- 1 year ago
Peter Navarro, President Trump's top trade advisor, speaks to reporters outside the White House.
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00:00Well, thank you all for laboring on Labor Day. You're really going the extra mile.
00:05I want to just wish the American people a happy Labor Day.
00:10It's actually my favorite holiday because at the White House here, I'm the director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.
00:19And my job is actually to make sure blue-collar America in particular is fully employed and has their wages rising.
00:27So I just wanted to give you a little report card for President Trump in the first six and seven months of this administration.
00:39Glowing reviews here. Let's start with the amount of jobs we've created, 2.5 million jobs since President Trump took office for American-born citizens.
00:51That's truly remarkable. One of the craziest things you saw during the Biden regime when we had the influx of illegal aliens is we lost millions of jobs for Americans.
01:03And the job growth was primarily among the illegal alien population, as reported by the Department of Labor and Commerce.
01:11It was truly stunning. We've reversed that trend.
01:15Now, one of the most important metrics for workers, and the one I follow the most closely, is whether real wages are rising,
01:26which is to say whether the wage growth is outpacing inflation.
01:31During the Biden regime, you had 26 straight months.
01:3526 straight months where inflation rose faster than wages.
01:39That's just death knell for blue-collar workers.
01:44So far, we're up 1.4 percent annually, second fastest in American history.
01:53And every single month, real wages have gone up in the Trump administration.
01:58Inflation is trending below 2 percent.
02:00So that's an incredibly stellar performance.
02:05What else can I tell you?
02:06Well, if you look at the big, beautiful bill, here's what's coming.
02:09And we're going to have an average of $15,000 tax cuts for blue-collar and middle America.
02:16That's a good deal.
02:18We're going to have $63 billion in benefits for no tax on overtime for seniors.
02:24The no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, is going to mean $1,500 a year more in the pockets of service workers.
02:35So that's a really big deal.
02:37And the last thing I'll tell you, in terms of the statistics, $8 trillion have come into this country in terms of pledged investment.
02:48And why is that important?
02:49From an economist's point of view, I can tell you that when you have investment, you have an increase in productivity.
02:56And productivity increases is the key to wage increases.
03:01So the future is very bright.
03:05Now, let's shift gears a little bit.
03:08I know you want to ask some questions about the court decision on Friday.
03:14I heard one of your colleagues talking about that to the world.
03:18This case is arguably the single most important economic case that has ever come before the Supreme Court.
03:30If the lower court's ruling is upheld, President Trump has correctly said that will be the end of the United States because it will be impossible to defend ourselves from the fentanyl poisoning and all of the trade environment,
03:47which is hollowing out our supply chains and creating very dangerous problems for the American people.
03:54So let me break the case down for you a little bit.
03:57There's a piece in The Washington Times.
04:00It's out online today.
04:02It'll be in print tomorrow.
04:03I urge you to read.
04:05Here's the top line.
04:06If you look at the politics, reporters are making much of the fact that it was a 7-4 majority.
04:14If you look deeper at the numbers, it breaks down to the exact same kind of partisan weaponization of the courts that we're seeing in other decisions with respect to illegal immigration and other kinds of things.
04:30What you've got is six out of seven of the judges striking down the tariffs.
04:37Democrats, the one Republican was an H.W. Bush free market Republican.
04:43So you can read absolutely nothing into that.
04:47And on top of that, there were 12 states that intervened and argued against the Trump tariffs.
04:58Guess what?
04:58Every single one of them.
05:00Yep.
05:00Democrat, blue state, Democrat governor, Democrat controlled legislatures.
05:05And the most interesting thing, which you're not going to find widely reported in the press, but it tells a lot about the source of the lawsuit.
05:14Five small importers, mostly importing crap from China, had big law firms.
05:24And when you track at least some of that money, it's alleged to track back to donors like the Coke Network, which are infamously anti-Trump, infamously free traders who have supported the offshoring of American jobs and the influx of illegal aliens for decades.
05:43So that's the that's the that's the root source of that.
05:47Now, with respect to the law, there were three big issues that are raised here that the Supreme Court will have to contend with.
05:57As I said, the dissent provides a very useful roadmap.
06:01Let me walk through them quickly.
06:03The first is whether or not the fentanyl killing Americans constitutes a national emergency, whether the trade deficit constitutes a national emergency.
06:16Of course, they do.
06:17It's it's it's unconscionable that communist China in league with the Mexican and Canadian drug cartels are killing Americans with fentanyl.
06:29And now this new designer drug is called nitidine.
06:34We're losing by the end of the day, we'll lose another couple of hundred Americans.
06:38It's over a million since the fentanyl war against America started.
06:42And if that's not a national emergency, I don't know what is.
06:47And by the way, the tariffs have helped start to stem that flow.
06:51So they're working with respect to the the trade deficits.
06:55It's one point three trillion dollars a year, 18 trillion dollars of our wealth have been exported over the last several decades.
07:03That has had the effect of costing this country.
07:09Millions of jobs over 100000 factories, but equally important from an economic and national security point of view,
07:17what countries around the world have done exploiting their mercantilism is take apart key aspects of our supply chains,
07:28whether it's in pharmaceuticals, whether, as you've seen recently, with the rare earth magnets, ball bearings.
07:35There's all sorts of things that our defense industrial base and our manufacturing base simply can't produce anymore.
07:43We've got to get those back.
07:44So and also, I mean, there's a lot of ways you can think about this.
07:49The trade deficit leads to budget deficits and we're having to fund a lot of these deficits.
07:58That's eating into our ability to fund our own government.
08:01We're exposed by that debt to blackmail from other countries, including communist China, which holds a lot of our debt.
08:10So clearly, on the first question, these unequivocally are national emergency economic emergencies and qualify under IEPA.
08:20The second point has to do with what is a semantical one.
08:28Basically, the question is whether tariffs constitute regulation of importation.
08:34Would it qualify as a form of regulating imports?
08:38And yes, of course, it will.
08:41There's good case law.
08:42I go over this in my Washington Times article that support that.
08:47And nothing rules out the use of tariffs.
08:50And I think we're on very solid ground there.
08:54There was a third issue raised, which I think was a clear red herring,
08:57which is the claim by the majority, the partisan Democrat majority,
09:03that because the tariffs were alleged to be permanent, that that isn't covered by IEPA.
09:11The claim is ridiculous.
09:14Neither Howard Lutnick, Jamison Greer, Scott Bessett, myself, or the president himself
09:20ever said that these tariffs were permanent.
09:23If, in fact, people stopped dying from communist, Chinese, Mexican, Canadian drug cartel fentanyl tomorrow,
09:32the tariffs would be lifted.
09:33We would have no reason to do it.
09:36On the same token, as soon as our trade deficit went away tomorrow, tariffs would be lifted.
09:43And, by the way, bury the lead, every single year we have to revisit these tariffs with Congress.
09:52So that argument doesn't hunt as well.
09:57So on all three of those grounds, I think we're in very good shape.
10:01Bottom line is we're optimistic that the Supreme Court will rule on this.
10:07We don't have to – the tariffs will remain in place at least to October and perhaps beyond until the Supreme Court rules on this.
10:16And, again, President Trump has said correctly, if the court does not uphold the Trump tariffs,
10:25it will be the end of this country.
10:27We will lose all sorts of bargaining power, and the rest of the world will continue to do what it has been doing,
10:34have its way with us.
10:36Okay, take some questions.
10:37A couple questions for you.
10:38Are you concerned at all about the show of unity between Putin, Xi, and Modi?
10:43And then the second follow-up, we saw Trump's truth about India, saying that they are going to cut those tariffs to nothing.
10:48Can you fill us in on the status of where the trade is right now with India, the negotiations?
10:54Here's what I can tell you, and, again, I'd refer you to the article I wrote in the Financial Times on this,
11:00which goes into it.
11:02Here's the problem with India.
11:04It's a two-pronged problem.
11:05There's 50 percent tariffs on India.
11:08Twenty-five percent of them is the reciprocal tariff because of unfair trade.
11:12Twenty-five percent is the fact that India is buying oil from Russia.
11:16So start with the reciprocal trade tariffs.
11:20The problem is that India literally is the Maharaja of tariffs.
11:25It has the highest tariffs of any major country in the world, and it's in denial about that.
11:31It tries to tell everybody out there, but that's not true, and it is demonstrably true.
11:37So they should engage with us.
11:42They haven't done that as Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, the European Union has.
11:49They simply think they continue having their way with us.
11:54President Trump's not going to allow that.
11:56Now, with respect to the tariffs, the 25 percent tariffs on India's buying oil from Russia, this is an incredible situation.
12:09Every one of you, when you report this story, should report the following fact.
12:14This is the first fact.
12:16India, for all practical purposes, did not buy any oil to speak of from Russia before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
12:25How many of you knew that?
12:27Probably not many.
12:28The way this oil trade worked is once Russia invaded and they were figuring out ways around to sell their oil, Russian refiners went to refiners in India, got in bed with them.
12:47Some of them actually helped produce right in India now.
12:51Putin gives India a discount on crude.
12:55Putin, they refined it, sell at premium prices to Europe, Asia, and Africa.
13:01It's nothing but profiteering.
13:03India cannot stand on the thin reed that somehow they need this oil to run their cars or cool their homes.
13:12It's false, just simply false.
13:16And so here's how this works.
13:18This is the crazy math of this for the American people.
13:21Listen to me carefully here.
13:22India charges the highest tariffs in the world, has the highest non-tariff barriers.
13:29So they export a bunch of stuff to us.
13:32We can't export to them.
13:34Our workers and our businesses get hammered by India.
13:39India then uses the money we give them, buying their exports, to buy Russian oil.
13:47The Russians use the money from the Russian oil to build more bombs and weapons and drones to kill Ukrainians.
13:58And then the Ukrainians come to us in Europe to ask for more money from our taxpayers to pay for that.
14:07That's crazy.
14:08So the road to peace, in many ways, runs at least partly through New Delhi.
14:15It's time for Modi to step up.
14:19I have great respect for Modi.
14:21I love the Indian people.
14:22It was a shame to see Modi getting in bed as the leader of the biggest democracy in the world with the two biggest authoritarian dictators in the world in Putin and Xi Jinping.
14:36That doesn't make any sense.
14:39I'm not sure what he's thinking, particularly since India has been in a Cold War and sometimes a hot war with China for decades.
14:49So we hope that the Indian leader comes around to seeing that he needs to be with us in Europe and Ukraine and not with Russia on this.
15:03And he needs to stop buying the oil.
15:05And why not impose those secondary sanctions on China, which is a massive purchase of oil?
15:10Well, that's a separate issue.
15:12I would just remind you that we have now 50 percent tariffs on India.
15:18How much do we have on China?
15:20How much do we have on China?
15:22What's that?
15:2330 percent.
15:23No, it's over 50 percent total on China.
15:26Okay, so the question is, how much war can you do?
15:31And there's a lot of things going on there.
15:33So I think that this issue is complex, but at a minimum, India's got to stop doing it.
15:42You got a follow-up?
15:43No, go ahead.
15:44Well, that's my first question about the show.
15:45Who are you worried about?
15:46I'm Kit with the pool today.
15:48Oh, gotcha.
15:48Yeah.
15:48Okay.
15:49I first asked about the show of unity between Xi, Putin, and Modi.
15:54Yeah.
15:55It's troublesome.
15:56It's troublesome.
15:57India is the biggest democracy in the world by population.
16:02Historically, India has been in a cold war with communist China for decades.
16:10China has funded Pakistan's military.
16:15China helped Pakistan develop its nuclear weapons.
16:21China has invaded India repeatedly, particularly in a place called Aksai Chin.
16:28I don't know if you're aware of that area.
16:30China has invaded India and actually has taken territory from India and still holds it.
16:37The Chinese patrol now far into the Indian Ocean and are challenging Indian sovereignty in the Indian Ocean.
16:46But at the same time, we're seeing China and its entrepreneurs and oil refiners getting into bed with Indian business people, and that relationship is toxic.
17:02I mean, a lot of this dumping that occurs, China now is using India as a big transshipment hub for all sorts of products to avoid the Chinese tariffs.
17:14So, you know, let's see what happens.
17:17President Trump, every American should thank President Trump for flagging this issue and calling India out on these issues.
17:27Because we don't want to be about the business of trying to defend Ukraine with funds and weapons and things like that.
17:35But when our money is going to somebody who's cheating us and they're using that money to give to the Russians to buy weapons, kill Ukrainians, and then use their taxpayer money.
17:45All right.
17:46I'll take just a couple more.
17:47Sir.
17:47Understanding, you say, the significance of this potential Supreme Court decision is paramount to the country's future, in a scenario that they were to rule against the administration, what conversations has the White House been engaged in this summer about potential alternatives, whether it be federal trade law or going to Congress?
18:06Yeah, that's not something that we're going to divulge.
18:12Let's just say that this is a smart White House and President Trump is a master chess player.
18:19There's certainly other authorities we can use, but the courts shouldn't use that fact to do the right thing in this case.
18:27Because, clearly, this is well within the Article II powers of the president.
18:34He's demonstrated, through the use of this power, just how effective it can be.
18:40I mean, it's like the most incredibly effective negotiating tool that we've ever seen a president wield.
18:46So, again, let's see what happens.
18:49Has Speaker Johnson and Leverett Boone been engaged?
18:52I have no insight on that.
18:54I'm sure that's the case.
18:56You know, my job, apropos Labor Day, is to make sure I'm doing the best I can to help the boss create jobs for blue-collar America.
19:05Yes, ma'am.
19:05The de minimis trading, the de minimis trading has now been closed, and you have shippers from Asia and Europe who have canceled shipments to the U.S.
19:14So, what is your message to Americans to see canceled orders, delayed shipments, and higher prices?
19:20Well, you're assuming that all that's true.
19:23Look, the de minimis loophole is insane.
19:28No country in the world has an $800 limit where anything can come in below $800.
19:35You don't even look at it, and you don't collect tariffs on it.
19:38That's crazy stuff.
19:40I mean, the fact that Congress allowed that to happen to begin with under the heavy lobbying of the online brokers like Amazon and eBay and Alibaba and stuff like that, that never should have happened.
19:54We closed that.
19:55Now, here's what Americans should be feeling now.
20:00Gratitude for President Trump, because this de minimis loophole has been one where counterfeits and pirated goods are coming in.
20:09It's the single highest source, the single highest source of narcotics and fentanyl being smoked across the borders.
20:19Okay?
20:19If you understand how this works, it's like these small packages, they don't register them.
20:23They don't tell us what it is.
20:24They just come in.
20:25Nobody looks at them.
20:26And guess what?
20:28You know, I can fit enough fentanyl on the tip of my finger to kill all of you in about 10 seconds.
20:33Okay?
20:33That's how powerful that stuff is.
20:35So this is a good deal.
20:36It's going to raise tens of billions of dollars every year, just closing that loophole.
20:46And congratulations to President Trump.
20:48It's just another way of celebrating Labor Day.
20:51Because, you know, it's like when I was in the first, I'll give you a little background.
20:54There was, over there in my office, right on the corner there, a Mighty Mug came to me early in the administration.
21:06And it's an American company, and they're telling me about how they were trying to sell their Mighty Mugs, right?
21:14And they were having trouble because China could send these things in.
21:19They'd steal a design, send them in.
21:21They'd send them in through the minimis.
21:22And the way De Minimis interacted with our international postal system, they could send a mug for half the price than Mighty Mug could send to the house next door.
21:37Okay?
21:37That's how screwed up that is.
21:39So we fixed it.
21:40I'll take one more.
21:41You've been patient, ma'am.
21:42Yeah, thank you.
21:43And you're with?
21:43I'm with News Nation.
21:44Hannah Brown with News Nation.
21:45Okay, great.
21:47Businesses have basically been saying from the start of this tariff discussion that uncertainty is the worst part for them.
21:52Are you afraid that these court's indecision basically cause uncertainty?
21:56Well, they've been saying that, but they haven't been acting that.
21:59I mean, we've had a tremendous influx of investment.
22:02We've seen – here's the most important thing to understand about tariffs.
22:09There's three parties that can distribute the tariff burden, right?
22:16Not two.
22:17The media likes to say, well, it's either going to be American consumers or American businesses that are going to bear the burden of the tariffs.
22:25But, in fact, the third party is the one that actually does it.
22:28That's the foreigners who export to us.
22:32And so what we observed in the first term, when people were saying the same thing about uncertainty and inflation and all that,
22:40we observed very clearly that the countries that rely most heavily on us,
22:47the most export-dependent economies like China, like India, like Europe, like Vietnam, like Indonesia, like Malaysia, like Thailand,
22:56all of these countries we run massive deficits with, they have no choice other than to lower their prices when we raise our tariffs.
23:04And so we don't see inflation coming in.
23:07And so I – look, the domestic – the businesses are elated with the protection we're giving them across the board.
23:17And, you know, on Labor Day, let's celebrate the revival now of our steel and aluminum industries, which is the chair of itself.
23:24So you've all been patient.
23:25Sorry, don't you see that as a gamble the administration is taking that the burden won't fall on businesses and American consumers?
23:30It's not a gamble.
23:31It's economics.
23:33And we know where the burden goes.
23:34I mean, the problem is – the problem is when you ask me that question, if you were asking me the question in 2018 after we put the China tariffs in,
23:43I'd have to speculate as an economist.
23:45But the problem is now, for those who make that criticism, is we have the data.
23:50It just didn't happen.
23:51China ate the whole damn thing.
23:53And they're going to do it again, just like all these other countries are going to do it.
23:57And it's just a beautiful thing for the American people.
24:02America, we love you here at the White House.
24:04It's a happy Labor Day, and I'll be back tomorrow the next day.
24:08Just quickly on the de minimis.
24:09Do you see a scenario where that ever comes back?
24:11No.
24:12Or gone?
24:12No.
24:12No.
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