Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump defended his tariffs on the EU.
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00from the people of our country.
00:01Mr. President, on tariffs, you made clear you're not backing down from this, but many
00:05American small business owners say they are concerned that these tariffs are going to
00:08hurt them.
00:09What's your message to them?
00:10They're going to be so much richer than they are right now.
00:14And we have many yesterday.
00:16General Motors was in.
00:17They want to invest $60 billion.
00:21The people from Facebook were in yesterday.
00:24They're going to invest 60 billion by the end of the year.
00:27Other people are talking about numbers.
00:30Apple, as you know, a few days ago, announced $500 billion investment.
00:35They're going to build their plants in the United States, which, as you know, almost
00:40all of their plants are in China.
00:42Now they're building in the United States.
00:43Nobody.
00:44I was like, look, the reason is two things.
00:48Number one, the election, November 5th.
00:50And the other thing is tariffs, I think probably in that order.
00:54But Tim Cook came in and he announced 500.
00:59Think of it, 500 billion, not million, 500 million is a lot when you think about it.
01:04Right.
01:05So I would have been happy with 500 million, but it's 500 billion dollar investment by
01:08Apple in the United States.
01:10And that's because of the election result.
01:12And it's because of the tariffs and the tax incentives to, you know, tariffs and tax incentives.
01:19And I've never seen anything like it.
01:20We have plants going up now in Indiana.
01:24We have plants going up in Michigan.
01:25A lot of plants going to be planned for.
01:27I'm trying to steer them to Michigan because Michigan got so badly beaten by, you know,
01:32what happened with Europe.
01:33You know, if you look at Europe, take a look at the EU.
01:37We're not allowed to sell cars there.
01:39It's prohibitive because of their policies and also their non-monetary tariffs.
01:45That's they put obstacles in your way that you can do nothing about.
01:49But if you take a look at what happened.
01:50So we sell no cars to Europe.
01:52I mean, virtually no cars.
01:55And they sell millions of cars to us.
01:56They don't take our agriculture.
01:58We take their.
01:59It's like a one way street with them.
02:01The European Union is very, very nasty.
02:04They sue our companies.
02:05Apple was forced to pay 16 billion dollars on a case that like very much like my cases
02:12that I want.
02:13They shouldn't have been even cases, but we felt they had no case and they ended up having
02:18an extremely favorable judge and decision decision.
02:22But they're suing Google.
02:23They're suing Facebook.
02:24They're suing all of these companies.
02:27And they're taking billions of dollars out of American companies, many more than the
02:30ones I just mentioned.
02:32And I guess they're using it to run Europe or something.
02:35I don't know what they're using it for, but they treat they treat us very badly.
02:39China obviously treats us very badly.
02:43Almost everybody does.
02:44And I blame past presidents, to be honest, because when I was president, I we received
02:50so far about 700 billion dollars from China over the years on the tariffs that I put in.
02:55No other president got 10 cents from China.
02:58And that was only beginning, except for covid.
03:01It would have I would have been able to finish the process process.
03:03But we had to fight the covid thing and we did really well with it.
03:07But we had to fight.
03:08We had actually, as you remember, Mark, we actually handed over the stock market.
03:14It was higher than just previous to covid coming in, which is sort of a miracle, frankly.
03:19We did a good job.
03:20But the tariffs are very important.
03:23And I think the psychology, there's great spirit.
03:26When Mark came in, he said, congratulations, there's a whole new spirit.
03:29There's a whole new light over this country and really over the world, because you have
03:33somebody that a whole group of people, really, because I talk about this whole group that
03:39we know what we're doing and a lot of great things are happening.
03:42But I've never seen investment like this.
03:44Trillions of dollars is being invested in the United States now that would have never
03:48our country could have failed another four years at this.
03:52What happened in the last four years, our country would have been a crime ridden mess.
03:56And I don't know if you noticed a little thing they call it, but it's not a little thing
04:00if you don't have if you like eggs and you don't have a lot of money.
04:04Eggs have gone down 25 percent in the last couple of weeks.
04:10We inherited that problem.
04:12Eggs, groceries have gone down a little bit.
04:16Energy's gone down.
04:17Do you want to speak to that for a second, Governor?
04:20Would you just say a couple of words, you and Chris, about energy?
04:24What's happened?
04:25Well, happy to.
04:26But I think that Chris and I just came from Sarah Week, which is the largest conference
04:30in the world.
04:31So global leaders, people from the E.U., officials from all the energy producing countries
04:37all there and all the global nationals, all the U.S.
04:41The spirit of that group is through the roof because now they realize that in the United
04:46States that President Trump's policies are pro-developing more energy as opposed to we're
04:52trying to shut down energy.
04:53And that pro-growth, pro-business, pro-energy approach is giving people the optimism.
04:59So then the markets are reacting to that and energy prices on the futures market are
05:02going to go down because people know we're not going to be killing off the energy we
05:06need for prosperity in all of our countries, but also for peace because people have used
05:12energy to fuel these wars that President Trump is working so hard to end.
05:17And we know that energy, high energy prices were driving the inflation that he talked
05:20about.
05:21So it accomplishes two goals for us, which is prosperity for the world, peace for the
05:25world when we have smart energy policies and President Trump has brought common sense
05:30back to how we think about energy.
05:32And it's brought down now $65 a barrel I saw this morning.
05:36That's phenomenal news and that's going to break.
05:38That's what brought it up.
05:40The energy went, they took our beautiful energy policies and they just messed them up.
05:44And then they went immediately back to them because, but by that time they lost it.
05:48They lost that Bronco as the expression goes.
05:51Chris, do you have something to say?
05:53I think Doug said it well.
05:55You just can't overstate how important the return of common sense, the return of knowledge
06:00about energy and pro American consumers, pro investment in our country.
06:05I think globally that was welcomed means capital flows.
06:09It means more sobriety and lower energy prices, more economic opportunity for Americans.
06:14So yeah, it was elated atmosphere at a global energy conference.
06:18Well, we're working on one project.
06:20It should be very easy.
06:22It's a pipeline going through a small section of New York.
06:26New York's held it up for years, actually for years.
06:29They wanted to do it for years and years and it will reduce the most expensive energy almost
06:35in the world is in New England because they have no way of getting it there because it's
06:40been held up by New York and uh, the whole of New England and Connecticut and New York.
06:45The energy prices are through the roof and this one pipeline will save for per family
06:50$2,500 just on heating and another $2,500 on everything else.
06:57So the energy by just a simple pipeline going through an area that wants it, an area that's
07:02not a rich area.
07:03It's actually a very poor area would create jobs and everything else.
07:07And it's going to be way underground.
07:08Nobody's going to see it once they fill it up.
07:10Nobody's going to see it.
07:11Nobody's going to know it's there.
07:12And families in New York and Connecticut and New England are going to save $5,000 a family.
07:20Think of that because right now they have the highest energy prices maybe in the world.
07:24They say New England is a disaster.
07:26So we're working on that.
07:27In fact, the governor is coming in, governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, who's a very nice
07:32woman.
07:33She's coming in tomorrow morning at nine o'clock to meet me on that and other things.
07:38Not only that, but other things.
07:40So I hope we don't have to use the extraordinary powers of the federal government to get it
07:44done.
07:45But if we have to, we will.
07:47But I don't think we'll have to.
07:48I can tell you Connecticut wants it and all of New England wants it.
07:52And who wouldn't want it?
07:53And it's also jobs on top of everything else.
07:56So that's going to be very exciting.
07:58So we're meeting with the governor tomorrow morning.