Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Monday, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett was asked about President Trump's tariffs on Brazil.
00:00I wanted to ask you about the tariffs on Brazil. Can you explain some of the thinking? I know that the president cited wanting to have the prosecution potentially of Bolsonaro being a key reason for it, but what would it take to lift those tariffs on Brazil?
00:18The president will decide that and we're in active negotiations, which have a deadline and we'll see how it goes.
00:24But was the reasoning for those tariffs beyond the prosecution of Bolsonaro?
00:29We'll see how it goes.
00:31Do you have a reaction to the better than expected economic data coming out of China? Is that sort of the antithesis of what Trump's trade policy is?
00:40There's a lot of ambiguity about what the real data in China are and I'd have to study the latest data to see if I believe it, but there certainly have been lots of reports, anecdotal reports, of troubles in China.
00:53But to the extent that the global economy is responding positively to technological change that we're seeing across the world because of better computers and so on, it might have been a positive thing for them, but I've not studied the Chinese data.
