Trump Defends Tariffs On EU: 'The European Union Is Very, Very Nasty'

8 hours ago

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump defended his tariffs on the EU.

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Transcript

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.

Trump Defends Tariffs On EU: 'The European Union Is Very, Very Nasty'

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