is it, the laboratories of democracy, the States, in Oregon and Colorado in particular, they are kind of creating a shadow FDA just for psychedelic compounds where you can get treatment but it's not FDA approved treatment. So, it really is a time of, you know, an exciting but complicated time.
KEILAR: Yes, and we're waiting to see what all of that research will bear. Josh, great to talk with you and someone who really knows this world. Thank you so much.
DR. WOOLLEY: My pleasure.
KEILAR: And we'll be right back.
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KEILAR: The new CNN original series, "My Happy Place", follows six people as they travel around the world to the places that have become their personal sanctuaries.
SANCHEZ: Up next, Sara Sidner in Los Angeles.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA SIDNER, SENIOR NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The minute I start touching them, I swear my whole body feels better.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
SIDNER: Like I feel better.
SIDNER (voice-over): Apache is my guide for the day.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Apache's kind of like regal, curious. He likes to do his own thing, but he also doesn't want to be too far away from everyone.
SIDNER (voice-over): Our personalities match. We're both curious and we like to win.
SIDNER: Oh, Apache does not like being fast. This is my happy place. On a horse, around a horse, feeding a horse, petting a horse.
SIDNER (voice-over): Up in the dusty hills of Griffith Park, above the highways and byways, where the coyotes roam free, and the view stretches out from the mountains to the sea.
SIDNER: We made it to the top. Such a good job, baby.
SIDNER (voice-over): Up here in the bright California sun, we are closer to Hollywood heaven, or at least the sign. Down below, there are signs of the way the West once was. Hollywood heritage runs deep here in Griffith Park, home to a museum named after Gene Autry, Hollywood singing Cowboy. Even, my buddy Apache has movie credits to his name, most of the horses on this ride do.
SIDNER: Rather a horse than a car any day.
SIDNER (voice-over): You can even ride by or stop in and check out the place in Griffith Park where Walt Disney envisioned what would later be deemed the happiest place on earth. Disney's Joy was tinkering inside this barn. His brain brimming with an idea for a childhood paradise that we all know as Disneyland.
SIDNER: There you go.
SIDNER (voice-over): And then we return to another kind of paradise, the Burbank and Glendale Rancho as it's known.
SIDNER: That house, just there to my right, was Betty Davis' house. And there's a little green gate and she used to come out and ride her horse.
SIDNER (voice-over): An unlikely sanctuary for horse people and horses alike.
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