Hi, Secretary Duffy. Can we ask you a few questions?
Yeah, hey, guys. I'll make a quick comment. So I couldn't be more delighted about President Trump and his EO on American shipbuilding. Uh, we don't build ships in America anymore. They come from South Korea and from China. In 2022, uh America built five commercial ships. China built 1,800 commercial ships in 2022. And so, the president understands that if you're going to be a global power, you actually have to build ships in your country.
And so this EO is incredibly important for that, as well as you need sailors, you need mariners, to sail these ships. Uh. So, uh, we're, uh -- we have, uh, the Merchant Marine Academy at DOT up in Kings Point. Some of the most amazing young men and women at this academy, uh, who are working on, uh, the mechanical engineering side of shipping, but then we also have the sailors of ships.
And we have not as a country invested in Kings Point. This is a facility that's dilapidated. They have mold in their buildings, uh, in their dorm rooms, uh, for four months they didn't have hot water for showers. Um, the president understands the importance of mariners and he wants to reinvest in this academy and not just this academy, expand it to make sure we have a whole new crew of young people who are going to sail around the world.
And by the way, if uh, if you're -- if you're -- if your kids are 18 and you want to have them think about going to the Merchant Marine Academy, these -- these young people get out of the academy at 22 years old and they make $150 grand a year, uh, working six months a year. It's great. So, maybe some of you guys want to take that job.
It's great. It's a great job and so -- but a lot of people don't know about it. But it's going to get better because this president's going to invest in it. A lot of this is going to come around DOT, um, but with that I'll take a couple. Yes?
On congestion pricing in New York City, um, what are your plans, uh, should the MTA, you know, keep moving forward with pulling vehicles? Um, would you take legal action against the city, the state? What's your next step here?
So, congestion pricing in New York City, again, I'm not opposed to congestion pricing, uh, this White House is not opposed to congestion pricing. But when you pay for the roads in New York City, which we have, they're already paid for, and you're going to charge an additional fee to use the road that you paid for, what you've done is you've priced poor and middle income families out of using, uh, American roads.
And so it's -- if you're rich in New York and you have the money, you love congestion pricing because everyone else is off the roads and you just drive right in. But the American philosophy is that we don't have roads for rich people, we have roads for Americans. And the problem with what the governor has done is she hasn't allowed a free pathway into the cordoned area in New York.
And they never did a study, by the way. If you're concerned about congestion pricing, what you would do is you would do a study that says how -- how much do I have to charge to reduce congestion by how much?
But they did have to do the environmental assessment.
She never -- she never did that. The reason was, this was never about congestion. This is about raising money for MTA. And we have never, at DOT, allowed all the money to go from road tolling to transit. You'll have some money that goes from tolling to transit, but not all the money to transit. And so, this is elitist.
This looks out for the rich people of New York and, by the way, then she sends people onto the subways that are dirty, that are violent. And so, clean your act up. Um be fair to people. And if you're going to make them -- want them to ride the subway, make it clean, make it beautiful, make it safe.
Question about the auto industry?
[Crosstalk]
So, I understand that the president is trying to revive the shipbuilding industry in the US, but how long do you think this process will take for the US to effectively have the ability to have the strength to counter China when it comes to shipbuilding?
So, China did it really fast, right? It's going to take us some time, right? We have -- we have years we have to -- we have to, uh, de-mothball, some of our shipyards. Uh, but we have great locations around the country. We can make these investments in and start to produce ships right away. And again, what the president is thinking about is the cost, right?
And so, how can we be helpful in the federal government to drive down the cost of ships and make them competitive, uh, around the world. And -- and again, this EO, which by the way it's a -- it's a -- it's a really, um, expansive EO, and it's great and he's thoughtful on how we can make this happen. So, thank you.
Yeah.
[Inaudible]
What's that?
Mr. Secretary, are you concerned that the tariff pause that's going into effect is not going to extend to the auto industry or there's the vehicle tariff and there's also the parts tariff, uh, that's supposed to take effect next month.
So, when we produce a car in America and we send it to Europe, uh, we are charged a 10 percent tariff on the American made car. When you have a European made car that comes to the US, we charge them 2.5 percent in a tariff, right? So, why is that fair? Why do they charge us more for the American made car than we charge them for the European made car?
And so, the president understands fundamentally that it's unfair. And so, I think if you listen to reciprocal trade, reciprocal tariffs, the effort is to bring tariffs down, bring barriers down. But no one wants to do that because they all access the biggest market in the world, ours, without paying anything and we want to sell our great American products by our great American manufacturers overseas.
They put barriers up. And that's fundamentally unfair. And by the way it's -- you can see, um, it rattles the market, but the president has the heart and soul to go, you know what, I'm willing to take a little bit of that rattle and make sure that we, uh, we stand up and fight for the American worker, the American company, and we're going to bring fairness back to trade.
And if you're not going to be fair to America or our workers, you're not going to access our market, or if you do, you're going to pay a lot of money. And so, with that, thank you all. God bless.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Have a good day. Oh, Victor, do you want me on that side? Yeah, please. I got the iPhone. Thank you.
At least it's a beautiful day, right?
Thank you for your time, Mr. Secretary. On Sunday, you said the tariffs would stay in place for days and weeks. What changed between then and now?
No, no, no, the reciprocal tariffs stay in place. They are 10 percent across the board on all the countries, right? We -- we paused on any numbers that are above 10 percent, and -- except for China, of course, who retaliated and then of course you know what's going on with China because they've retaliated.
And the president was very clear, if you retaliate, you will feel what he thinks and -- and they feel what he thinks. So, there's 10 percent reciprocal tariffs across the board, but we are not going above that. We're letting each country come in and let's negotiate fully and completely. And you may have heard the president in the Oval Office, he talked about that.
He really wants to put military spending on the table. He wants to do -- you know, let's have a full conversation with each country and let's really discuss it together and the lead negotiator is going to be Donald Trump.
[Crosstalk]
Mr. Secretary, can you say definitively that it wasn't the direction of the market that turned Trump to make this 90 day pause?
It was not. I will happily say definitively, it was not. Donald -- Donald Trump is in charge of these policies and this direction. He is the greatest negotiator and the greatest person who understands these are his goals and his objectives and he is executing them. And so, he said, uh, yesterday, or the day before yesterday was the first day he said, and he put out a Truth that said he was willing to negotiate.
And then yesterday, he told us all he'd be bespoke and then we had so many calls after he said he would do -- do bespoke negotiations. I mean, it just became crazy, the amount of calls we got that it was just -- it was impossible to be respectful to all these wonderful allied countries, and to do that. So, how can you be respectful when a country says I want to come and talk, I will do it. I will be reasonable.
I've analyzed it and we will come and talk. How do you deal with that when you have so many countries that deserve our time and our respect. So, he decided he would pause it, start at 10 percent for everybody, right? And let's go negotiate with all of these great countries and let's see if we can do great deals for America.
Much better deals for America, but that's the model. So, it was just this incredible influx of calls, I mean more than 75. I mean I can't -- it was incredible the scale and scope of the calls that we received.
[Crosstalk]
Those calls were coming in -- at all with Chinese officials, you or other cabinet members. Trump said that he would expect a phone call from Xi. How soon do you think that's coming?
I am not engaging with him. Scott has not engaged with him and the president, you know, he -- he does expect to have conversations with President XI, but that is between them. If we get a contact, we will just pass it to the president and this is really about him. He has said publicly that maybe they don't really know the best way to go through.
But the answer really is, it's a phone call between the two leaders of these giant countries that they can work it out together, but it's really -- that's what's going to happen and that's what we all expect to happen.
[Crosstalk]
Mr. Secretary, is the president trying to build a coalition against China? And second question, are members of the EU calling the administration singularly to cut a deal?
So, the answer is the president is focused on America, OK, and he's going to try to negotiate the best deals for America with each of these great countries that are calling us that want to talk. So, he's not trying to build a coalition or any kind of thing like that. He's just focused on making the American farmer, the American rancher, the American fisherman, right, our manufacturers, our people, let them have a better chance at the world.
And that's what he's focused on. And the answer is we've spoken to the EU and we've spoken to the member states as well. They are all just -- those member countries are calling as well. So, it is -- busy would be the understatement for Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick and Jameson Greer, the three of us, it is just -- wow.
I don't know. That's the only way to say it. It's just -- we have so many great countries who want to talk, who are willing to talk, who are finally, finally, willing to make what we expect to be a fair deal for America. And we're really excited to talk to them.
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Yes.
Lots of countries, sir? Canada is just imposing retaliatory tariffs in the auto industry. How do you react to that and are you considering a pause maybe also for the auto industry?
No, the president was very clear, the sector tariffs, those on steel and aluminum and those on autos are going to remain as he put them out. So, that is unchanged, right? What he said was the reciprocal tariffs would go to 10 percent and if Canada decides to keep their retaliatory move, which I would suggest having watched how it went with China would be a really, really bad choice -- you know Europe put out some retaliatory tariffs, but they said they don't start for a couple of weeks, right?
And I think what's going to happen is they are going to be pushed out for the 90 days so they have time to negotiate with the president without having something hanging over their head. So, that's -- that's certainly my expectation that all these countries will realize, let's just wait. Let's go negotiate, let's see what we can accomplish together, but they have to understand their rules.
It's not just tariffs. You know tariffs are one thing, but you have to realize why can't we sell a car in Japan? Why is 94 percent of cars driving around in Japan, Japanese? Do you think it's their tariffs which are actually really low? No, there are other things that they do to make it impossible, right?
They have -- they have subsidies, they have non-tariff trade barriers. They just make it impossible in Japan. They make it impossible for anybody. Korea, similar, Europe, similar for us. And these things just need to change. So, Canada -- Canada needs to understand things are changing, OK? The things are changing.
We -- we made a deal with them. We put out tariffs on autos that protected their auto parts industry. They should understand that that was a balanced move by the president with respect to Canada and Mexico, right? You see how Mexico has dealt with it? Mexico has been restrained and being pragmatic. And her ratings in Mexico are 75 percent positive, right?
Now Canada, they're in an election so you never know. Maybe it's all election -- uh, you know, uh, bluster. But we don't know. But the fact is if they put those tariffs on, we're going to be talking in the Oval Office and he is going to respond. So, I hope they choose to refrain. Yes?
[Crosstalk]
The pharmaceutical tariffs -- Would you say that the markets had no impact on the president's decision to pause the tariffs?
As I said, the president two days ago, put out a Truth that said he would negotiate. Yesterday, he said he would do it bespoke, country by country. And the inflow of countries asking to negotiate with us on a bespoke fashion became overwhelming. It was, you know -- and so, he decided this morning that to be respectful to all of these countries who want to negotiate with the United States, right, that he should put a pause on so, that we can negotiate with them for 90 days.
He said 90 days. He made it clear that it was 90 days, right? But that's the policy that he set today and he is -- he thinks resetting American trade policy is fundamental, right? It's fundamental. He said it during the campaign trail, he said it after he was elected, he said it leading up to Liberation Day.
He announced Liberation Day and he did not bend.
But what happened is the scale of those countries who want to come and negotiate with us is so great that it's the incredible respect and kindness of the president that says I want to treat these countries with great respect and I'm going to. So, let's put a pause on and then let's negotiate with them. But you saw also how he dealt with China.
So, he wasn't worried about the market per se. What he's worried about is that China is retaliating and has no interest of treating American fairly. That's how they've acted and he is acting accordingly. He said he would act accordingly and, of course, he is. He tends to be incredibly consistent to what he says.
Amazing. A president who does what he says he's going to do. It's amazing.
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Yes?
[Crosstalk]
The day after the announcement -- Stephen Miller said on X that the president's strategy here is not only fixing the broken trade system globally, but also to isolate China economically and politically as China is the architect of global trade aggression. Is that the administration's stance here to build a coalition to really counter such unfair trade practices by China?
Well, the president of the United States was asked that question about an hour ago and he said no. He said, I want to reset trade country by country for the benefit of America. The president said it, he said it in his own words, you can go see those words and that is what he feels. That's what he said because that is true.
[Crosstalk]
Mr. Secretary, the day after the announcement, the calls started pouring in. Two days ago, the president said he was not considering a pause. Those countries were already begging to negotiate. So, what changed in the last 24, 48 hours, if it wasn't the market?
Well, remember people calling and saying, I'd like to talk but offering up the same old, same old was not going to move the needle. What happened is the Prime Minister started calling, their heads of trade, and they started calling making offers that were the right kind of offers, the right kind of thinking, the right way of addressing how things are going to change.
And it became very, very clear that we can get there. I'm not saying we're going to get there with every country, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that many, many countries have offered a path to actually getting to reasonable and fair trade for the benefit of the United States. Because the reason I say it's for the benefit of the United States is because we have a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, which means we are buying net $1.2 trillion more of other people's goods than the other way around.
So, they have the greatest deal in the world and it's time for someone to say, oh, come on. We can't keep this up. Eventually this is going to break. So, that's what changed was that these countries decided it was time to get real with the United States or this was just going to go forward. That's why he rolled it out, that's why he has this, uh -- the policies he has and I think it's going to result in exactly what he said, a great growth for America.
Anyway, I got to go. Thanks very much everybody.
[Crosstalk]
Mr. Secretary, when can we expect -- Sorry, thank you.
[Crosstalk]
-- the pharmaceutical tariffs? Did you get any concessions, sir? What happens after 90 days?