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-- perhaps hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets that we need to manage smartly, sustainably for the benefit and the use of the American people.
Mr. President, is there anything China, Canada, and Mexico can do tonight to forestall your implementation of tariffs tomorrow?
No, nothing. Not right now. No.
Not a negotiating tool?
No, it's not. No, it's pure economic. We have big deficits with, as you know, with all three of them. And in one case, they're sending massive amounts of fentanyl, killing hundreds of thousands of people a year with the fentanyl. And in the other two cases, they're making it possible for this poison to get in, number one.
And number two, we have big deficits and it's something we're doing. And we'll possibly very substantially increase it, or not, we'll see how it is, but it's a lot of money coming to the United States. As you know, we have about a $200 billion deficit with Canada, getting close to $200 billion. They've treated us very unfairly.
And I say, why should we be subsidizing Canada? It's wonderful. I have so many friends in Canada. It's a great place, but --
Is there a concession you're looking for, sir?
No, we're not looking for a concession, and we'll just see what happens. We'll see what happens. And with Mexico, it's the same thing. We have a $250 billion deficit and we have a lot of people coming into the border, and now we've largely stopped that, but we've stopped that ourselves. I think they've done a fantastic job.
You've seen the numbers have dropped to almost zero, but we've suffered under the past administration. For years and years, we've suffered with millions of criminals coming into our country. Criminals, people from jails from all over the world. They come through Mexico and they come through Canada too. A lot of them come through Canada and a lot of fentanyl comes through Canada.
And China makes the fentanyl, you know? China makes the fentanyl, gives it to Mexico, puts it through Canada, puts it through different places, mostly Mexico, but also a lot through Canada. And so all three haven't treated us very well.
Sir, can I ask you about your meeting with NVIDIA? What did you talk about and do you think you need to ban more of the chips that they're selling to China?
Well, he's a great gentleman, and I hadn't met him. He's the biggest in the world in terms of chips, and I can't say what's going to happen, whether... We had a meeting, it was a good meeting. But eventually, we're going to put tariffs on chips. We're going to put tariffs on oil and gas. That'll happen fairly soon, I think around the 18th of February.
And we're going to put a lot of tariffs on steel. We already have tariffs on steel and we've saved our steel industry, but that was relatively small compared to what it'll be. But we're going to be putting tariffs on steel and aluminum and ultimately copper. Copper will take a little bit longer. And that'll happen pretty quickly.
It'll mean it'll be a great boost for our steel industry. It'll make our steel industry very strong. If I didn't put the tariffs on, years ago, on steel, which actually Biden left because there was so much money that they couldn't do anything about it, we would've lost... We wouldn't have one steel mill in this country if I didn't do that.
We saved the steel industry. So it was an honor to do it. And I think the people that love me most in the whole world are the people that make steel, but we're going to be putting, sometime this month, next month, we're going to be putting tariffs on steel and aluminum. And we'll give you an announcement as to what the exact date is, but it'll be a tremendous amount of money for our country, a tremendous amount.
These are big numbers. And in addition to that... And you see the power of the tariff. I mean, the tariff is... And nobody can compete with us because we have by far the biggest piggy bank. And so that'll take place very quickly. But also, we'll be doing pharmaceuticals and to bring our industry back. We want to bring pharmaceuticals back to the country.
And the way you bring it back to the country is by putting up a wall and the wall is a tariff wall. We were the richest country in the world. We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That's when we had... We were a tariff country. And then they went to an income tax concept. And you know, how did that work out?
It's fine. I mean, it's okay, but would've been very much better. So we'll be doing pharmaceuticals importantly, and drugs, medicines, et cetera, all forms of medicine and pharmaceuticals. And we'll be doing very importantly, steel. And we'll also be doing chips and things associated with chips.
And sir, what do you plan on talking with the Japanese prime minister about next Friday when you all meet?
Well, he's coming in, yeah, next week. I don't know. He asked for a meeting and I have great respect for Japan. I like Japan. Prime Minister Abe was a very close friend of mine. What happened to him was so sad, one of the saddest days. But they're coming in to speak to me and I look forward to it.
Mr. President, on the crash, do you have any concerns that your commentary about things you have described as common sense or your observations could in any way interfere with a thorough investigation of the crash?
No, I think they'll do an investigation. It'll probably come out the way I said it. I like to put it up front. I'm so tired of listening to things happen to our country and then people say, "We'll do an investigation," and three years later they come out with a report that nobody looks at, especially, not in all cases can you do that, but in this case, you had a helicopter that was, the Black Hawk, was too high.
It was above the 200 limit by double. It shouldn't have been there. And there were some other mistakes made too and I pointed them out also and I was right on all of it, but they'll still do an investigation just to check it out. But I think that's what your question --
As commander -- in -- chief, are you at all concerned about opining about the Army and the conduct of that aircraft when you are commander -- in -- chief and these are the people who report to you?
No.
And there's an investigation ongoing?
This was all caused by bad rules, regulations, and other things by Biden, the Biden administration.
What tells you that, sir?
And when you look at the way they ran things, in fact, if you look, we hired... One of the first things I told them to do, I said, "Get talented people in those beautiful towers overlooking runways. You better get them in there fast because we don't have people there that are qualified." And you knew that because planes were landing very, very late.
They were circling all over the place. We had people that didn't know what the hell they were doing. And if you look --
And so there are planes in the air everywhere --
Excuse me.
... and there are other air traffic... Pardon me, sir.
Excuse me, excuse me. We have to have the best people, the smartest people, the sharpest people as control tower experts. And that's what they have to be. They have to be experts and they have to be very smart. And we didn't have our best. And if you read the quote that I read yesterday at the news conference, it talked about people that were psychologically injured were okay, and people that had lots of problems were okay.
I'd read it again if you'd like me to, but I don't think I have to waste your time.
Does that mean you're concerned though, sir, with planes in the air all around the country, people relying on that as safety? Are you suggesting there's an ongoing risk?
No, I think there's very little risk, but I think that we have to make sure that this never happens again. Very, very little risk. And we're taking actions that this can't happen again. The helicopter, as you know, was out of its zone. It shouldn't have been out of its zone. It was at the same height as the airplane.
Now, the airplane was coming down on its track. It was perfect. It was in perfect shape coming down and something was in its way. You can't let that happen and it won't be happening again. And this was all because of weak rules in the Biden administration and we're just not going to let that kind of thing happen again.
And again, I could wait and I could give a report in two years like they always do, and sometimes it's obvious. In this case, to me, it was very obvious and I think I've been proven to be very correct. Yeah.
Mr. President, what do you expect from your meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu next week?
I expect a lot of good things. From all meetings, I expect good things. Marco Rubio, as you know, is going to make a tour of various countries in South America. He's going to be meeting in Panama where Panama's treated us very badly. They gave him, rather them rather foolishly a thing called the Panama Canal.
The most expensive project we ever built if you look at today's numbers, most expensive ever built. We lost 38,000 men in that case. All men. Just about all men. 30,000 to the mosquito, to malaria and various other problems that you get from jungles. It was a tremendously costly event. We built the Panama Canal 110 years ago.
Think of it, the most expensive development we ever did, and really one of the wonders of the world, one of the great wonders of the world. We didn't give it to China, we gave it to Panama. And Panama has been ripping down all the China language signs. They've been working like mad to try, but about 70% of the signs were up and they were written in Chinese and that's not the deal.
So we're going to take it back. They've already offered to do many things, but we think it's appropriate that we take it back. They've totally violated the agreement. We have an agreement. They violated the agreement. And Marco Rubio is going over there to talk to the gentleman that's in charge.
Mr. President, do you still think it's a good idea for Jordan and Egypt to be taking in Palestinians when they reject the ID and the Palestinians who are living now in Egypt?
Oh, I think Jordan will take people, yeah, people from Gaza, and I think Egypt will take them also. I mean, I heard somebody said they're not going to, but I think they will. I feel confident they will.
Mr. President, will tomorrow's tariffs include the oil?
What?
Will tomorrow's tariffs be inclusive of Canadian crude?
I'm probably going to reduce the tariff a little bit on that. We think we're going to bring it down to 10% on the oil. So it's 25% on the Canada side.
Mr. President, are these tariffs stacking on top of already existing tariffs or this will be --
Yes, on top of whatever may be existing. Yeah.
Mr. President -- Mr. President, ask you a question about Venezuela. Rick Grenell was seen on state TV shaking hands with President Maduro. Is there any concern that that might lend legitimacy to the Maduro administration?
No. We want to do something with Venezuela. I've been a very big opponent to Venezuela and Maduro. They've treated us not so good, but they've treated, more importantly, the Venezuelan people very badly. We have tremendous Venezuelan population. I got 92% of the vote, the Venezuelan vote. Now we want to see what we can do to get people back in their homeland safe and free and all.
He's meeting with a lot of different people, but we are for the people of Venezuela, we're for the Venezuelan Americans. If you look at it, we have them all in Florida, right around the Doral area. That's where, that's really, they call it Little Venezuela, right? And they voted for me close to 100%, so we'll see what we can do to straighten out the situation in Venezuela.
Venezuela has been very unfortunate. I was very surprised when I saw that Biden agreed to buy a lot of oil from Venezuela because Venezuela was just about finished, the dictator, and when that happened, it brought him back to life. Biden went out and they buy millions of barrels of oil. I say, "What's that all about?" So we're not going to let that stupid stuff happen.
So we'll see what happens. We're not happy with Venezuela. We don't like the way they've treated the Venezuelans at all.
Mr. President, there have been some warnings or messages that government websites will be shut down this evening to scrub them of DEI content. Can you confirm if that's accurate?
The what's been shut down?
Government websites, excuse me, will be shut down this evening to scrub them of DEI content. Can you confirm whether that's accurate and if there are any concerns about --
I don't know, it doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. DEI would've ruined our country and now it's dead. I think DEI is dead, so if they want to scrub the websites, that's okay with me. But I can't tell you. I guess probably certain people handle it certain ways, but I'll tell you who's very happy about it. The military, the real leaders, the real generals in the military, they're very happy about it. Doug is very happy about it. He's got a big, big group of people that are going to be working for him, are really starting right now.
He just got signed up and they're very happy about it. He had a lot of DEI, everybody did, but he has not been a fan. It was really hurting our country badly. It was costing a lot of money too. Did you see the kind of money we're talking about? Hundreds of millions of dollars for nonsense. Now we have our country back now.
Our country is back. It's a nice thing to say. I've never seen such love. I've never had anything like it. I've never seen anything like it. People are coming up, "Sir, thank you for bringing our country back." We were losing our country and I think we're stronger now than we've been in many, many decades.
Is there any update on your call with Vladimir Putin?
Well, we'll be speaking. We'll be speaking and I think we'll perhaps do something that'll be significant. We want to end that war. That war would've never started if I was president and we want to end that war. That war is a horrible war. Millions of young people are being killed, mostly on the lines now, mostly at soldiers, but the cities have been largely destroyed, many of them.
They're like demolition sites, but the soldiers are just shooting at each other. You know, it's a very flat land. I said this the last time. Very, very flat land. The only place that a bullet stops is when it hits a person and they're hitting a lot of people. They're hitting a lot of soldiers on both sides.
I think Russia would probably say close to 800,000 and Ukraine, six or 700,000, and it's just a senseless situation and it's got to stop. So whatever I can do to stop it, and we are having discussions, yes.
Mr. President -- Ongoing? Already scheduled and ongoing?
Already talking, yes.
So you've already spoken to Vladimir Putin?
I don't want to say that, but we are having very serious discussions about --
Is there a reason you don't want to?
We are... Well, I just don't want to say that. We're having very serious discussions about that war, trying to get it ended.
With Russia?
With Russia, yeah.
At the Department of Justice and the FBI, there are a number of high -- level people who are being asked to resign or are being told they are going to be fired. Did you specifically request any actions at the Bureau or DOJ with respect to those employees?
No, but we have some very bad people over there. It was weaponized at a level that nobody's ever seen before. They came after a lot of people, like me, but they came after a lot of people. No, I wasn't involved in it. I'll have to see what is exactly going on after this is finished. But if they fired some people over there, that's a good thing because they were very bad.
They were very corrupt people, very corrupt and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization. They used the justice department to go after their political opponent, which in itself is illegal, and obviously it didn't work.
Are you going to impose tariff on the European Union?
What does that mean?
Are you going to impose tariff too on the European Union like you did, you are going to for Mexico and Canada?
Well, you're asking me a question because I'm sure you didn't hear. Am I going to impose tariffs on the European Union? Do you want the truthful answer or should I give you a political answer?
The truth.
Absolutely. Absolutely. The European Union has treated us so terribly.
You promised Americans to try to reduce costs and so many of the products that would be tariffed when they come into the country, the outgoing country is not paying the tariff, the buyers in the United States pay that, and then that's passed on to consumers in most instances.
Right. Sometimes.
How would you expect to have prices come down if you have such a broad plan for tariffs? And what do you say to the voters who want to see you reduce everyday costs?
Well, let me just tell you that I got elected for a lot of reasons. Number one was the border. Number two was inflation because I had almost no inflation, and yet I charged hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs to countries. And think of it, I had almost no inflation and took in $600 billion of money from other countries and tariffs don't cause inflation.
They cause success, they cause big success. So we're going to have great success. There could be some temporary short -- term disruption and people will understand that. I had that when I negotiated some of the good deals for the farmers, and unfortunately those deals have been lead astray by Biden and his people because they didn't enforce the deals.
We have a deal with China, which is phenomenal for the farmers, but there was nobody to enforce it in the Biden administration. They let them get away with murder. So it's another thing we're going to be bringing. They committed --
Do you accept the principle of the cost being passed on?
Wait a minute. They committed to buying $50 billion worth of farm product and they did it when I was president, and as soon as I left, they stopped doing it because there was nobody in Biden to enforce it. But the tariffs are going to make us very rich and very strong and we're going to treat other countries very fairly.
But if you think about it, other countries charge us tariffs. We don't charge them tariffs, and it's about time that that changes.
Sir, are you concerned about the market reaction around tariffs?
No. No. Tariffs, the word tariff is a very misunderstood word. You've heard me say, I say it kiddingly, but it's one of the most beautiful words in the dictionary. It really is. And we've been taken advantage of because others have charged us VATs. As an example, the European Union charges us 20% -- plus -- plus -- plus, a VAT tax, it's called a VAT tax, very similar, and it costs us an absolute fortune.
We are treated so badly, they don't take our cars, they don't take our farm products essentially. They don't take almost anything. And we have a tremendous deficit with the European Union, so we'll be doing something very substantial with the European Union. We're going to bring the level up to where it should be, and if you think of the European Union, then you go to NATO, it's largely the same group of countries.
Until I came along, I mean, we were paying almost 100% of NATO only to get bad trade deals, and now it's been evened out, but very unfair, having to do... It was evened out pretty good. Actually, I did a good job. They paid $440 billion if you look at the secretary general's report, and he was here recently and he said that.
He said, "One of the most amazing things I've ever seen is what President Trump was able to do with these countries of Europe," of which he was in charge of them, but he couldn't get them to pay. I went over, I said, "You got to pay, and if you don't pay, we're not going to protect you." It was very simple.
But very unfair is with Ukraine because we're in for $300 billion plus and they're in probably for $100 billion. There's a $200 billion difference and they need it more than we do. We have an ocean in between. They don't. And so they're going to have to step it up a little bit
With efforts to reduce the federal workforce, whether it's offering what we call the buyout package or other efforts, do you have any concerns that there will be employees broadly across the federal government who might take that up? And they're a part of the many different ways that agencies protect the public, from food inspections to water safety to the air traffic controls --
Sure, sure. I know, but everybody's replaceable and we'll get very good people to replace them if it turns out to be more than we thought. It could be a lot. It could be a little, we don't know, but we'd love to have them leave. We're trying to, remember this, we want them to go into the private sector. It's our dream to have everybody almost working in the private sector, not in the public sector.
We have many people. Very few people came to work. It started more or less with COVID, but actually even before COVID, but it started with the COVID. They didn't come back. And then Biden let them get away with murder, and we had a federal workforce, like 4% coming into the office and that just doesn't work.
People could say it does, but it doesn't work. You have to be unified in a group in the office. It was crazy. You don't know what they're doing. And then at some point, we may ask them to certify that they didn't have two jobs, meaning were they really getting a check from us, the government, and then were they also working a second job and a third job and on government time?
And many of them will say that they did, you know? Which is not legal, but it's a problem. It's a problem. No, we want to get that out. We want to clean it out. You know, people have been trying to reduce federal government now for 40 years, 45 years, and they haven't been able to do it, and this is a way of doing it, I think, very nicely.
It's sort of a buyout too. I think we're treating people very good, but people don't come to the office and they won't have a job starting on that very special date. So we'll see how that works out. I mean, nobody knows how that's going to turn out. Everybody might show up to the office and maybe a large number won't show up, but if they don't show up, we've accomplished a very serious goal.
We're trying to reduce government.
Does Mr. Musk or any of those associated with your DOGE effort, do they have any direct access through the government systems to how money is dispersed?
No, nothing. No, they are... This has nothing to do also with the federal cutting, with this federal cutting. This is very separate. This is if you don't show up, you don't get paid. But DOGE, I think great progress has been made. We're talking about cutting over a trillion dollars of waste. We're talking about waste.
We're not talking about we are going to love and cherish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. We're not going to do anything with that, other than if we can find some abuse or waste, we'll do something, but the people won't be affected. It'll only be more effective and better. And our country, as our country gets richer, the people on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, those people are going to be more secure.
If Biden had gotten elected, Social Security was going to fail because the country was failing. It was going to fail. The country was going to fail, and therefore their social security, Medicare, Medicaid and all of the other things that you may get would not be able to be paid. Our country's getting very strong and you see it. I think more progress has been made in the last two or three weeks than has been made in the last four years.
I think not only has more progress been made, in the last four years, it's, I'll call it, de -- progress. We went way backward as a country in so many different ways, from woke to all of the other things that took place that were so bad. You look at Afghanistan, how embarrassing that was. I think Afghanistan really started the problem with Russia and Ukraine.
When Putin looked over and he saw how incompetently that was handled, I was getting out, but I was going to keep Bagram. Right now, China has Bagram. I was going to keep one of the biggest air bases in the world. They left it. But other than Bagram, I was going to get out and I wasn't keeping Bagram for Afghanistan, I was keeping it for China because it's one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons and we were keeping it. So we have a lot of great things happening in our country and we appreciate that you're here, and I'm really thrilled about Doug and I'm really thrilled about his friend, Chris Wright, who's a legend in the oil business.
Right? They keep telling me, Catherine, he's like a legend, and he's a legend too in a lot of businesses, and we have an amazing group of people working with us. There's a man behind me who became a tremendous success. He was not a wealthy man. He didn't start off a wealthy man, and he ended up a wealthy man, and that's a great talent and he's willing to sacrifice so much and to put it to work for our country.
Watch the job he does on the interior, but in particular, on really making our country very, very wealthy by utilizing it properly, and at the same time, environmentally, he does it very... He's very much an environmentalist. He's going to do it very carefully and very painstakingly good, but you just watch what happens.
And working with the Department of Energy where his compatriot, his friend, and also consider the most talented man in the oil business is the head of the Department of Energy and they work together. It's almost like a partnership. It really is a partnership and watch what that does for our country. It'll be a fantastic thing to see.
Thank you very much, everybody.
All right, guys. Thank you. Thank you, friends. Thank you, friends. We're headed out.
On Tulsi Gabbard --
We're headed out. Thank you. Thanks, guys. We're headed out. Here we go. Thank you, friends. Thank you, friends. Let's go, let's go. Let's go! Let's move it out. Heading out, friends. Thank you. We're going.