Donald Trump Says He Is Not Thinking About Extending The Pause On Tariffs As Deadline Nears

Forbes Breaking News

President Trump gaggled with reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday and was asked about tariffs.

Transcript

00:00Mr. President, are you thinking of extending the pause on tariffs beyond July 9th?

00:05No, I'm not thinking about the vote.

00:08I'll be writing letters to a lot of countries.

00:11And I think you're just starting to understand the process.

00:14We've dealt with Japan.

00:15I'm not sure if we're going to make any idea.

00:17I doubt it with Japan.

00:18They're very tough.

00:19You have to understand they're very spoiled.

00:21I love Japan.

00:23I really like the new prime minister, too.

00:25Abhi was one of my closest friends, as you know.

00:27The new prime minister is great.

00:29He's a very strong guy.

00:31But they and others are so spoiled from having ripped us off for 30, 40 years that it's really hard for them to make a deal.

00:41You know, it's very hard.

00:42As an example, with Japan, they won't take rice.

00:47And yet they desperately need rice.

00:49You know that.

00:50But they won't take rice.

00:52They won't take other products that we have.

00:55But think of it.

00:56They need rice so badly, but they won't take rice.

00:59I figured that was an easy one.

01:01Well, the cars, as you know, they send out millions.

01:04We didn't give them one car in 10 years.

01:07They won't take any cars, but they'll sell millions.

01:11So we tell them, sorry, you can't do that.

01:13And we have a great relationship, great reliance, and really a great sort of a partnership in a way.

01:22But on trade, they've been very unfair.

01:25And those days are gone.

01:26So what I'm going to do is I'll write them a letter to say we thank you very much.

01:29And we know you can't do the kind of things that we need.

01:33And therefore, you'll pay 30 percent, 35 percent, or whatever the number is that we determined.

01:39Because we also have a very big trade deficit with Japan, as you know.

01:43And it's very unfair to the American people.

01:45So they maybe will be happy.

01:48They maybe won't be happy.

01:50But some countries, we won't even allow to trade.

01:53But for the most part, we're going to determine a number and just very simply write them a nice letter.

01:59Probably one page or a page and a half at the most.

02:02And it's going to be essentially congratulations.

02:05And it's going to be an honor to allow you to go and do business in the United States of America.

02:12Because it really is an honor to be able to do that.

02:14But we never viewed it that way in this country.

02:17And you saw, we took in $129 billion in tariffs already.

02:20We haven't even started.

02:22No inflation.

02:23Our country is strong.

02:25Our interest rate should be three points lower.

02:27If our interest rate was three points lower, that's almost a trillion dollars in cost.

02:32And it's dangerous by the signing of a pen.

02:34But we have a moron.

Category

Transcript

Recommended