Reporter To Trump: 'Can You Explain How You Calculated Your Latest Round Of Tariffs?'

Forbes Breaking News

During a meeting with African leaders, President Trump was asked how he calculated his tariffs.

Transcript

00:00Yes, please.

00:01Sir, can you explain how you calculated your latest round of tariffs?

00:05Was there a formula that was used?

00:07And do you expect any of these countries to face tariffs as well?

00:11The formula was a formula based on common sense, based on deficits,

00:18based on how we've been treated over the years, and based on raw numbers.

00:24And we're going to have a couple of more coming out today.

00:26Brazil, as an example, has been not good to us, not good at all.

00:33We're going to be releasing a Brazil number, I think, later on this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

00:38But they're based on very, very substantial facts and also past history.

00:43You look at the past history.

00:45We've been, we never had anybody in the White House that understood the numbers or were into it like I have.

00:54You know, we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, hundreds of billions.

01:00And we haven't even started yet.

01:02And it's going to be a great thing for our country.

01:04I think it's going to be a fair thing for the world.

01:06And we really haven't had too many complaints, because I'm keeping them at a very low number, very conservative, as you would say, number.

01:15And we haven't had, I'm sure they will be complaining at certain points, but we haven't had complaints.

01:21We've been treated very unfairly by both friend and foe.

01:25And friend has treated us very badly.

01:27It's not even believable that for so many years, you know, I was, I was using tariffs in my first administration.

01:37We had the most successful financially administration that there's ever been.

01:41This is going to be much better.

01:43But we got cut short with the COVID because I didn't think it was appropriate when, you know, Italy, Spain.

01:50And it's sort of a horror show that a lot of the countries went through.

01:55So I cut it a little bit short.

01:57But we took in hundreds of billions of dollars, and we had the most successful term ever from a president financially.

02:05But this is going to be much more successful.

02:07Yes, please.

02:08Do you expect any of the countries here to face tariffs as well?

02:12I haven't thought of it, but I, maybe, I don't know.

02:15Let's see, I like him, him, him, him, and him.

02:17No, I don't think so.

02:18Not too much.

02:19He's very good.

02:20These are friends of mine now.

02:22Yes, please.

02:23Thank you for taking our questions, Mr. President.

02:25You talked about the amount of external revenue the country has brought in thanks to your tariffs.

02:30Can you talk about how these hundreds of billions of dollars that are getting brought in will help grow the country?

02:35And what do you hope to put it towards?

02:36Well, bigger than the tariffs, actually, are the fact that when you charge the tariffs at a certain point, they say,

02:42well, we can't pay those tariffs.

02:44It doesn't make economic sense.

02:45These are wealthy countries.

02:46And they or their companies will come into our country and build.

02:50And that's what's actually happening.

02:51If you had a very low tariff, there'd be no incentive to do that.

02:55If you have no tariff, like we used to have, which is so stupid, it's not even believable.

03:00But then, obviously, they make their product, the product in their country.

03:05They have the jobs.

03:06They have the income.

03:07They have the taxes.

03:09They have everything.

03:09And they just send it in to us, and it's jobs that we wouldn't get.

03:13But now, the wheel is turned.

03:16And what we're doing is we're, I mean, more important, we're thinking in hundreds of billions of dollars, money that we've never seen before.

03:26But more important than that, we have a lot of people that would rather not have to pay that.

03:30So they're coming in and they're building plants.

03:33AI, I mean, we're leading everybody, including China, by a lot with AI.

03:37They're building their own plant.

03:38You heard me say yesterday they're building their own electric generating plants to go along with the factories or plants that they're building.

03:46If they want to do that, we're getting them fast approvals, very fast turnarounds.

03:51They're using mostly natural gas to start off, but they're using coal.

03:54They have the right to use coal.

03:56They have the right to use nuclear.

03:58Nuclear has come a long way in the last five years.

04:02So we're getting them very fast approvals.

04:04We have factories and plants building at a level that we've never had in this country before.

04:10Yeah.

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