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State has Broadened; Pence Defends Taiwan Call As Courtesy; Army Corps
of Engineer Halts Dakota Pipeline; Conway Defends Trump's Tweet As
Presidential;Regime Forces Hit Aleppo Hard For 24 Straight Hours;
Anthony Bourdain In The Real Rome. Aired 5-6p ET - Part 2>
HARLOW: Especially if he is tweeting from the Potus account. I wish we had more time. We'll have a lot to get through with you. We will have you on again. Ryan Williams, thank you.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
HARLOW: Still to come, President-Elect Donald Trump tweets a threat to companies planning to move jobs out of the United States. What he said and how corporate America is reacting next. You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.
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HARLOW: In a series of tweets up this morning the President-Elect Donald Trump is telling U.S. companies to be, quote, forewarned, as they plan to move American jobs to other countries. Trump said if they do that, he would flap a hefty 35 percent tariff on any goods they tried to shift back in to this country to sell. Saying quote, any business that leaves our country for another country, fires its employees or builds a new factory or plant in the other country and sells its products back into the United States would face that tariff. He also said please be forewarned prior to making a very expensive mistake, the United States is open for business. Also, listen as vice President-Elect Mike Pence responded this morning to questions about Trump's latest tweets.
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[17:35:13] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does he now pick up the phone and call the head of (inaudible), does he call all these other companies who are going to move overseas?
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENTIAL-ELECT: Well, I think what you are going to see and the President-Elect will make those decisions on a day by day basis in the course of the transition, the course of the administration, but what you're seeing emerge here and I think it's so exciting for millions of Americans, you should have seen the emotion on people's faces. We saw...
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HARLOW: Interesting the Vice President-Elect saying on a day-to-day basis these decisions will be made. Let's talk about all of it with Austan Goolsbee, he is the former Chief Economic Adviser to President Obama and a Hillary Clintons supporter. Thank you for being with me.
AUSTAN GOOLSBEE, PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FORMER CHIEF ECONOMIST AND ECONOMIC PROFESSOR AT CHICAGO'S BOOTH SCHOOLS OF BUSINESS: Thanks for having me, Poppy.
HARLOW: Let me get your take, because you know the inner workings of the White House, obviously working there, advising the president on economic issues. What do you make of what the Vice President-Elect said, someone who knows how the business of governing is done quite well being governor of Indiana saying, you know, we'll look at the individual companies and whether we intervene on a day-to-day basis. Does that work?
GOOLSBEE: No. Of course it doesn't work. I mean, once you're -- you can do what happened this week where they called up Carrier and because Mike Pence is the governor in Indiana they were able to give them a subsidy. Now, the thing that is weird here is Donald Trump is kind of acting like, he called and threatened them and that is what got them to leave half the jobs in the U.S. When, in fact, they just paid them to keep the jobs in the U.S. Once you're in the federal government, once you're the president, you can't really do that. I mean, we have federal tax policy. It is not up to the president to call and decide which company's going to get a subsidy and which one is not. I think Donald Trump's own companies did that outsourcing, so I saw a lot of executives saying hold on a minute. If there's going to be a 35 percent tariff on products getting sent to the U.S. that were outsourced, does that apply to Trump's own business or how are they going to decide it? HARLOW: Well, it would, right? If it's the law of the land and applies to his children's businesses where...
GOOLSBEE: Well it would.
HARLOW: Let me get your take in this though, because I don't have a ton of time with you.
GOOLSBEE: Sure.
HARLOW: I know you strongly disagree with the way in which the President-Elect went about this. But it worked.
GOOLSBEE: Yeah.
HARLOW: 800 people in Indiana who thought they would be out of work, you know, were going into Christmas thinking, how will I support my family and how am I going to do this? Now they have their jobs and these are good-paying jobs. You know that, good paying union jobs.
GOOLSBEE: It worked for those 800 people. I agree with that.
HARLOW: It work for those 800 people, It has not worked and happened to other, you know, manufacturing jobs that are going to be lost in Indiana like Rexnor a mile down the road, but...
GOOLSBEE: Right.
HARLOW: But some say, why not just do whatever it takes? Maybe it won't work for everyone, but why not?
GOOLSBEE: Well, look. It's perfectly -- that is perfectly valid way to ask it. And as you say, for 800 people who are keeping their jobs, they're perfectly happy. The thing that Donald Trump's tweeting out, though, all it would raise is, he is not talking about doing what he just did. What he just did is give a multi-million dollar subsidy to a company to ship only half their jobs to Mexico. What he is talking about in the tweet is slapping a 35 percent tariff on other companies and that I think you better be careful, because if you start a trade war, thousands of Americans are going to lose their jobs, not gain them.
HARLOW: Yeah, of course. We should learn from history here, right? There is one thing to threaten and perhaps threatening works, right? Perhaps we will see other companies not dare to do this. Or at least to the extent that they were planning on it, because of what we have seen, but you know the last time this country instituted a major tariff was in the 1930s on (inaudible).
GOOLSBEE: That did not end well, yes.
HARLOW: Made the great depression even worse.
GOOLSBEE: Yes.
HARLOW: And prolonged it. However, as you know, Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the world trade organization, if he can't get a better deal. And if you aren't bound by the WTO, then you're actually not violating, you know, international law to slap these tariffs on. Are you concerned that perhaps, to see the President- Elect do that?
GOOLSBEE: Oh, I don't think that we will see that. I'm not saying he does not have the ability to slap on tariffs. I think he has the ability. I just think, things like if a lot of imports into the U.S. are actually supplies that are used in U.S. manufacturing, so if you start doing that, and you start getting those countries slapping tariffs on U.S. products, then U.S. auto manufacturers are going to not be able to make a bunch of cars because they are going to say, whoa, wait a minute. We can't get the electrical system or we can't get the air conditioner or whatever supply was the thing coming from Mexico. So I just think they just need to take a step back, take a deep breath and figure out what works. Going and calling people and threatening them on a one by one company basis is a really bad way to make your economic policy.
[17:40:33] HARLOW: I have 30 seconds left but given your experience in the White House on economic policy, if indeed, this tariff is instituted, what would a trade war look like in the near term and long term for the U.S. jobs?
GOOLSBEE: It would be bad in the short term. In the long term, we'd probably be able to negotiate our way back out of it. To find some new agreement, but in the short term they would have to shut down a bunch of factories while they were waiting to get their spare parts. Hopefully Donald Trump will put his focus on corporate tax reform which I think they will and that has the potential to be a positive for the corporate sector focusing on this, let's fight it over is not good.
HARLOW: I have to leave it there. He has said he is going to bring the corporate tax right down to 15 percent and he is going to have congress on his side to do that, we will probably see a mayor change on that policy, Austan Goolsbee, nice to have you on, thank you very much.
GOOLSBEE: Great to see you again, Poppy.
HARLOW: Straight ahead tales of starvation, fear and a fight just to survive. These are the stories our Fred Pleitgen, fears firsthand from inside of Syria. We will take you to the front line in Aleppo straight ahead. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM.
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[17:45:20] HARLOW: Staying with our top story tonight, the tragic fire, in Oakland, California, that is left at least 30 people dead. We are waiting for a news conference from officials in Oakland. It is expected to be really any moment. So we will bring that to you live as soon as it begins. Again, 30 people dead at least in this Oakland warehouse fire, much more of that ahead.
Meantime, in Syria, Syrian regime forces have been pounding bombarding Aleppo for the past 24 hours in a bid to try to drive out rebel forces and gain control of the City.
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(GUN SHOTS)
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HARLOW: Air strikes and mortar rounds pounding eastern Aleppo nonstop reducing buildings to rubble, sending some 30,000 people in just days out of the City. All while international leaders try to hammer out some sort of diplomatic resolution to what has been a bloody civil war in Syria that has ride on and on for years. The United Nations now estimates 600,000 people have been killed in this civil war in Syria. Our Senior International Correspondent Fred Pleitgen joins me live tonight from Aleppo. You are on the ground. You are inside the besieged city, you are seeing this all firsthand. It is the children, Fred, as we showed in your piece on this program last night. It is the children who are bearing the worst of this.
FRED PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. They certainly are, Poppy. And you know one of the things that we always have to keep in mind is that as night falls here in Aleppo, we can see and we can hear all of the shelling going on, we can hear aircraft in the air, also dropping bombs, as well. All you can do is just imagined how bad things must be for families that are still trapped inside these besieged areas, especially, of course, for the children. You know, earlier today we managed to get to one area that was recently taken back by the Syrian government, it was absolutely destroyed and, again, there were many of those displaced people inside there. Trying to cling on to hope and also trying to cling on to any sort of belongings they could find. Here's what we saw.
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PLEITGEN: Driving through a destroyed wasteland, that until recently was one of the main battlegrounds in Syria. Aleppo's district was in rebel hands until last week when government forces moved in with crushing fire power. 13-year-old Udai shows me where a rocket landed next to his house and describes the fear he felt as the war raged.
We were very, very frightened Udai says. Normally we would hide in the basement, but luckily that night we slept on the first floor, because that is when two rockets hit right over here. Udai's little brother Abdul Karim is clearly traumatized by the horrors he has witness and still weak from living under siege for weeks with almost no food and water available much of the time.
As the rebels lost their grip on this place, many residents fled trying to escape with their lives and not much more. Now, they're coming back, some haven't seen their houses for years. Halid Chavelo left in 2012 when the rebels took this district. Now he is trying to salvage any belongings in what's left of his apartment.
I am very sad, because everything is either destroyed or ransacked he says. We found these pictures under the rubble. Even the walls are destroyed but we'll come back here and rebuild. The battle for Aleppo is far from over. Syrian government forces clearly have the upper hand. Taking about half the rebels' territory in the past week alone and continuing to push their offensive with massive fire power. Like in so many districts that have been taken back by the Syrian military, there is massive destruction in this part of eastern Aleppo, but there's no denying the shift in momentum in favor of the Syrian military and also the boost in morale that many of the soldiers have gotten.
Troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al Assad said they believe they could capture all of Aleppo, Syrian most important battleground very soon. The rebel headquarters was right here, he says. So the loss of this district was a big blow to them. You can see how our shelling pounding them and that shows that their morale is collapsing.
Rebels left behind makeshift cannon when they fled here last week. So far the opposition hasn't found a way to shore up their defenses in the face of this massive and possibly decisive Syrian government offensive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[17:50:00] PLEITGEN: And Poppy in the past 30 hours that we've been on the ground, we've seen absolutely no let up in the shelling. I'm not sure if you can hear some of the rounds that are being fired behind me as we speak right now. In the past couple of days alone, the rebels have lost about 60 percent of the territory that they once held here in Aleppo. Certainly if you speak to some of those people that we saw their in that report, those displaced people very few of them believed that a political solution is something that will happen or something that is even possible especially with the momentum going the way it is right now despite of course the efforts by the international community, Poppy.
HARLOW: It is absolutely heartbreaking. Fred Pleitgen, thank you for the reporting. And thank you to you and your entire team, your producer, your camera men. We know you are putting your own lives in danger to bring us this live from Syria tonight. Thank you very much.
We're also waiting as I said that update from Oakland, California. Tonight the scene of that horrific warehouse fire, the confirm death toll much higher, that originally thought, at least 30 people dead. We will bring you that as soon as it begins, also breaking news tonight on the hotly contested Dakota access pipeline, those protesters winning major battle. In all of this we will tell you what happened, straight ahead live from North Dakota you are on the CNN NEWSROOM.
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[17:55:00] HARLOW: Don't miss the season finale of "PARTS UNKNOWN". Anthony Bourdain uncovers the real Rome. He is on the vibrant modern city, behind the artifacts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ANTHONY BOURDAIN, CNN PARTS UNKNOWN HOST: It was the out skirt, the margins of Rome that were interesting and beautiful, the real Rome, not the temples and monuments of a long dead empire, a place where people struggled every day to live and to love. You've been eating here for how long?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Since I was a kid. I used to love since childhood. It's comforting.
BOURDAIN: That is the thing, more or less?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is the thing. That is why I keep coming back. It's always her cooking. She cooks every time.
BOURDAIN: Rome is a City where you find the most extraordinary of pleasures in the most ordinary things. Like this place which I'm not ever going to tell you the name of. He is been coming here regularly, forever. She brings her kid still, so I'm not going to screw it up for her.
It's good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's good. Isn't it comforting?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Makes me hungry just watching that. Of course in Rome comes for food for season finale of "PARTS UNKNOWN", tonight at 9:00 Eastern only right here on CNN.
(Byline: Poppy Harlow, Stephanie Elam, Ryan Nobles, Van Jones, Sara Sidner, Fred Pleitgen, Anthony Bourdain)
(Guest: Chris Dunn, Mike Pence, Ryan Williams, Austan Goolsbee )
(High: 30 people are now confirmed dead in the Oakland Warehouse fire; Search for Secretary of State has broadened, and Jon Huntsman is on top; Battle to try to stop a controversial crude oil pipeline in Dakota; President-Elect Donald Trump tweets a threat to companies planning to move jobs out of the United States; Syrian regime forces bombarding Aleppo to drive out rebel forces and gain control of the City; Season finale of Parts Unknown as it uncovers the real Rome.)
(Spec: Politics; Oakland Warehouse Fire; Aleppo; Secretary of State; China; Taiwan; Dakota Pipelines; Standing Rock Sioux; Presidential Behavior; Economics; Aleppo; Syria; Civil War; Part Unknown; Rome)