Trump on tariffs: August 1 deadline is firm but he is open to other ideas

The Star

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday (July 7) that the August 1 effective date for U.S. tariffs was firm, but that he was open to extensions if countries made proposals.   WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00I would say firm, no, I would say firm, but not 100% firm.

00:04If they call up and they say, would like to do something a different way,

00:08we're going to be open to that.

00:10But essentially, that's the way it is right now, yeah.

00:13Are the tariff letters that you sent today final offers, or are they negotiable?

00:17More or less final offers.

00:18So South Korea, Japan should take it earlier?

00:20We're always subject to negotiate something that's fair,

00:23but we've talked to most of the countries,

00:25and pretty much they've had their way for many, many decades, as you know.

00:30And it was time that we just wanted fairness.

00:32This is not really equitable from our standpoint,

00:37because it's just a small token by comparison to the damage that's been done over the years.

00:42But we had no other president that was willing to do this.

00:45I did it my first term with China and others.

00:48We took in hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs.

00:51No inflation, the most successful period of time that we've ever had financially in the country.

00:56The first term, I think this term is going to be much better,

00:59even much better than that.

01:00That was the best ever, and this is going to be, I think, substantially better.

01:04And we're on the way to doing that.

01:06We've already taken in over $100 billion worth of tariffs, and we haven't even started.

01:11Now we've made a deal with United Kingdom.

01:14We've made a deal with China.

01:15We've made a deal.

01:16We're close to making a deal with India.

01:19Others we've met with, and we don't think we're going to be able to make a deal.

01:22So we just send them a letter.

01:23If you want to play ball, this is what you have to pay.

01:27So as far as I'm concerned, we're done.

01:30We're sending out letters to various countries telling them how much tariffs they have to pay.

01:35Some will maybe adjust a little bit, depending if they have a cause.

01:40We're not going to be unfair about it.

01:42And actually, it's a small fraction compared to what we should be getting.

01:45We could be asking for much more.

01:48But for the sake of relationships that we've had with a lot of really good countries,

01:53we're doing the way I do it.

02:00We're doing the way I do it.

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