00:00All right let's talk tariffs. No questions. Let me start. Let me start. I want to just lay some stuff out for you and then we'll take some questions. How's that? Bad deal? Okay. So obviously just heard the news. They've stayed the order of the court and we will go obviously to the appeals court and if necessary up the chain from there. Let me give you some context.
00:24The broad context for this administration is that President Trump ran among other things on stopping communist China from poisoning Americans with fentanyl. We've lost over a million souls to fentanyl over the last years. It's not just the fentanyl itself that kills. It's that they use the Mexican cartels blend the fentanyl in to all the hard drugs.
00:54The methamphetamine, the heroin, the ecstasy and all that. But also and if you're anybody out there watching this is buying any prescription drugs online. It's creeped into things like Valium and Xanax as well. It's a carnage and it is an emergency and President Trump promised to stop that and the courts have intervened now on that.
01:15So that's one piece of what happened yesterday. The second piece is the reciprocal tariffs. President Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would end the unfair trade practices of foreign nations.
01:30I think the press is now agreed with this administration that the rest of the world charges higher tariffs and has higher non-tariff barriers and cheats us and they do so by the very rules of the World Trade Organization.
01:44So the court has taken a step which will break that promise as well. And what we see this is as this broader problem of rogue judges erecting essentially a judicial blockade motivated both by Democrats and in the case of trade, the typical rhino free trade Wall Street ship, the jobs offshore, open the borders.
02:09So the open border wing of the Republican Party and it's we see this as a judicial blockade. It's consistent with the other things they've done to try to stop the deportation of violent felons and to basically slow us down on all sorts of different fronts and they will pay the price for this at the ballot box.
02:37Every time something like this happens, Democrats reveal themselves as against the very agenda President Trump ran on that propelled him to a landslide election.
02:48And just from a detail that you should put on your stories. I mean, how did this suit come about? Twelve states of this union sued and every single one of them is a blue state from the left coast of Oregon and Washington
03:03to New York and Connecticut on the elitist coast. And the other parties to the suit were a bunch of importers who buy a bunch of cheap subsidized crap from China that really is illegally traded in the sense that it doesn't abide by the rules of the WTO.
03:26Now, with respect to the rulings themselves, let's think about this. It's a lot of texture here. It's unusual when you have a court come out with two very separate rulings where the law interpretation is very different and very, very textured.
03:40The common denominator is the international economic emergency powers act. It's an act which entitles the executive branch with very, very broad authority to take action in the face of economic emergencies.
03:54It was case to the fentanyl. There's an obvious one there. It's killing Americans, many of them of prime working age. And that fentanyl tariff also was designed to stop the border invasion.
04:06And when you have 20 million people coming in, stealing jobs, depressing wages, that's part of the emergency.
04:12And then the reciprocal tariff issue, the emergency there very clearly is the $1.3 trillion trade deficit a year, which cumulatively has added up to $18 trillion of wealth transferred into foreign hands.
04:28And can you imagine what you can buy with $18 trillion in this country? You could buy a whole state with that.
04:34So with respect to the fentanyl tariff, the court argued that somehow that there wasn't a sufficient connection between tariffs and the ability to stop the fentanyl poison.
04:49We just violently disagree with the court on that and see that as a violation of the separation of powers between the judicial branch and the executive branch itself.
05:00The court is not supposed to micromanage how the president of this United States is supposed to be able to get people to stop dying from fentanyl.
05:10And the court didn't even note the fact that the fentanyl tariffs have been actually quite successful so far in improving that situation.
05:20It's gotten a lot better. The court didn't even acknowledge that. So that one's wrong on legal grounds.
05:25With respect to the reciprocal tariff argument, that was like a whole separate argument.
05:31They basically said that the president acted beyond or beyond the scope of his authority.
05:39And the buried lead in all that was they said, well, this is why the stock market has basically not reacted to this because the status quo is still in place.
05:49It's like you can use other things to accomplish the same result. We just don't like this one.
05:55You know, it's that it's the 122, the 232, the 301, 338. Do your homework. You know how all that works.
06:03So where we stand right now is we have a dramatic expansion of a judicial blockade of the Trump agenda by Roe judiciary working in league with Democrats who are at the heart of the suit.
06:21And right now Republicans who have a vested interest in shipping our jobs offshore and opening our borders.
06:28We will fight this all the way up the chain. And in the meantime, this did not catch us by surprise.
06:33We will hear within the next day or two at a minimum from the United States trade representative on how we will respond to all of this.
06:45We will respond forcefully and we think we have a very good case with respect to this.
06:50Now, after having said that, I appreciate your patience.
06:54What I try to do when I come out here is give you more texture and background rather than just sound bites.
07:00So that's what I hope I've done. Yes, ma'am.
07:02Thank you so much, Peter. And just given this appeals court temporarily reinstating the tariffs, what does that mean for you and your position?
07:09And does it buy the administration more time in your view?
07:12Me and my, you know, you're not talking about me personally. You're talking about the administration.
07:15The administration, of course.
07:16Yeah. So, look, the tariffs remain in place. The court told us, they didn't all but tell us.
07:24They told us, go do it another way so you can assume that even if we lose, we will do it another way.
07:32And I can assure the American people that the Trump tariff agenda is alive, well, healthy and will be implemented to protect you, to save your jobs and your factories and to stop shipping foreign wealth, our wealth into foreign hands.
07:47So you are working on a plan B right now?
07:48Of course. There's no plan B. It's plan A. Okay?
07:52Plan A encompasses all strategic options. And when we move forward, we had a full view of what the battlefield looks like.
08:02We are not naive about rogue justices in the judiciary and Democrats filing lawsuits.
08:09This has got to stop, by the way. This weaponization of the judiciary to stop President Trump from doing what he promised the American people, this has got to stop.
08:22The people of America have the lowest level of confidence in the American judiciary they've had in 100 years.
08:32And it's getting close to what they think about Congress. And that's a low bar to hit.
08:38Which of that is because every time you get a court decision you don't like, you and your colleagues come out here and rail against rogue judges.
08:45See, who is this guy? Tell me who you are, sir.
08:47I'm Andrew Feinberg. I work for The Independent.
08:49Okay. So that is such a biased question. That is not a journalist question. That was like an op-ed, sir.
08:55So I don't even respond to that. Who else has got an intelligence? Yes, ma'am.
08:59Peter, I want to ask you, what do the conversations look like right now with other countries as you're seeing the courts pushing back here in the United States?
09:08Well, great question. In fact, that is the question in many ways. This morning, we were getting plenty of phone calls from countries saying we saw the ruling.
09:20So what? We're going to continue to negotiate in good faith because we understand that there's a problem.
09:26And based on that court decision, we understand that that court decision is not going to stop you from doing what you need to do.
09:32So we're going to work with you. So I can assure you. And by the way, there's going to be within the next, I don't know, say a few days because that puts me too much on the spot.
09:41But you will see a cascade of new deals coming out in the near future. And these will all be good for the American people. Okay. Yes, sir.
09:49On the Nippon Steel, U.S. Steel deal...
09:52Let's stay on the tariffs thing.
09:53Well, it actually is related to that.
09:55How is that related?
09:56It looks like we have the framework of an agreement that involves some kind of U.S. involvement in the company.
10:02Japan gets...
10:03Some kind of U.S. involvement in the company? No, U.S. Steel owns the company.
10:08The Nippon Steel is going to have some involvement, but no control of the company. I don't want to tell the other...
10:14Hey, look, today is tariff day. Tomorrow I'll come back out and we'll talk about it. Yes, ma'am.
10:20You're talking about other things that the courts are asking you to do, like Section 122 and 301.
10:25The court didn't ask us to do it. They pointed out that we have other ways to do that, which is kind of curious that they would do that.
10:36But I think the fact is that they know that their ruling is on soft ground and they just want to make it clear that the president does have broad authorities that do what he's trying to do for the interview.
10:50Finish question.
10:51Will you pursue those in parallel paths or will you wait till the court rulings play out?
10:56Yeah, I defer to our great United States Trade Representative Jamison Greer on that. I'm sure he'll be out in front of these cameras and with cross-release. He's trying to explain that, ma'am.
11:10Yes, ma'am.
11:11How about here? Yes, sir?
11:12What do you mean that we should expect from Mr. Greer in a couple of days? Is that...
11:16Yeah, yeah. Obviously, we're going to have a lot to say about this and he's the best person to lay all of that in full.
11:26My job here today is to explain to you the backstory about what that case is and how it came about.
11:32But we'll point out that it was not unanticipated and we're going to move forward with an aggressive thing.
11:40So just to be clear...
11:41Thank you, Peter. My colleagues with Spectrum News across the country have talked to a ton of small business owners over the last few months
11:46who say they're having trouble keeping up with this back and forth for their supply chain, explaining price increases to their customers.
11:52What's your message to them right now? How are they supposed to keep businesses normal amidst hourly changes?
11:58We're in a point where in this history of this country, if we do not shift structurally to a world where the world treats us fairly,
12:10we will never have this opportunity again. And a lot of this back and forth is the result of the Democrats working with the globalist,
12:21Rhino, Wall Street people to try to stop the Trump agenda, whether it's at the border or whether it's on trade.
12:28But we're going to move forward and we're going to get to a place where we're going to have more factories, more jobs.
12:36We've already had trillions of dollars investment. I mean, I don't think any of you can deny that these Trump policies are working to attract trillions of dollars of investment
12:46and that we are moving to on-shoring our facilities. And that's what we've got to keep doing.
12:51I take two more here. Yes, ma'am.
12:53Just on the back and forth. So is your message to small businesses, to the markets that are watching this news,
12:58the back and forth of the on and off again tariffs, the rulings, is that these tariffs are going to go into effect regardless
13:03and that the administration will find a way to get it done?
13:06I think that's a fair assessment. And look, I think that one of the other themes that I would ask every one of you
13:13when you talk about your stories and write them is this. You cannot simply write about tariffs within the context of just tariffs alone.
13:22You have to look at the broader, broader issue of how we're going about policy.
13:29I had an op-ed yesterday in The Hill, which I would urge everybody to read and report on,
13:35which basically talks about how this Congressional Budget Office, when they scored the bill, came out with an estimate of GDP growth of 1.7%.
13:48And they said that we were going to have a nearly $4 trillion addition to the deficit. And it's dead wrong.
13:58When you look at the CBO's history for the 2017 Tax Cut Act, they did the same thing.
14:06They understated growth by a full percentage point, understated revenues accordingly.
14:11When you add those revenues, we expect at least a percentage point of growth more than the CBO projects.
14:18That's over $2 trillion. And then when you add simple tariff revenues from a 10% baseline tariff, that's another more than $2 trillion.
14:27And you see a $5 trillion swing into a $2 trillion surplus from that tax bill.
14:35So we're going to have that. And within that, for your small business, I kind of got around to that.
14:40Like by now I'm here with the small business, full expensing, full expensing for new investments in factory and plant.
14:52Energy prices. You've got to consider that we're down in the low 60s for a barrel of oil now.
14:58That's like thousands of dollars more in people's pockets to buy as consumers and a tremendous benefit to businesses.
15:07The regulatory effect of the lower regulations are going to make small business bloom.
15:13I mean, no president in the last 50 years has been more intent on helping small businesses.
15:18So we feel really comfortable about that.
15:20So yes, ma'am. Well, last question.
15:23Thank you. Do you think that the pause will negatively impact the negotiations?
15:28But do you think that the 90-day pause will be shifted because of that?
15:32The pause will not affect the negotiations in any way if people out there in the world simply look at the court decision.
15:41The court was clear, as I said, that the president has brought authority to impose tariffs.
15:48They took issue with the particular statute we use.
15:54We think they're dead wrong on that.
15:55But they actually pointed us in the direction of other statutes.
15:59Look, I appreciate all your...
16:02Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Let me just finish.
