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Trump's Sweeping Tariffs in Effect on Dozens of Countries; Planned Epstein Strategy Dinner Appears to Have Been Rescheduled; Army Sergeant in Custody After Five Soldiers Shot at Fort Stewart. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired August 07, 2025 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[07:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: After months of pauses, delays, extensions, President Trump's historic tariffs have now kicked in for nearly every country in the world, kicking his global trade war into high gear.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Dinner reservations canceled? The reported meeting hosted by the vice president to discuss Jeffrey Epstein's strategy did not happen as planned. What knocked it off the rails?

And pizza, soda and pretzels, a new report that more than half our calories are coming from ultra processed food.

Sara is out today. I'm John Berman with Kate Bolduan. This is CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: Right into the breaking news, President Trump's widespread tariffs are now in effect on dozens and dozens of America's trading partners around the world. The new measures amount to a true reshuffling of U.S. trade policy and a major escalation of the president's trade war. And it could ignite the biggest change to the global economy in nearly a century. All of that likely about to impact many things you buy, from computers to clothes, furniture, and toys, and beyond.

This new round of tariffs kicked in across the globe just after midnight. The president celebrated by posting on social media and posting that billions of dollars in tariffs are now flowing into the United States, so he says. And while it is correct, the new tariffs he's already imposed this year have raised more than a hundred billion dollars in tax revenue, those tariffs reminder are actually paid by the U.S. companies that import the goods that you buy. And a number of those companies include huge companies, like Procter and Gamble, Walmart, Hasbro. They're warning, and have been, that price hikes are coming for American consumers.

CNN's Matt Egan is tracking all of this for us and good luck with tracking all of it, Matt. Fill us in, break down what has happened as of midnight.

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, Kate. Look, we are all living through history right now. These sweeping global tariffs that just kicked in, they represent the biggest change to world trade in nearly a century. They're lifting the U.S. tariff rate to levels that have not been seen since the 1930s during Smoot-Hawley, the infamous tariff hike that made the great depression worse.

So, let me run you through some of the numbers here in this new tariff regime. Talk about a 10 percent minimum tariff now on nations that the U.S. has a trade surplus with. So, 10 percent, that is the new zero. You can't go lower than that.

BOLDUAN: That's a good way of putting it.

EGAN: 15 percent is the new minimum on countries that the US has a deficit with. It could go higher, but that's the minimum.

Now, we're talking about two dozen countries that have higher tariffs than 15 percent, some of them, much higher, South Africa, 30 percent, 35 percent on Iraq, look at this, 39 percent on Switzerland. That was a big surprise the other day when that came out. Myanmar, Laos, Syria and Brazil, 50 percent.

BOLDUAN: Brazil is a punishment. The U.S. has a surplus with Brazil.

EGAN: Exactly, yes. And that does speak to some of the questions that have been raised about this new tariff regime, because, yes, Brazil is a country that the U.S. actually exports more stuff too than we buy from.

Now, also not on this list, India. Just yesterday, the president threatened an additional 25 percent penalty on India because they're buying oil and gas from Russia. So, if that kicks in later this month, that would lift the tariff rate on India, a major trading partner, to 50 percent.

So, what gets more expensive because of these tariffs? Well, analysts say there's a number of items that we import, including computers that are very much exposed to these tariffs. Clothing, that's another one. A lot of clothing obviously comes from Asia. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that these tariffs could increase the cost of clothing by 38 percent.

In the short run watches, that's something that we get from Switzerland and other nations. Shoes, a lot of shoes are imported, alcohol as well, furniture and toys. All of these are items that could get more expensive.

Now, it's true that the rate of inflation, it has heated up, but it's not going through the roof, right? It is not skyrocketing. And proponents of tariffs, they pointed that as evidence that tariffs are not going to cause inflation. But I think what's really important to remember is even though tariffs kicked in overnight, the price hikes, that does not happen immediately.

[07:05:03]

It takes time. Goldman Sachs estimates it could take eight months from when tariffs kick in until when all of us as consumers actually see it. I think the bottom line here, Kate, is this is all an experiment, right? There really is no historical precedent for what happens to a modern economy just three years after an inflation shock when you have historically high tariffs. There's no precedent, but we're about to find out. We are in the middle of finding out right now.

BOLDUAN: Matt, thank you so much.

EGAN: Thanks, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Much more to come on this all throughout the morning. John?

BERMAN: All right. Developing this morning, meeting rescheduled. The exclusive high-power dinner party that was supposed to be hosted by the vice president where the most senior administration officials plan to strategize on their response to the Jeffrey Epstein situation, it appears to have been move, shifted or canceled after intense media coverage. Vice President Vance called it fake news and said there were no plans to discuss Epstein. Hours later sources said that the meeting was in flux.

CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House. Alayna, where do things stand? What happened? What next?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. John, this is exactly right. I mean, when I had spoken with all of my sources who I talked to for this story, they said that the meeting had appeared to be either moved locations rescheduled or canceled all together. We are still, you know, gathering what exactly ended up taking place last night, but the dinner that we had reported on did not go on as planned.

And I just want to give you a sense, because you're right, we have seen now Vance and his team denying CNN's reporting, saying that Epstein was not going to be the sole focus of that meeting, but I want to break down what our reporting actually said, okay? So, we -- and this was from multiple sources, including those in the White House, around the White House, very close to all of these key players.

Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, all of them were expected to meet at Vance's residence last night to go over really some of the strategy on Epstein, but specifically as well kind of the rollout of what they're going to be doing next, and also ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

Now, I would remind you that the last time we talked about a meeting between Bondi, Wiles and Patel, it ended in Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director, storming out of that meeting after being accused that he was leaking stories about Bondi. And so a big part of this, we were told, was also about trying to get everyone on the same team and kind of be a united front as we potentially see more on this kind of trickle out from the administration.

Of course, the context that's so important here is that it was scheduled to come as, you know, we know that the Trump administration is weighing whether to release, at least in part some of the audio or transcript of Blanche's meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell last month.

So, all to say all of this came as we did see the president kind of lash out about these questions about Epstein and specifically questions about our story on that meeting yesterday in the Oval Office. I want you to take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Look, the whole thing is a hoax. It's put out by the Democrats because we've had the most successful six months in the history of our country, and that's just a way of trying to divert attention to something that's total bullshit, okay?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now, John, while you see the president clearly frustrated there, swearing in the Oval Office, you had, you know, Tim Cook of Apple standing nearby as he's taking these questions. There is a growing sense among people in the administration, but specifically here at the White House, in the West Wing, that they need to begin to really take over the narrative here and try to control the optics around the Epstein scandal. And that is why they're having these talks and wanting to, you know, considering whether or not to really make public those materials from Maxwell's maybe a good first step in all of this.

All to say unclear if they're going to try and meet again to, you know, really smooth things over between Kash Patel and Pam Bondi and what exactly happened there. But it did not move forward as planned after our story and the media and the intense media scrutiny that was on it. John?

BERMAN: Those naughty words, you know, sear my virgin ears, Alayna. But just to be clear, the deputy attorney general did meet for two days with Ghislaine Maxwell O over an issue, which the president just said is total B.S., correct?

TREENE: No, that's right. And they are, again, as we've reported, and they are potentially going to be releasing that information. You know, the president here, John, does want to move on from this and every time he's addressing it. You can see the frustration that this is kind of consuming a lot of the coverage. And so, yes, there are our divisions here, but they are still moving ahead with the strategy.

BERMAN: All right. Alayna Treene at the White House this morning, thanks so much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Divisions just within the president himself of what he would like to see happen at this point.

Also breaking overnight -- stop me. I could -- can we just -- we're going to move on to news. We're going to -- we'll talk robots (ph) later.

[07:10:00] United Airlines says that its planes are flying once again now that it has resolved what the company called a technology issue. They grounded flights across the country last night. The outage triggered thousands of delays and cancelations. Air traffic controllers in Newark actually learned of the issue while coordinating a flight departure to Chicago O'Hare.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tower United 254?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 254, go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The company's advising us there's a system-wide outage of our system that pushes the numbers out to us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Passengers from coast to coast then left stranded and obviously confused by that system wide outage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was checked in for my flight to leave at 11:59 and I scanned my pass and it said my flight had already left. So, I thought, oh, am I here on the wrong day?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: I would be so confused as well. It's not clear yet what caused the glitch. They're clearly working on that. But according to the flight tracker, FlightAware, nearly 300 United flights are canceled or delayed still this morning. So, stand by to stand by on this.

We are learning new details about the suspect in the Fort Stewart shooting. His father saying that he was trying to get transferred off the base and had complained of racism on the base. There's new 911 audio coming out this morning.

And Russia now says that there will be a meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the coming days. We've got new details coming in on what this all entails.

And South Park at it again, this time taking on DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

BOLDUAN: We are learning some new details this morning about the active duty Army sergeant accused of shooting five fellow soldiers at Fort Stewart in Georgia. We got a new image coming in that was just released showing the suspect being escorted by military police. And there's also new audio, it was just released, of a 911 call coming in. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm on standby with Fort Stewart on 911 call, they have an active shooter on Fort Stewart.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Also advising one shooter is in custody. I'm trying to get a hold of Fort Stewart, 911, see if they can be more specific.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Officials are praising the soldiers who were able to tackle and stop 28-year-old Sergeant Quornelius Radford before he was arrested. All five of the shooting victims are said to be in stable condition this morning.

CNN's Ryan Young is live in Georgia with much more on all of this. Ryan, what more are you learning?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kate. Really, that's the good news so far about the five people who will be okay are in stable condition and will survive this. I can tell you the outward community have been talking about this, especially since yesterday, because this has really shown a lot of impact in this community. They want to know exactly what happened.

But talking about the suspect, Quornelius Radford, we do know The New York Times has talked to his father. He actually made some allegations, saying his son wanted to transfer from this base and was facing racism.

So, we actually reached out to the third I.D. to ask about those claims, and so far, they have not gotten back to us yet about the claims. They said there's been sort of an active investigation ongoing in terms of the claims made by Quornelius Rafford.

But we do know from our own reporting that there was some sort of beef there between him and one of the co-workers. He was very upset, then brought that weapon onto the base here and opened fire. We know he shot the person that he was having that disagreement with and then moved to four other people. Then the soldiers jumped in and were able to tackle him.

We talked about that new image that we have of him being transferred into military custody. Hopefully, we'll put that up on the screen so everyone can see it. One of the things that struck me is his size as he was being moved through here. There is additional video that we hope to have a little bit later on this afternoon of him being transferred into military custody.

We're also told today at 9:25 that the secretary of the Army will be here. There'll be a news conference. So, hopefully, we'll learn more information, but listen to the general here for this base talk about how other soldiers jumped in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIG. GEN. JOHN LUBAS, FORT STEWART COMMANDING GENERAL: Soldiers in the area that witnessed the shooting, immediately and, and without hesitation tackled the soldier, subdued him. That allowed law enforcement to then take him into custody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: Yes, Kate. You know, a lot of times, we end up focusing on the shooter and what exactly happened, and we know investigators are trying to work that out. But one of the things that we should talk about is the impact on this community. And I can tell you a lot of people want to know how their fellow soldiers are doing, the five who were taken to the hospital, three who needed surgery, two who were transferred to Savannah Memorial Health, which is about 40 miles away from here.

That's sort of the focus here today. And, hopefully, as we hear from the military, we'll learn more about those men and women who may have been impacted by this. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. I'm so glad you're there. And it does sound like we're going to learn a little bit more today when the secretary of the Army is there.

It's great to see you, Ryan. Thank you so much for bringing this up. John?

BERMAN: All right. Developing overnight, a soldier based at Fort Bliss in Texas was arrested and charged with attempting to send sensitive information about tanks to Russia in exchange for Russian citizenship. Prosecutors alleged 22-year-old Taylor Adam Lee possessed a top secret clearance and tried to use that to send technical information about the Abrams tank to Russia. Prosecutors say Lee made posts online saying, quote, the USA is not happy with me for trying to expose their weaknesses, and at this point, I'd even volunteer to assist the Russian Federation when I'm there in any way.

[07:20:00]

Overnight, a new blistering commentary on the Department of Homeland Security and ICE from South Park.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm proud to work for the ICE.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: It's interesting. Homeland Security shared this screenshot from the episode with a link to join ICE. South Park responded with this, wait, so we are relevant? This is a reference to what the White House said after the season premier, when the show lampoon the president's anatomy and depicted his romantic entreaties to Satan being rebuffed.

The White House said the show has been irrelevant for decades. It is getting, we should note, some of its highest ratings in years.

Breaking news, new information was being called Operation Trojan Horse, apparently an ICE effort at a Home Depot.

And be on the lookout for someone trying to push some hot pastries on the street this morning. And by hot, I mean stolen. The search is on for a little Debbie thief on the land.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:00]

BERMAN: So, Cleveland was so, so, so close to a no-hitter, the team's first in decades. Remember Len Barker? I do.

CNN's Andy Scholes joins me now. So, Andy, what happened?

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yes. Well, John, you know, one of the worst feelings in all sports, really, it's got to be when you get a no-hitter all the way into the ninth inning, but then you lose it. You always just feel so, so bad for the pitcher and Guardian starter Gavin Williams. He was having a career game, the no-hitter. It was actually almost gone with the very first batter, Francisco Lindor's liner here, it knocks off William's glove, but he recovered and got that out. Williams said after the game he thought he was going to have to change his pants after that.

But fast forward all the way to the ninth ending, Williams still with clean pants, two outs away from that no-hitter, but Juan Soto gets a hold of this one. Angel Martinez almost makes the grab, but it was a solo home run ending the no hit bid. Williams would come out the game one out later, getting a standing ovation from the New York crowd. Cleveland, they would win 4-1, but still have not had a no hitter in the past 44 years show.

Shohei Ohtani, meanwhile, he was doing it all for the Dodgers yesterday. The reigning MVP homering in the third inning for his 1,000th career hit. It was his 39th homer of the season, ended a nine- game homerless drought.

And on the mound, Ohtani had a season-high eight strikeouts in four innings of work. He's now the first player ever to hit a home run, strike out eight batters, drive in more runs than he allowed, and draw more walks than he allowed. But despite all of that, Dodgers still lost to the Cardinals in that one, 5-3.

Yankees, meanwhile, finally ending their five game skid. Paul Goldschmidt coming through with the clutch pinch hit, go-ahead home run in the seventh. Then new closer David Bednar, he came in, he got a five out save, throwing 42 pitches. Yankees, they beat the Rangers 3- 2.

And, finally, Jen Pawol set to make history this weekend, becoming the first ever woman to umpire a Major League game. Pawol being called up for the Braves-Marlin series, she's going to be on the field Saturday and Sunday. Pawol has steadily climbed the umpire ranks since beginning her pro career in rookie ball back in 2016. She reached AAA in 2023, becoming the first female to umpire at that level in 34 years.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said this historic accomplishment in baseball is a reflection of Jen's hard work, dedication, and love of the game.

So, John, congrats to her on this big time accomplishment, and we wish her well this weekend.

BERMAN: That's awesome. So, going back to Gavin Williams, he got hit in the glove by the first batter, yet he thought he might need to change his pants. Andy, can you diagram what exactly he meant there?

SCHOLES: Well, you know, there's two ways that could have gone, John. No, I'm just kidding.

BERMAN: Oh, you win. Andy Scholes for the win, love you, man. Thank you so much.

SCHOLES: All right.

BERMAN: All right. This morning, police in Bardstown, Kentucky, say they have identified the man caught on camera stealing ten cases of Little Debbie snacks from a storage unit. Video shows the suspect cutting a lock, then loading up his red truck before driving up. Can you see that? All right, I see, it's right back there. No word if they think it was for personal consumption or resale.

Now, if he did try to move this, you know, spread it around a little, it would have a street value of some, as Kate would say, $700.

BOLDUAN: Dude, it was not robotic. It was not robotic. I was saying, shut up.

BERMAN: Okay.

BOLDUAN: Can I move on now?

BERMAN: You go ahead.

BOLDUAN: Go.

BERMAN: All right.

BOLDUAN: Okay. Coming up, speaking of ultra processed foods, with John Berman as one, the CDC is out with a new report just this morning laying out just how much Americans rely on ultra processed foods in their diet today, and it is facing painting an especially troubling picture for children.

Also, the key to protecting your brain against Alzheimer's may be an old remedy. The new findings from researchers at Harvard Medical School.

We will be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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