Soon after US President Donald Trump unexpectedly reversed his stand on the controversial "reciprocal" tariffs on Wednesday—announcing a 90-day delay for most affected countries, with the exception of China—reporters questioned him about the reason behind his change of heart.
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00:00Thinking about why you decided to put a 90-day pause.
00:04Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line.
00:08They were getting yippee, you know.
00:10They were getting a little bit yippee, a little bit afraid, unlike these champions.
00:15Because we have a big job to do.
00:17No other president would have done what I did.
00:19No other president.
00:19I know the presidents.
00:20They wouldn't have done it.
00:22And it had to be done.
00:23What was happening to us on trade, not only with, you know, if you look at it,
00:28not only with China, but China was by far the biggest abuser in history.
00:33And others also.
00:34But somebody had to do it.
00:37They had to stop because it was not sustainable.
00:39Last year, China made $1 trillion off trade with the United States.
00:44That's not right.
00:46And now I've reversed it.
00:47It's for a short period of time.
00:49But we made $2 billion.
00:52We're making now $2 billion a day.
00:54And somebody had to do it.
00:58Roger actually said it.
00:59Charles Schwab was here a little while ago, one of the great financial people.
01:03And he said he's been waiting for 40 years for somebody to do what I did over the last month.
01:10And if you didn't do it, you wouldn't have a country.
01:13It wouldn't be sustainable.
01:13So I'm honored to have done it.
01:16And, you know, look, nothing's over yet.
01:18But we have a tremendous amount of spirit from other countries, including China.
01:23China wants to make a deal.
01:24They just don't know how quite to go about it.
01:26You know, it's one of those things.
01:27They don't know how quite proud people.
01:31And President Xi's a proud man.
01:33I know him very well.
01:34And they don't know quite how to go about it.
01:36But they'll figure it out.
01:37They're in the process of figuring it out.
01:39But they want to make a deal.
01:40And we have many other countries, as you know, many more than 75.
01:47And they all want to come.
01:48And they want to come here or they'll go to commerce or they'll go to treasury.
01:52We have our great senators here and congressmen.
01:56They'll call John.
01:57They'll do somebody.
01:58They'll go through somebody.
01:59But they're all calling.
02:00How do we do this?
02:01They all want to make a deal.
02:03Somebody had to do what we did.
02:04And I did a 90-day pause for the people that didn't retaliate.
02:08Because I told them, if you retaliate, we're going to double it.
02:11And that's what I did with China, because they did retaliate.
02:15So we'll see how it all works out.
02:16I think it's going to work out amazing.
02:18I think that our country is going to be at the end of a year or shorter.
02:22But I think we're going to have something that nobody would have dreamt possible.
02:27A man like Roger Penske, I don't want to get him in trouble with China, so I won't.
02:31But he would know that someday you have to cut the bow and you have to do what you have to do.
02:37Right, Roger?
02:38And that's what I did.
02:39And I'm very happy to have done it.
02:40Yeah, Mr. President, um, was there any...