In the Oval Office, President Trump discussed U.S.-China trade.
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00:00Mr. President, I was hoping you could clarify something earlier this morning, Capitol Hill,
00:05Secretary Besson said that there hadn't been known negotiations against China.
00:08Do you have said something different?
00:11They want to meet, and they're doing no business right now.
00:15And those ships are turning around in the Pacific Ocean.
00:18Big turn. Those are big ships. Those ships take about 10 miles to turn.
00:23And, you know, we lost a trillion dollars to China on trade because of an incompetent
00:28president that we had, who preceded me, grossly incompetent.
00:31You're finding it out more and more now.
00:34And by not trading, we're losing nothing.
00:36So we're saving a trillion dollars. It's a lot.
00:40But they want to negotiate, and they want to have a meeting,
00:42and we'll be meeting with them at the right time.
00:45But you haven't met with them yet.
00:47I have not met with them, of course. You would know if I met.
00:49I'd tell you they want to meet.
00:52But, you know, we are right now.
00:55Look, they're suffering greatly. Their economy is suffering greatly.
00:58Because they're not doing trade with the U.S.
01:00And they made most of their money off the U.S.
01:02Don't kid yourself. They don't make the money off other countries like this.
01:07And they were making, we had a trade imbalance.
01:10We had a deficit, or they had a surplus, another way of saying it,
01:14of more than a trillion dollars.
01:16Think of it, more than a trillion dollars.
01:18And because of 145 percent, that's the only reason,
01:22but because they have now 145 percent there, there's no trading.
01:26You can't trade with 145 percent.
01:29We are, therefore, making, in a certain way, I guess, $1.1 trillion.
01:37In other words, we're not losing $1.1 trillion.
01:39Our deficit is much better.
01:41When I started, I say we were losing billions of dollars a day on trade.
01:47That's rapidly turning around.
01:49We looked at numbers this morning.
01:52So we were losing, the United States during Biden was losing more than,
01:57I won't even give you numbers because they're so embarrassing,
02:00but billions of dollars a day on trade.
02:03Those numbers are rapidly turning between the tariffs.
02:06Don't forget, we're now getting 25 percent on cars, 25 percent on aluminum,
02:1225 percent on steel, and maybe more importantly,
02:15massive numbers of companies are moving into the United States.
02:20Honda, we have tremendous, the car companies are moving in at levels we've never seen before.
02:28The biggest investment ever made in the United States is being made right now.
02:33Trillions of dollars.
02:34I would say we could be at nine, nine trillion dollars.
02:38You could go back to other presidents.
02:40They haven't had one trillion dollars for their entire term.
02:45Look at Biden.
02:46He had bad numbers.
02:47People are leaving.
02:48They weren't coming in.
02:49They were leaving with Biden, and he didn't know the difference.
02:52The only thing he knew is people coming in.
02:54You know who they were?
02:55Illegal immigrants.
02:57Okay, from prisons, from mental institutions,
02:59from all sorts of places that weren't good, from gangs, from Venezuela.
03:06They were coming in, and there were criminals and murderers.
03:0911,888 people that murdered, and at least half of them murdered more than one person.
03:15This is what Biden led into our country.
03:18I'm bringing in big companies.
03:20We have Apple is investing 500 billion dollars.
03:24We have Jensen, as you know, is going to be 500, the biggest chip maker, or chip thinker, I call him.
03:31He's really a thinker more than a maker.
03:32But we also have the maker, Mr. Way.
03:36I get to know them all in the last, it was a cram course.
03:40But they're all moving into America because of the tariffs.
03:44And I don't think people have appreciated it.
03:47Some people do.
03:48Some of the smart people do.
03:49So we have more money coming in.
03:52It's really an amazing thing.
03:53We have more money being invested in the United States now than at any time ever before in our history,
03:59and it's not even close.
04:00And I think the real number could be 9 or 10 trillion.
04:03We don't know everybody that's doing it.
04:04We have many.
04:05I just heard about a plant that's being built right now, a very, very top-of-the-line company,
04:11and they didn't come to the White House.
04:12They're just doing it because they're making it because if they build here, there are no tariffs.
04:17And this is the big market.
04:19This is the market.
04:19That sets us apart from it.
04:21This is the market where everyone wants to be.
04:24Now, if I didn't come here and do this, all of a sudden we wouldn't be the market where everyone wants to be.
04:28So we're able to do it in time.
04:30But we're going to have a great announcement.
04:32And I'm not necessarily saying it's on trade going to the beginning.
04:37We're going to have a great announcement over the next few days, an announcement that will be so incredible, so positive.
04:44And I'm not saying I don't want you to think it's necessarily on trade.
04:48Just to finish, we also have a situation because everyone says, when, when, when are you going to sign deals?
04:53We don't have to sign deals.
04:54We can sign 25 deals right now, Howard, if we want it.
04:59We don't have to sign deals.
05:00They have to sign deals with us.
05:01They want a piece of our market.
05:03We don't want a piece of their market.
05:05We don't care about their market.
05:06They want a piece of our market.
05:07So we can just sit down, and I'll do this at some point over the next two weeks.
05:12And I'll sit with Howard and Scott and with our great vice president, who has done a really good job.
05:19We have some good news to report on a lot of fronts.
05:22But J.D. will be there, and Marco, and we're going to sit down, and we're going to put very fair numbers down, and we're going to say, here's what this country, what we want, and congratulations, we have a deal.
05:35And they'll either say, great, and they'll start shopping, or they'll say, not good, we're not going to do it.
05:42And I say, that's okay, you don't have to shop.
05:44Now, we may think, well, they have a right, you know, that maybe we were a little bit wrong, so we'll adjust it.
05:50And then you people will say, oh, it's so chaotic.
05:53No, we're flexible.
05:54But we'll sit down, and we'll, at some point, in some cases, we'll sign some deals.
05:59It's much less important than what I'm talking about.
06:02For the most part, we're just going to put down a number and say, this is what you're going to pay to shop.
06:06And it's going to be a very fair number.
06:07It'll be a low number.
06:08We're not looking to hurt countries.
06:09We want to help countries.
06:11We want to be friendly with countries.
06:13But you keep writing about deals, deals.
06:15When are we going to sign?
06:16It's very simple.
06:17We're going to say, in some cases, we want you to open up your country.
06:22In some cases, we want you to drop your tariffs.
06:24I mean, India, as an example, is one of the highest tariffs in the world.
06:28We're not going to put up with that.
06:30And they've agreed already to drop it.
06:32They'll drop it to nothing.
06:33They've already agreed.
06:34They would have never done that for anybody else but me.
06:37So we're going to put down some numbers.
06:40And we're going to say, our country is open for business.
06:43And they're going to come in, and they're going to pay for the privilege of being able
06:48to shop in the United States of America.
06:52It's very simple.
06:53It's very simple.
06:54So I wish they'd keep, you know, stop asking, how many deals are you signing this week?
06:59Because one day we'll come, and we'll give you 100 deals.
07:02And they don't have to sign.
07:04All they have to do is say, oh, we'll start sending our ships right now to pick up whatever
07:10we want or to bring whatever we want.
07:12It's very, very simple.
07:13And I think my people haven't made it clear.
07:16We will sign some deals.
07:18But much bigger than that is we're going to put down the price that people are going to
07:22have to pay to shop in the United States.
07:24Think of us as a super luxury store, a store that has the goods.
07:31You're going to come, and you're going to pay a price.
07:33And we're going to give you a very good price.
07:35We're going to make very good deals.
07:36And in some cases, we'll adjust.
07:38But that's where it is.
07:40And we've been ripped off by everybody for 50 years, for 50 years.
07:47And we're just not going to do that anymore.
07:49We can't do that.
07:50And we can't let any country do that to us.
07:53We're just not going to do it anymore.
07:54We're just not going to do it anymore.
08:06We're just not going to do it anymore.