- 7/16/2025
President Trump takes questions from reporters.
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00:00Let's go.
01:30I think we're over now as a country, we're over $15 trillion of investment, and there's
01:37never been anything like that.
01:38In the history of our country, there has not been anything like it, or even close.
01:43So, okay.
01:44Do you have any questions?
01:45Mr. President, you announced the Indonesia deal today.
01:46You announced the Indonesia trade deal today.
01:47How many more trade deals, beyond the letters, will you announce before August 1st?
01:51The President, we're working on probably five or six.
01:52Of the five or six, I'm not sure I really want to do them.
01:53You know, you want somebody that knows how to negotiate.
01:54But we'll probably have two or three.
01:56You know, we insist on opening up the country, which is a big deal.
01:57Indonesia was great.
01:58He's a great president.
01:59And we made a terrific deal where they opened up the entire country to trade with the United
02:03States.
02:04We weren't allowed to go in and trade.
02:05I think something similar will happen with, I would say India, and we have a couple of
02:30India, and we have a couple of others.
02:33But I have to tell you, for the most part,
02:35I'm very happy with the letters.
02:37You know, the letters are a deal.
02:38You know, I can't explain it any better.
02:41The letters are a deal.
02:42The press doesn't want to pick that up.
02:45But I will veer from those deals on occasion
02:47when somebody is willing.
02:49Like if Japan would open up their country.
02:51They don't do that.
02:52They just don't do that.
02:54And I don't either, I don't subscribe to it
02:56one way or the other.
02:58But they won't do that.
03:00So we might just stick with the letter.
03:02South Korea is inclined to maybe do that.
03:04So we'll let you know.
03:05But we have letters out.
03:07Every time I send out a letter,
03:09essentially, that's a deal.
03:11The Press Press on which date you gave
03:13August 1st, but the date that you gave
03:15August 1st, why stick with the date?
03:18You're saying that you want you to...
03:19The Press Press No, payments start on August 1st.
03:22The only thing about that's really sacred
03:24about August 1st is that's when payments start.
03:27So they have to start paying billions of dollars
03:31to you and people.
03:32Are you a citizen of the country?
03:34The President Yes, sir.
03:34The Press Press All right, good.
03:35You'll be very happy because you're going to be
03:36getting a lot of money.
03:38Just like they found a budget surplus.
03:41We have a budget surplus of $25 billion.
03:44Everyone said, how did that happen?
03:46It hasn't happened in many years.
03:48It happened because of good management and tariffs.
03:51The Press Press Do you plan to release more details
03:55of the Vietnam-China deals?
03:57Is there going to be a paperwork release
03:59to the public and all that?
04:00The President Well, I might.
04:01I don't think it matters how much you release
04:03of the deal.
04:04We have a Vietnam deal.
04:07And I would say that that deal is being pretty well set.
04:10It's pretty well set.
04:12Again, that's an opening of their country.
04:14They've opened it up.
04:15Just so you know, these were closed countries.
04:17They were wonderful people, wonderful leaders,
04:20very strong, smart leaders.
04:22But their countries were closed to us,
04:24but our country wasn't closed to them.
04:26And so I said, you got to open up your country.
04:29So we're going to see.
04:30But the Vietnam deal, we may open it.
04:33I mean, I don't know.
04:33I can't tell you.
04:34Is it necessary?
04:36No.
04:36Yeah, I don't think so.
04:37The Press Press Why did you settle
04:40on giving Putin another 50 days?
04:42It seems like he's had a lot of time to show he wants to.
04:44The President I don't think it's a long time.
04:46I think really the question should be asked,
04:48why did Biden get us into that ridiculous war?
04:51Why did Biden bring us there?
04:53That should never, ever have happened, that war.
04:56This is Biden's war.
04:57I'm just trying to end it because we're saving a lot of lives.
05:00The Press Press Why do you think his opinion will change
05:02in 50 days when it hasn't over the last?
05:04The President A lot of opinions change very rapidly.
05:07Might not be 50 days.
05:08Might be much sooner than 50 days.
05:10The Press Press To that end,
05:11when do you think the first Patriot missiles,
05:13some of these weapons that our allies will buy?
05:15They're already being shipped.
05:16The Press Press From what countries?
05:17They're coming in from Germany,
05:19and then replaced by Germany.
05:20And in all cases, the United States gets paid back in full.
05:24The Press Press So what's happening,
05:26as you know, is the European Union,
05:29if you look, mostly European Union stuff.
05:32But let's put it in the form of NATO.
05:34The Press Press Right.
05:35It's very similar.
05:36But NATO is going to pay us back for everything.
05:39In some cases, we're going to be paid back
05:41by countries of the European Union directly.
05:44The Press Press But we're always getting
05:46our money back in full.
05:48So we're not going to have any more investment to make.
05:51We're getting our money back in full.
05:53And if we can make a deal, that would be great.
05:56We're saving 5,000 or 6,000 soldiers a week.
05:59They're Russian and they're Ukrainian soldiers.
06:01They're not American soldiers.
06:03And we won't have boots on the ground.
06:05But it's a shame.
06:085,000 last week, they say 7,100 soldiers.
06:12Both Russian and Ukraine were killed.
06:16The Press Press If I ask about Iran,
06:17have you seen any progress in talks with Iran?
06:19We haven't really heard about that in a while.
06:20The Press Press Well, they want to talk.
06:22I'm in no rush to talk.
06:24They would like to talk.
06:26I'm in no rush to talk because we obliterated their site.
06:30They'd have to start all over.
06:31In fact, it's obliterated to the point
06:34that it's not usable anymore.
06:36They'd have to pick a different mountain.
06:38That mountain is so blown up inside and so unstable
06:44that they would have to pick a different mountain.
06:46Our people really did the job.
06:48Yes, please.
06:49The Press Press On the Fed, sir,
06:51would you fire Jarempel over the Treasury renovation?
06:54The President Well, he spent $2.5 million
06:56building this place.
06:58I have to say this.
07:00I think he's terrible.
07:02I think he's a total stiff.
07:04But the one thing I didn't see him
07:06as a guy that needed a palace to live in.
07:08You talk to the guy, it's like talking to a nothing.
07:12It's like talking to a chair.
07:14No personality, no high intelligence, no nothing.
07:18But the one thing I would have never guessed
07:19is that he would be spending $2.5 billion
07:22to build a little extension onto the Fed.
07:26The Press Press Is that a fireball pension?
07:26The President Nobody's ever seen it.
07:27I think it sort of is.
07:29Because if you look at his testimony to the House
07:33and the Senate, you take a look at the testimony,
07:36it's under it.
07:37That whole thing is, he's not, you know,
07:40he's not talking about the problem.
07:41It's a big problem.
07:43$2.5 billion.
07:44And that's $2.5 billion now.
07:46That's going to be a lot more money than $2.5 billion
07:49to expand.
07:50And with all of that, to house thousands of people
07:53to give him information.
07:55And yet, out of the 71 economists, and they included me,
08:00me and one other person got it right.
08:02I got it right, and one other genius got it right.
08:06They had everybody else was wrong.
08:08Sixty-nine were wrong, and two were right.
08:10I was one of them.
08:12And I don't have a lot of people.
08:14I have Howard.
08:15I have Doug.
08:16I have a few people.
08:18He has thousands of people, and he got it wrong.
08:21No, I think when you spend $2.5 billion on really a renovation,
08:28I think it's pretty disgraceful.
08:29The Pressure, sir.
08:30The Pressure, have you spoken to President Putin
08:33since your announcement yesterday?
08:34The President Trump No, I have not.
08:36The Pressure, do you think, when you speak to him on the phone,
08:38does he say that he wants peace?
08:40The President Trump Yeah, he does.
08:42The President Trump He says he wants peace.
08:43He does.
08:44So far, it's all talk and no action.
08:47But, you know, if you think about it, India, Pakistan,
08:50we did so many.
08:51The Congo, and I mean, look at the deals we've made.
08:54We've made all these peace deals.
08:57Look at Rwanda, it was an impossible deal to make
09:00with the Congo.
09:00I made that.
09:01I made all of these deals, Serbia, Kosovo.
09:05And here's the one deal.
09:07And actually, Vladimir called me up.
09:09He said, I'd love to help you with respect to making a deal
09:15with a couple of them, like Iran.
09:18I'd love to help you.
09:18I say, Vladimir, I only want to help with one deal, Russia,
09:22because you're the only deal that we're not doing too well on.
09:27He oftentimes, oftentimes, he said, no, he wants peace.
09:32And I think he does.
09:33I hope he does.
09:34We're going to find out soon.
09:35And it could be before the 50 days.
09:37The Press, Mr. President, twice yesterday,
09:38when you were talking about this, you mentioned conversations
09:41you had with the First Lady after talking with President Putin.
09:44Has she influenced your thinking on this at all?
09:47The President, she's very smart.
09:49She's very neutral.
09:51She's very neutral in a sense.
09:52She's sort of like me.
09:54She'd like to see people stop dying.
09:56You know, people said, are you for one side or another?
09:59I'm for the side of people stopping dying.
10:02We have 5,000, 6,000, and 7,000 people a week, at least.
10:08And that doesn't include people from the cities and towns
10:11that are having rockets lobbed in there.
10:14I mean, people are dying in the cities and towns, too.
10:17But we're talking about 7,100 in the last eight days died.
10:24And I'm for stopping that.
10:26The Press on the Fed chair search, sir.
10:28Is Scott Besson, your Treasury Secretary,
10:30your number-one option whenever Jerome Powell leaves or...?
10:34The President, well, he's an option.
10:35The Press on the Fed chair search, sir.
10:36Well, he's not because I like the job he's doing.
10:39The Press on the Fed chair search, sir.
10:40The Press on the Fed chair search, sir.
10:41I'd like the job.
10:42I don't know if he was on the plane.
10:43I don't know.
10:45Maybe he wasn't.
10:46But I do like the job he's done.
10:47The Press on the Fed chair.
10:48So, in that sense, probably he's not that much of an option.
10:51The Press on the Fed chair.
10:52Scott has been great.
10:53He's been terrific.
10:54He did a good job today.
10:56He's a very soothing force.
10:58You know, he's soothing.
10:59All right.
11:00The Press on the AI and some people.
11:03The Press on the AI and some people.
11:04The Press on the AI and some people.
11:05The Press on the AI and some people.
11:07And we're going to start off with a low tariff
11:09and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build.
11:13And then we're going to make it a very high tariff.
11:15Because we've got to move them in.
11:18Look, there's two ways you do it.
11:20You make money and or and or you have them move here
11:25so they don't have to pay the tariff.
11:26Those are the two ways.
11:27The pharmaceutical companies are moving back to America
11:31where they should be.
11:32The Press on the miconductor, sir.
11:34Is that in the same timeline with semiconductors tariff?
11:37The Press on the other side.
11:39Similar.
11:40Actually, less complicated, but similar.
11:42Semiconductors and chips.
11:44Mr. President, I know you've urged people to move on.
11:47But I'm curious, why do you think your supporters in particular
11:50have been so interested in the Epstein story?
11:53I don't understand.
11:54And so upset about how it's been handled?
11:55I don't understand it.
11:56Why they would be so interested?
11:58He's dead for a long time.
12:01He was never a big factor in terms of life.
12:05I don't understand what the interest
12:07or what the fascination is.
12:09I really don't.
12:10And the credible information has been given.
12:13Don't forget, we went through years of the Mueller witch hunt
12:16and all of the different things.
12:18The Steele dossier, which was all fake.
12:21All that information was fake.
12:23But I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case
12:26would be of interest to anybody.
12:28It's pretty boring stuff.
12:29It's sordid, but it's boring.
12:32And I don't understand why it keeps going.
12:35I think, well, really only pretty bad people,
12:39including fake news, want to keep something like that going.
12:42But credible information, let them give it.
12:45Anything that's credible, I would say let them have it.
12:48The Pressure, Mr. President, a question on AI.
12:52How do you want Americans to think about it?
12:54Are you concerned about job loss or privacy or the new technology?
13:00The President, what's interesting, because we need jobs.
13:03We need a lot of people to work.
13:05You know, we're building, we're going to be building,
13:08very shortly, hundreds of factories, including AI.
13:11We're building a lot of car factories.
13:13They're all coming in from other countries now,
13:15in order to avoid paying the tariffs.
13:17And we need people working.
13:19So if AI can help us with that, that's a positive.
13:23Because we're not going to have enough workers to take care of it
13:26if we don't create something.
13:27So whether it's robots or whether it's AI,
13:31we need somebody to take care of it.
13:32Do you agree with that?
13:33The President, I agree.
13:34So many jobs to build.
13:36I mean, think about $15 trillion.
13:39That's five million people working in these factories,
13:42building them great, high-paying jobs in America
13:45that President Trump has brought back.
13:47So those jobs, of course, are in the wings.
13:51So let's go, let's train America, and let's get it going.
13:55What do you think about that?
13:57What would you say about this job?
13:58The President, I think with AI, as Howard and the President said,
14:01we're going to need more workers in this country
14:03because President Trump is the greatest economic developer
14:06that this country has ever had.
14:08It's brought back this record amount of foreign direct investment
14:11and a record amount of U.S. investment
14:13going back into job creation.
14:15But the mix is going to change.
14:17AI will take jobs away, like software development,
14:20because AI can write code.
14:22But AI can't wire a building, do plumbing.
14:24I mean, if kids go into the trades today,
14:27they're all going to be making $150 grand,
14:28and they'll have amazing live-built companies,
14:31start businesses.
14:32I mean, this is part of the boom of America,
14:35because middle class, working class, working Americans
14:38will never have had it as good.
14:40They have lower taxes, lower regulations,
14:42and more opportunities to go to work to build things.
14:45We need people.
14:46We really need, because we're building so many factories
14:48in the country.
14:49And so, AI can help with that.
14:51But what also is going to help are going to be robots.
14:54You know, the robots, I think, are going to be a big deal.
14:57And that's going to help also.
14:58The Press on the Russian sanctions, sir,
15:00on the secondary tariffs, are you concerned
15:02that secondary tariffs on buyers of Russian oil
15:05will hurt American consumers, higher gas emissions?
15:07I don't think so.
15:08I think that whole thing is going to go away eventually.
15:11It should have gone away.
15:12And Putin does say, oh, I want peace.
15:13I want peace.
15:14But so far, he hasn't lived up to that.
15:17So I think it's going to go away.
15:18But we're going to find out soon.
15:20We're going to find out soon.
15:21The Press on the sanctions.
15:23Is it 100 percent sanctions?
15:24I don't want to do that.
15:25But they're very biting.
15:26They're very significant.
15:28And they're going to be very bad for the countries involved.
15:31I mean, they'll be very, very powerful
15:33and very bad for the countries involved.
15:36And I hope we don't have to pull that string.
15:39And maybe we'll see.
15:41We've got to end.
15:42We've got to stop the killing.
15:44The Press, were you frustrated today
15:45that the House wasn't able to move
15:46on that crypto legislation?
15:48The President Trump No.
15:48You know, the interesting thing is the 12 votes
15:51were votes where they wanted it to be stronger.
15:54in terms of crypto people.
15:57I figured, oh, wow, that's sort of interesting,
15:59because I was focused really on today's meeting, not that.
16:02But the interesting is the votes, those negative votes,
16:05were because they wanted it to be at the safeguards.
16:08They wanted it to be stronger for people with Bitcoin or crypto.
16:13They wanted more strength, which is interesting.
16:15What do you want to refine in the U.K. trade deal?
16:18The President Trump We have a little to discuss.
16:21But the deal is really very well done.
16:23But I'll meet with the Prime Minister
16:24so we have a good relationship.
16:26And I think it's going to be, and it'll be very shortly,
16:30and it'll be probably in Aberdeen, Scotland.
16:33The Press, Mr. President, at any event,
16:35which state decides taxes would you like
16:37travel savings to gerrymander?
16:38The President Trump Say it again?
16:39The Press, which state decides taxes would you like
16:41Republicans to redraw the congressional line?
16:42The President Trump Well, there's about four of them.
16:44I'll let you figure that one out.
16:45But we have about four of them.
16:47In three cases, it's one.
16:50And in one case, it's two or three.
16:52The Press, where do you think from?
16:53The President Trump And Texas would be five.
16:54The Press, are you concerned California will turn
16:56around and do the same thing with Republicans?
16:57The President Trump Well, we'll fight them.
16:58You know, they're so corrupt in California,
17:00you never know what's going to happen.
17:01But we've done pretty well in the courts in California,
17:04as you see.
17:05We're batting about 1,000, ultimately.
17:08We start off a little slow, and then we get a lot of hits.
17:11The Press, Mr. President, you said today at the event in Pittsburgh
17:15that if it wasn't for Mr. Ludnick and Mr. Besson,
17:18who want to do more deals, that you would basically
17:21just go with the letters.
17:22You've said that a few different times.
17:23I just want to clarify.
17:25Do you just want to go with the tariffs and move on?
17:27The President Trump No, I think they would like
17:28to make deals more than me.
17:30I'm satisfied with it.
17:32But they would like to make deals more than me.
17:34I'm not saying they're wrong.
17:35I'm just saying, in my opinion, he and Scott and maybe
17:40even Doug, to a certain extent, you're more like me, I think.
17:44But they would like to make deals more than me.
17:46I'm very happy with the deals the way they are.
17:48Those are very, right?
17:50Those are very simple deals.
17:51It's whatever the percentage is.
17:54And we base that on a lot of things,
17:55including the deficit and, you know, various things.
17:58And, you know, I think it's a much faster way.
18:02Don't forget, we'll be releasing a letter soon
18:04talking about many countries that are much smaller,
18:08where you're not going to do letters, per se.
18:10You might do an individual letter,
18:12but it's going to go very quickly.
18:13And the number will also be less.
18:15Which countries are those?
18:16These are countries that are, many of them,
18:19you know, like 200 countries.
18:22Do you understand?
18:23Caribbean countries, African countries.
18:25You have a huge amount of countries that are small.
18:27And the President is just going to deal with them
18:30sort of the way he thinks is the right way to deal with them.
18:32We'll probably set one tariff for all of them.
18:36Over 10 percent?
18:36Over 10 percent tariff?
18:38Probably a little over 10 percent, yeah.
18:4015, 20.
18:41We don't do a lot of business, but we do.
18:42You know, it's still significant.
18:43What about Israel, Mr. President?
18:45Is that related to your other, like, the Gaza negotiations?
18:48Is that tied up in other issues?
18:50No, I think Israel is going to be fine.
18:53We had a great victory with Israel.
18:56That was a great, great victory.
18:57What we did with the B-2 bombers and all of that.
19:01And, you know, I never thought of it.
19:04But so many people are thanking me.
19:05They say no President had the guts to do it.
19:08Because, you know, this has been going on for 25 years.
19:11In fact, when the pilots came to the Oval Office,
19:13they said, sir, we and our predecessors
19:17have been working on this attack for 25 years.
19:22Have a good time, everybody.
19:23Thank you, President.