In fact, I -- I don't have a meeting for five minutes, so I have a --
Oh, great.
Usually I'm dashing --
That's a lot of --
Right into the --
Can you guys step over here a little bit, please? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
So you want me to stand here?
Yes, sir.
Can you share a -- can you go back to tariffs? At some point today, the president [Inaudible] communicated that announcement. Is it coming?
Yeah, we'll -- we'll see. We'll see. Right now the -- there's no announcement forthcoming.
The president said last week that he was considering tariff retaliation against countries in the European Union, Spain for, like, NATO contributions. Are you working on that?
I am not working on that matter. The White House is working on what to do. They're hopefully negotiating a happy ending with our European colleagues. I had some European folks in my office last week talking about other matters, and there's a very strong working relationship. There have been --
Did that matter come up?
No, it didn't with me because I've not one of the trade negotiators.
Mr. Hassett, on the Australian visit today, how much of the conversation is going to be about pushing Australia to decouple from China?
I don't think that the president believes that decoupling is the right answer. As Secretary Bessent says, it's all about de-risking. And the Australians --
And de-risking would also --
Yeah. Yeah, but -- no, but -- but -- but the point is that Australia is really, really going to be helpful in the effort to take the global economy and make it less risky, less exposed to the kind of rare earth extortion that we're seeing from the Chinese. Because really, one of the best mining economies on earth and the -- the smartest and most favorable refiners are in Australia, and they've got lots and lots of rare earths.
So -- so, I think there'll be a lot of conversation about that matter today.
Can we expect any deliverables, any announcements on that partnership?
I -- you know, that'll be up to the president and the prime minister.
It's day 20 of the shutdown. What impact can that have? Can we expect to see more federal layoffs?
You know, our -- our expectation is -- we saw Senator Shaheen come out on Friday, say she thinks that we should open up. We're seeing that moderate Democrats are perhaps, you know, free now to open up the economy after we've had the No Kings rally that apparently made them feel like they had to wait until after that.
But we're -- there's going to be a real reckoning. We'll have to watch and see if the story that we are hearing from moderates, that we just had to get through the weekend and then maybe we could open the economy, we'll have to hope that that's true, because it's our position that nobody should shut the government right now.
Republicans voted 13 times to keep the government open for Joe Biden, and the -- the Democrats need to do their constitutional duty and do that for President Trump. And the fact is that that -- this idea that you should do everything you can to stop President Trump from governing is something that the Democrats need to lose.
This is the third time that they have had a government shutdown with President Trump, and they need to -- if they want to have policy disputes, they can do it through regular order. But just shutting down the government and making 750,000 government workers not get their paychecks is just unacceptable to the president.
Is -- is the president expected to meet with or speak with any of those moderates that you've just mentioned at some point today or later this week?
That'll be up to the president. Thanks, guys. I'm sorry. I have to go now.
Is Australia's level of defense spending is going to be on the agenda?
I'm not --
Thank you.