Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump spoke about trade with China.
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00:00Mr. President, if the talks go well this weekend between Secretary Best and Ambassador Greer with her Chinese counterparts, not preemptively, but if the talks go well, would you then consider lowering the tariff rate on China?
00:11Well, it could be. I mean, we're going to see. Right now, you can't get any higher. It's at 145, so we know it's coming down. I think we're going to have a very good relationship.
00:20You know, I always got along very well with President Xi. That relationship was greatly disturbed by COVID when COVID came in. But we get along very well now.
00:30I mean, we had a I mean, the relationship was hurt with a lot of people, a lot of countries when COVID came in. But I think we're going to have a very good relationship.
00:39I expect to have a very good relationship with China, Scott. I think it's a very friendly meeting. They look forward to doing it in an elegant way.
00:49China, as you know, has a tremendous trade surplus with us and we can't, you know, we just can't have that. And but I think it's going to I think it's going to be very good for both countries.
00:59I would like to see China opened. You know, one of the big things here is and nobody would know this, but the UK was largely closed.
01:06It was very much closed to trade. And now it's opened. And a lot of the financial reporters are very happy about that because it's so much.
01:15I listen to them. I hope they get countries opened up and then you compete on a fair basis.
01:20But you can't compete when you're not allowed to go there. China would be the number one example of that.
01:26You know, it's very close. We almost had it last time before COVID and that didn't work out.
01:32But we made a great deal with China. They had to buy $50 billion worth of our food products and it was a great deal doing very well for our farmers.
01:40And then when Biden came in, as usual, nothing happened. You know, he didn't enforce it and it got less, less, less and ultimately, you know, destroyed a great deal.
01:49That was a great deal. But no, I think that we're going to have a I think we're going to have a good weekend with China.
01:55And I think they have a lot to gain. I do think they have far more to gain than we do, in a sense. But we're going to have a good I think we're going to have a very, very good weekend.
02:04Will you speak to Xi after the weekend talks?
02:06I might. Yeah, sure. Depending on what Scott says, we sort of Scott is doing certain countries and Howard's doing certain countries.
02:15I mean, I wish I had like 10 more of each. Then we could do them all at one time.
02:20But there will be a time. We'll do a number of them. And then there'll be a time, I think I can say this, Scott and Howard, where we're just going to say, because we understand the countries, we understand what they want, where we're just going to make the deal.
02:35In other words, we don't need the country involvement because we've already had it.
02:38And we'll say this particular country, which had big surpluses, let's say we had therefore deficits, that this particular country is going to pay a 25 percent tariff or 30 percent or a 50 percent or 10 percent or whatever it may be.
02:53This was I think we should explain it now. One of the things we did here that will rarely do is on cars.
03:01We took it from 25 to 10 on Rolls Royce because Rolls Royce is not going to be built here.
03:08I wouldn't even ask them to do that. It's a very special car and it's a very limited number, too.
03:13It's not, you know, one of the one of the monster car companies that makes millions of cars.
03:18They make a very small number of cars that are super luxury and that includes Bentley and Jaguar.
03:23So we have some very special cars. So in order to help that industry and that's really, you know, handmade stuff and they've been doing it for a long time in the same location.
03:37And I said, yeah, that would be good. Let's help them out with that one.
03:40But that's different than a car company that comes out and makes millions of cars, which they'll be doing in our country.
03:45They're going to build. We have many, many factories, car plants being built or going to be built very soon.
03:55I think we can say that we'll be close to $10 trillion of investment.
04:01I think we're actually at that number now if you if you add up some of the ones we haven't heard about yet.
04:06I mean, we have some going up right now. They have plants going up and they haven't even spoken to us.
04:10They're doing it because of the tariffs and tariffs have always been used against us.
04:15And I never understood. I used to sit back. As you know, China paid hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs when I was president.
04:22But until then, China never paid anything. And, you know, they really did a big number on us from the standpoint of trade.
04:30But we are using tariffs now for our benefit. And we have now close to $10 trillion.
04:39Think of that, $10 trillion. If you look at the past administration, and we're talking about over, you know,
04:45essentially two months, because we could say three, but it took a little while to get the office in perfect shape, right?
04:50It took a little while to get things done.
04:53But once we started, when you think of that, close to $10 trillion of investment.
04:59You've had years where the United States wouldn't do that in a whole, wouldn't do $1 trillion in a year.
05:04Wouldn't do anywhere near $1 trillion. We did $10 trillion in two months.
05:08So it's amazing what's happening. We're getting calls from, and that has to do with chips, has to do with cars.
05:16We used to make chips. We had Intel, and we used to make chips. We had a monopoly on chips.
05:20Everything was made here. And now, over a period of years, because of presidents that didn't know what they were doing,
05:25they allowed that business to be stolen from us. Most of it moved to Taiwan.
05:29And you probably were in the same position, right? Because you had a lot of the chip-making capacity.
05:35But they moved it in. And if we would have said, that's fine. If you want to move it to Taiwan, that's good.
05:40But if you want to sell back into the United States, we're going to put a 50 percent or 100 percent tariff on.
05:46They would have never left. But we had people sitting here that didn't understand that, and it's too bad.
05:51But now they're coming back, because I'm saying it about 40 years too late.
05:56But they're coming back. As you know, we have the biggest chip-makers in the world spending, in one case, $300 billion.
06:02In one case, $500 billion. Same as Apple. And in another case, $200 billion.
06:09And we're going to have a large share, a very, very substantial share of the chip-making market.