'The Warning Lights Are Flashing Red': Elizabeth Warren Sounds The Alarm On Potential Recession

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On CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spoke to Jake Tapper about a potential recession caused by President Trump's tariffs.

Transcript

00:00Let me ask you a larger philosophical question, because the Democratic Party

00:03obviously not in a great place right now. Democrats seem divided on whether to try to

00:08allow room for the belief that tariffs, as you say, targeted tariffs can be a good thing,

00:12or whether to reject all of Trump's tariffs outright. We saw this play out with Michigan

00:17Governor Gretchen Whitmer making headlines when she visited the White House. She praised tariffs

00:22as a useful tool. Take a listen. I understand the motivation behind the tariffs. And I can tell you,

00:29here's where President Trump and I do agree. We do need to make more stuff in America,

00:35more cars and ships, more steel and ships. We do need fair trade.

00:43Is there room for that kind of nuanced discussion right now? Or do you think what she said was a

00:48mistake? You know, I want to put it slightly differently. And that is, it is a mistake

00:55to have the President of the United States out there just playing red light, green light and

01:01saying, oh, this morning I woke up and think the tariffs should be this big. Now I think they should

01:06be this big. Now I think they should be somewhere else. And I got to say, saying, well, I will continue

01:12to make those decisions and I'm going to hold off on these tariffs for 90 days. That doesn't put the

01:17economy in a better place. That doesn't put investors in a better place. Congress has a job

01:23right now. And that is to step up and take this authority away from Donald Trump. He has proven how

01:31he will use it. But remember, the statute that he's now using starts with a declaration of emergency.

01:38And in that same statute, Congress has the responsibility to decide, is it really an emergency

01:45or not? Are we really in an emergency with Belgium right now? Are we really in an emergency with South

01:50Korea? Congress can say, no, there's no emergency. It's a resolution. And if we do that, it takes

01:59Donald Trump back to the trade as we had it before. And tariffs are then decided with Congress having an

02:07important say in it. And that's an important signal to the rest of the world. Right now, it's a no curbs

02:14on Donald Trump. And that means chaos and corruption. We have an opportunity in Congress

02:20to vote that down and to say, no, we are going to use tariffs in a far more targeted way. We're sure

02:28not headed in the direction he wants to go. All of the Democrats are ready to support that.

02:34But we've got to get the Republicans or at least some of the Republicans on board to make that happen.

02:40They've got to decide, is their job just to suck up to Donald Trump or is their job to stand up for

02:47the American people? J.P. Morgan says the odds of a recession are now 50-50. Goldman Sachs puts the

02:53odds at 45%. You were one of the loudest voices warning about the 2008 financial crisis. What do you

02:59think the likelihood of a recession is right now? Well, it's the economists, it's Wall Street are all

03:06telling us there's a problem and the warning lights are flashing red. You know, though, Jake,

03:11the part I remember from 2008 is what a recession means. Family by family, small business by small

03:19business. You know, I watched back in 2008 when 10 million people lost their homes, when millions of

03:27people lost their jobs, when millions of people saw their savings wiped out. I also watched when

03:33little tiny businesses got turned upside down and never had a chance to recover. Recessions are

03:40something that people like to talk about. They talk about the stock market. They talk about the big

03:44numbers that move. But the reality is they are experienced, one family, one small business at a

03:52time, and they are hard to recover from. So I am worried that the continued chaos, the continued

04:00corruption. The fact that Donald Trump is just out there shooting wildly is pushing our economy in the

04:08wrong direction. And the people who are going to feel it most are not the wealthy traders. It's going

04:14to be the families and the small businesses who get wiped out.

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