this is gps, the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. today on the show, susan rice, president obama's national security advisor on how the donald trump team is managing world affairs. north korea. russia and more. that should answer the white house's extraordinary accusations against her. also, the u.s. sets off what some call a trade war with canada. >> canada has been very rough on the united states. >> and the president on pulling out of nafta. i'm trying to make sense of it

all with canada's foreign minister. and forget the first 100 days, how about the next 265? to me, the president's first year is the most important milestone. a great group of scholars join me to discuss what we have seen and what we can expect. but first, here's my take. there are so many unusual, unprecedented aspects of donald trump's first 100 days in office that's hard to figure out where to begin. the number of promises unfulf l unfulfilled the staggering. but the policies unfulfilled are those that have been reversed entirely. never in the annals of the presidency have there been so many flip-flops so fast without any explanation. trump announced many of these reversals cavalierly.

as he said in late february, nobody knew health care could be so complicated. i suspect that the next education will be in tax policy. trump's proposals outlined this week are breathtakingly irresponsible. they would add trillions of dollars to the debt and are not even designed for maximum stimulus impact. the apolishment of the estate tax which would affect .002% of americans each year, but it would cost the government $20 billion a year in lost revenue. the appeal of trump for so many was that he was an outsider, a businessman who would bring his commercial skills and business acumen to the white house and get things done. washington's fektless

bureaucrats would see how a man from the real world cuts through the fog. instead we have watched the sheer incompetence of trump's first 100 days, bills that collapse in congress, offices that remain under staffed. it turns out that running a family owned real estate franchise operation is not really the same as presiding over the executive branch of the united states government. it turns out that government is hard and complicated. while there's plenty of corruption in washington, the real reason so little gets done these days is that the american people have wildly contradictory desires. for example, they want unlimited amounts of health care, don't want to be denied such care, because they're sick, have preexisting conditions and yet expect that costs should plummet. they want government out of their lives but will vote on

the -- medicare, social security, or the removal of tax benefits for health care and home mortgages. this condition has been building for years. in a 1995 book, michael kinsly explained what was then the pop list anger at washington that newt gingrich had exploited in his contract with america. he wrote, american voters make flagrantly incompatible demands, cut my taxes, preserve my benefits, balance the budget, then explode in self-righteous outrage when the politicians fail to deliver. the king could do no wrong, and if he did do wrong, the blame

was i remember puted tohis advisors. when americans come to realize that washington is dysfunctional not because of the banality of the politicians alone, but rather because of the desires of the people they represent. for more go to cnn.com/fareed and read my "washington post" column this week. let's get started. let's get right into my conversation with susan rice, she was of course president obama's ambassador to the united nations before becoming his national security advisor, susan rice, welcome back to the show. >> it's good to be with you, fareed, thank you. >> so let me ask you first, donald trump now says he thinks there is a chance of a major, major military conflict with north korea.

do you think this is a bluff or is he signaling that the united states could actually go to war? >> well, what i hope he's doing, fareed, and it's hard to know exactly what he's doing. i hope he's just giving an assessment of the fact that that remains a risk, albie it hopefully not a high risk of direct conflict. he did say in the same statement that he very much hopes for a diplomatic solution. north korea is obviously one of the very toughest and pressing problems we face, and we have seen a lot of bellicose rhetoric out of the administration, but after a considered policy review, it seems that their policy course that they have chosen is much the same as it has been for several years. we need to maintain the economic pressure and the sanctions on north korea and ratchet them up to the greatest extent possible, which is what i think secretary

tillerson was saying to the u.n. on friday. we need to exercise the chinese leverage and influence. it's something that president trump has correctly emphasized as an appropriate course. we need to reassure and secure or allies, particularly south korea and japan. who feel most directly threatened by north korea. and there i'm concerned that we're hearing very mixed messages, a message on the one hand, that south korea's security is something we will step up to defend, and on the other hand the president in the same interview that you quoted from, said that we must renegotiate the free trade agreement with korea and the south koreans must pay for the missile defense, the faad program. that's not the deal, their

provide the land and we would provide the system and it's operation. this was created along with the miscue on the aircraft carrier. a great deal of unease in south korea at the same time we ought to be providing reassurance. >> one of the elements of fallout from russia's attempt to influence the american election was that there was a certain amount of intelligence work being done on russia, our intelligence agencies were listening to what russian government officials or russian intelligence officials were saying. donald trump has accused you of trying to unmask the americans on the other end of those conversations in an attempt to implicate the donald trutrump c to implicate trump in some kind of collusion with russia. what is your reaction to that. it's an extraordinary claim of the president of the united

states? >> it's absolutely false, i have addressed this frequent, we have had members of the intelligence committee on both sides of the aisle take a look at the information that apparently was the basis for chairman nunes's concern. and say publicly that they didn't see anything that was unusual or untoward. i did my job, which was to protect the american people, and i did it faithfully and to the best of my ability and never did i do anything that was untoward with respect to the intelligence i received. >> one more question about this, the administration now says that it is the obama administration's fault that michael flynn got through unvetted, or not vetted enough. that it was on your watch that he w

he retained his top secret security clearance despite that he received money from the russians. what do you say? >> i'm smiling because that's rich. let me explain how this process works, first of all a former military officer such as general flynn who wants to retain his security clearance would go through a process with his home agency, in this case the defense intelligence agency, to have his clearance reviewed and renewed. that happens at the, you know, a very routine level. never at a political level. but that's a very separate thing, the renewal of a clearance from the vetting that go into the appointment of any senior white house official or any senior administration official. the trump administration, like every previous administration had an expectation and an obligation to vet to their satisfaction those individuals that the president was appointing to high positions, which is a separate and much more elaborate process than a

security clearance, it get into the financial information, it get into your relationships and contacts, it gets into your behavior, it's a much deeper vet than what is done solely for the purpose of a security clearance. >> but you do see the point of what they're doing, which is every time there's some accusation, there's a counter accusation which in a sense throws up a lot of smoke and seems to be affective. wouldn't you agree? >> i have noticed. fareed, yes, much of this seems to be an effort to distract and deflect from perhaps their own shortcomings or the larger issue that i think all americans are very concerned about, which is what did russia do in its process of intervening and manipulating the u.s. election in 2016. why did they do it and with whom did they do it?

and was there any suggestion of or evidence of coordination or collusion? this has to be dealt with responsibly, the institutions and democracy, and to the extent that we're not united. and it's very, very dangerous. >> let me ask you a general question, about trump foreign policy so far. how would you characterize it? >> well, i think obviously, fareed, it's only been just about 100 days, so it's early days, but i would say that in many effects it's been unsteady and rocky, and by that, i would point particularly to the fact that a number of our closest friends and ally s aies are off balance, unclear, as to where we stand and what we mean.

the united states is supposed to be the grown up at the dinner table, we're not supposed to be the crazy aunt in the attic. i think our allies have been off balance and uncertain in a way that wasn't serve our interests. we have also had very mixed signals sent, the words coming out of the administration, even on the same day, by multiple officials on consequential issues like our position on syria, for example, are often at odds and i think it leaves the world uncertain as to what we mean. then finally i point to the fact that very unfortunately, many of the most important jobs in our national security apparatus remain unfilled and not even just unfilled, but no people

selected to serve in those roles, whether in the state department or the defense department and many other places. and that means that we are dealing with a complex and complicated world with less than all of our cylinders firing. and that's unfortunate and it needs too to be rectified. i think there are many aspects of what has transpired that we need to do better on and i hope we will do better on. i hope some of the shifts in policy as i suggested earlier have moved us in a better direction, now we are recognizing and supporting our nato allies as critical, not obsolete. we haven't upended our very complex and important relationship with china by embracing taiwan and jet tisonning the one child policy? we are seeing some writing of some important policy courses.

but in a very rocky and unsteady and i think unstable way. >> susan rice, always a pleasure to have you on. >> it's good to be with you again, thanks so much. next on gps, the trump administration was accused this week of trying to start a trade war with canada, of all countries, i will talk to canada's foreign minister, when we come back. aleve with direct therapy tens device, a relief from lower back pain.

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fmy doctor recommended ibgard. abdominal pain and bloating. now i'm in control of my ibs. nonprescription ibgard-calms the angry gut. it was a rather extraordinary week in north american relations. it all started on monday when the trump administration slapped it's first tariffs on imports from another neigh, canada.

commerce secretary wilbur ross accused canada of bad acts and said it's been a bad week for u.s.-canada trade relations, but also said he wouldn't regard the canada situation as being anything like the war with isis. oh, good. then on wednesday morning, sources told cnn that the white house was considering withdrawing from nafta, but thursday morning, trump tweeted, i received calls from the president of mexico and the prime minister of canada asking to renegotiate nafta rather than terminate. he said he had agreed but if a fair deal wasn't reached, he would pull out. what's at stake and what's going on? oh, just $1.2 trillion in trade. joining me now the canada's foreign minister and in her private life as a journalist, a frequent gps guest, welcome back to the show, madam foreign minister. >> great to be with you fareed, it's a real pleasure.

>> so first, were you given any advanced notice of the decision to slap those tariffs on canada. >> yes, absolutely we were. it's important, fareed, on the softwood lumber dispute to get this in historical perspective and in perspective in terms of the overall trading relationship. softwood lumber is something that canada and the united states have been talking about since the 1880s, so this is not a new discussion between canada and the united states, it's very familiar. it's also soft wood lumber is just 2% of canada's overall export exports -- in all of the previous disputes, canada has won at every single international tribunal, we won

at wto and we have won at nafta and what's even more important fareed, and here i'm going to quote the wall street journal, known as i think a conservative publication, quite friendly to the trump administration, they called these tariffs a housing tax and that these tariffs were going to hurt the very middle class voters who voted for this administration. i couldn't agree more. you guys need our lumber to build your houses and we want to keep selling it to you. >> on that phone call between justin trudeau and donald trump, what did prime minister trudeau say to donald trump that convinced him not to pull out of nafta? >> the primary and the president have a really strong mutually respectful relationship. i was there at our bilateral meeting in the white house in february and i have to say the two really got along.

i think what the prime minister said is that he really pointed out the extend to which the canada-u.s. economic relationship is one of the best economic relationships in the world. it's a real win-win relationship. what many americans don't always fully appreciate is canada is the single biggest customer of the united states. you know, fareed, you devote a lot of your time on your show to china quite rightly, but the united states sells twice as much to canada as it does to china. what the prime minister said, which has been the position of our government from day one, is that we are ready to sit down at the nafta negotiating table any time. but our count, we have made nearly a dozen modifications to nafta since it first came into force.

and we have an agreement that could be modernized for the 21st century. so let's roll up our sleeves and do it. the holdup is now coming from the united states because the americans need to take a little bit of time before they join us at the table. but we're ready to go. and i do want to say to the president and to the u.s. administration, we're really glad you made the right decision, i was glad to see the president saying he believes he could get a great deal and i agree and we're ready to start talking. [vo] quickbooks introduces jeanette and her new mobile wedding business. at first, getting paid was tough... until she got quickbooks. now she sends invoices, sees when they've been viewed and-ta-dah-paid twice as fast for free. visit quickbooks-dot-com.

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on friday april 21st, taliban soldiers maneuvered their way into an army base. a few weeks earlier, on february 9, a u.s. top commander in afghanistan told congress that the u.s. needs a few thousand more troops in afghanistan. that's on top of the 8,400 american troops that are already there. haven't we heard this before? send more troops, drop bigger bombs? is that the answer? according to several studies as of 2016, the united states had spent almost 800 billi$800 bill

after tan. and more than 2,200 americans have lost their lives fighting on american soil and yet there doesn't seem to be much to show for all that. according to the u.s. inspector general, the afghan government has been steadily losing ground to the taliban since 2015. afghanistan nicknamed the graveyard of empires has often bedeviled foreign and military conventions, alexander the great was nearly killed there, the british were exiled and defeated more than 100 years ago and the soldiers saw many of their froops killed by mujahideen. american force s returned home with just a token force

remaining behind. but since then a revitalized taliban and al qaeda have found safe havens in neighboring pakistan where they have launched insurgent -- the noted regional expert barnett ruben writes in a recent essay that, the united states now faces three choices, american forces can leave afghanistan entirely, in all likelihood, the afghan government would quickly collapse and the taliban would once again cease fire. or the military could obtain an open ended commitment in afghanistan, with american troops engaged in a long unwinnable stalemate with the taliban. but the president is focusinged on not on sending more troops and dropping more bombs but rather -- these regional

players, china, russia, india, pakistan and even iran are all developing strong economic and political ties with each other. each has reasons to see afghanistan stabilize and prosper. in this scenario, the united states supports the democratically elected government president, allowing him to negotiate with his neighbors. the secretary of defense james mattis once remarked that if funding for diplomacy was cut, then i would have to buy more ammunition. the truth is all the bullets in the world won't solve the problem in afghanistan. but some creative diplomacy just might. up next, everybody else has been talking about the first 100 days. but i think the thing to really talk about is the next 265 days. i have a great panel of scholars

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there's been a lot of ink spilled over president trump's first 100 days. i do agree with the president on just one point, that the 100-day mark of his presidency. after a year, election season starts up again and presidential power begins to wane. so a look back at the first 100 days, and a look ahead to the next 265. i have a panel of experts. former director of the nix soften presidential library and now someone who teaches at nyu. professor of political science, professor of history at yale and

in south bend, indiana, the associate professor of government at georgetown. we talk about 100 days because of franklin roosevelt. why? what is the importance of it? >> good question, franklin roosevelt felt that in that first 100 days of his administration he could alter the course of -- we were in an era of congressional government and now he saw that his role as the new executive would be to take the reins and run with them. it's that move forward that the powerful executive that we see now actually has its roots. >> tim, when you look at it, other than roosevelt, has anyone really had a powerfully successful first 100 days?

>> when you look at the signature achievements of some of the more iconic presidents, they come after the 100 days, ronald reagan's tax cuts, 206th day, obamacare, 268th day. and thethe -- so i think the 100-day standard is not helpful at all. one thing i would add is that roosevelt himself didn't think in terms of 100 days. he was ready to ask congress to leave after the fifth day, after he passed the banking legislation. people around him were saying, this is amazing, this momentum, we should just keep doing this. he had called congress back for a special session. so even roosevelt didn't know he was in the mids of something remarkable for a president. and f and. >> to me what's most -- does

struk me the number of reversals, i may be wrong, but i cannot recall any president who has reversed himself so fast on so many fronts, so effortlessly, is that good or bad? >> well, i guess i would much rather see them as reversals, this is an unusual president, the first president we have had without experience in political office or in the military. so he made some kind of broad statements on the campaign and i think once he's come into office, then it's been up to his team, really excellent team he's built to kind of put details on that, so he's talked about renegotiating nafta and now, you know, pence and others are talking about how they're going to update it to account for the internet and other things. he's talked got getting rid of the iran deal, some of his team has talked about how to negotiate the iran deal to extend the sun set provisions.

now we're starting to see some flesh on the bones. >> let me ask you just directly, for example, china, he said, was going to be labelled a currency manipulator on day one, he said that it had been raping the united states, he was going to put a 45% tariff on them, and perhaps taiwan should be recognized as a country. he's reversed himself on all of these things, are they just details? >> the currency manipulation, i think you're right, there has been a change there, and he's also said that north korea's become more of a priority. so instead he wants to work with china to lean on north korea to solve the issue. and so, again, i think we're starting to see some of these policies being filled out a little bit with these new reviews and as the personnel falls into place. >> tim snyder, you wrote a book

where you worried about trump implicitly, as being somebody who was almost a threat to american democracy, not just the issue of changes in policy here or there. what have you learned in this 100 days? >> i have seen that a number of his challenges to american institutions seem to be rather close to core beliefs, he talks about the judiciary as president much the same way he talked about it as a candidate, scornfully, and he talks about nafta like he talked about -- somewhere that we have no particularly good reason to believe cares about american institutions. i think more about the way in which in person has not adjusted

himself to what we thought were the basic norms of american political life. >> fascinating. we're going to have to take a break, panel please stay there, viewers stay there too. we will be back to talk about the next 265 days when we come back.

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we are back talking about trump's first 100 days and next 260 some-odd with our panel. tim, when you look at the tax bill, what does strike one is that trump does for all the populist rhetoric, and there's a little bit on trade, he's governing more like a conventional conservative. he appointed a conservative supreme court justice and this tax bill is a supply side tax

basis, it will mostly help the rich, but it will trickle down and growth will pay for it all. >> when you look at trump, you should compare him to other presidents who have had both houses of congress. if you do that, it's remarkable how little traction he's getting in congress. the obamacare repeal and replace fiasco taught us lot about speaker ryan and the republican coalition. you look at the tax cuts, yes, in some ways he is, but in some ways, he is actually going to upset his base because a number of, most at the core objectives of his tax cut policy will benefit wealthy americans, not the people who put him in power. what i am looking to see in the next 100, 200, 300 days, is the extent to which the republican party, the party in washington

decides what party it is. is it going to be -- is the freedom caucus going to have a veto power or not? what about the moderates? are they going to try to fashion themselves into a trump coalition. is the republican congress that's going to decide the legislative legacy of the donald trump years. >> do you think that trump is morphing into a traditional republican, and in that sense, a lot of the america first nationalism will adjust itself to the kind of foreign policy that clearly most of its key advisors seem to support in their vast statements? >> when trump talked about america first, i never heard that as america only. i think there were many people who thought that the united states needed to do some things to get its own house in order and if the united states isn't

strong at home, it can't be strong abroad. richard haus of the council on foreign relations wrote a piece on that a few years ago. so i do see president donald trump continuing to play the leadership role that it has played and i think we have already seen that since the inauguration, president trump was willing to use force to enforce the red line over syria, in the middle east, more broadly, he's been willing to increase the tempo of operations against isis, after bipartisan calls for that far the last few years. i do think many republicans are happy with the direction that president trump's foreign policy is heading. >> tim snyder, do you worry that this kind of talk is normalization, normalizing trump. >> that's the problem with the whole 100 days, with the

president storming ahead, i think this president has to be judged in a different way, due to the fact that we have family members in office, and that now seems normal. and we have advisors that are extreme right, we take that as test. those things are not normal, but they've become normal in a way we need to have a daily asterisk by everything so we don't forget them. >> when you look at the kind of atmosphere, this is a president for whom images are very important, i wonder, you know, is the purpose of the trump presidency to create great policy or is it to create a series of stories and images? the carrier deal, things like that. so that, you know n three years he'll go back to the american people and say look, i did all these amazing things. watch the video. >> first of all, presidents really can do a lot with

executive action. he can sign an executive order that wipes out nafta essentially. that overturns the iran nuclear deal. it deals with climate change. he can sign executive actions that to many of his base do what they want him to do. to some extent, the legislation is secondary. to move forward a tax bill is absolutely the easiest thing that he can do. he has a republican house. he has a republican senate. tax cuts are the best thing for any republican congress. but that's about all that he's going to be able to do. so what you're going to see is these minor -- these changes by executive order with lots of flash. which is exactly what you're saying. the image is very important to him. he is an image person. >> and will these images work? >> right now what we're seeing is a staccato presidency.

he changed his words about china because he needed china for north korea. when he couldn't move -- do obamacare, he decided i'm going to push on nafta. i'm just going to pretend something big's going to happen and he scared the ca nad yanadi the mexicans, but nothing came of it. he promised the whole visa system would change. he couldn't get it done. he signed an executive order that really has very little effect. after a while, it's very possible that his base, which loves him at the moment, will start to see that nothing is actually happening. right now it's great tv. can you sustain great tv for four years enough to satisfy people who actually wanted real change? we'll see. but right now it's basically a lot of light and very little action. >> on that note, we are going to have to thank all of you fascinating conversation. we will definitely have you all back to see how it develops.

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go irish! see that? yes! i'm gonna just go back to doing what i was doing. find your awesome with the xfinity x1 voice remote. . aply kapts kants -- ap -- more than doubled between 2007 and 2017. the program provides up to 50,000 visas annually drawn at random to people from countries with row laerates of immigratioo the u.s. which nation had the most citizens apply for the green card lotly in 2015? the year for which the most recent state department data is available? egt yo-- stay tuned and we will

tell you the correct answer. instead of a book of the week i wanted to recommend the podcast of this show. if you go to itunes or wherever you find your favorite podcast, just search for fareed zakaria and you'll find us. hit the sub zriscribe button an you'llet gus eve-- get us every week. now for the last look. this week china launched its second aircraft carrier, but its first homemade one. its first such vessel you may remember was a rebuilt soviet era ship purchased from ukraine. not much use in a high intensity conflict according to the experts. this new one, which is expected to interactive service in 2020, was designed in china and built in the country's shipyard.

it is a great improvement, but still has a ways to catch up with american technology. see that upward slope where the planes will take off? military expert tells cnn it's to help help the aircraft get into the air and stay there. while american ships have better technology than those so-called ski jumps. the american carriers have cat ta pults po plato blast the pla off. this new carrier is a milestone in china's quest for military status and request. the answer to the question is ghana. 1.73 million applied for the visa in 2015. that's more than 6% of the population of that country. just 3,381 of the more than 1.7 applicants actually won the

lottery that year. all applicants luck may run out soon. the visa program currently faces elimination under bills both before the house and the senate. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. happening now in the newsroom. >> what do you make of north korea? >> i really, you know, have no comment on him. people are saying is he sane? i have no idea. i would not be happy if he does a nuclear test. i will not be happy. >> not happy meaning military action? >> i don't know. we'll see. >> is the president considering a preemptive strike on north korea? >> i don't think so, jake, but as somebody said, this could be a cuban missile crisis in slow motion. >> "cnn newsroom" starts now. hello, everyone.