Read the full transcript of President Donald Trump’s press conference on Russia, Ukraine War, Tariffs & Jobs Report from the Oval Office, [March 7, 2025].
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Opening Remarks and Jobs Report Discussion
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] November 5th. So a lot of these people, they listen to us speak and they say, well, I’m gonna gear up and they’re gearing up. And so they’ve been gearing up. They’ve had a little time. It’s not just five weeks, it’s five weeks plus a few months. And they put it into effect pretty quickly. They have confidence that what I’m saying is gonna happen.
So with that, I’d like to ask a highly respected gentleman, Kevin Hassett, he’s been with us for a long time and he’s been right about a lot. We had the greatest economy in history in the first term and Kevin was a big part of it. So Kevin, could you maybe give a little description, please?
[KEVIN HASSETT:] Thank you very much, Mr. President. I think that the three things that you emphasized during the campaign is that you wanted to create domestic high-paying manufacturing jobs, that you wanted to end wasteful government spending and reduce the unproductive government workers. And in fact, at least move them into the private economy where they could be more productive and to create jobs for Americans.
A lot of people said that if you deported illegals, employment would go down because no Americans would take those jobs. And if you look, 280,000 American-born folks were hired, manufacturing jobs are going up. And this is just out of the expectation of your future policies, really, sir. It’s in April when your Reciprocal Trade Act is expected to happen, the tax cuts haven’t passed yet. And so people are clearly expecting the golden age.
And if you wanna forecast the future numbers, everybody, just keep in mind that President Trump has already gotten us 1.7 trillion in commitments of new factories. And those haven’t even happened yet. Those aren’t even in the numbers. And so I expect that this is gonna be a glimpse of the golden age to come, sir.
Addressing Trade Imbalances with Canada
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] Thank you very much. One other thing, in Canada, you know, we find that they’re charging us over 200% for dairy products. You know about that. And when I left, we had that well taken care of, but under Biden, they just kept raising it. Very difficult to deal with the Canadian representatives.
250% for dairy products, tariff. So where do you hear that? You don’t hear that. They have a tremendously high tariff, give you the exact numbers in a little while coming out, on lumber. So they sell this lumber. They have a tremendous tariff. They make it impossible for us to sell lumber or dairy products into Canada. But our numbers are a tiny fraction of that, almost non-existent.
And what we’re doing is freeing up our forests from the environmental nonsense that they put on them. Well, you can’t cut down a tree. And we have to cut down trees in order to build the firewalls and those trees are sold, but we’re freeing it up on an emergency basis because Canada has been ripping us off for years on tariffs for lumber and for dairy products.
250%, nobody ever talks about that. 250% tariff, which is taking advantage of our farmers. So that’s not going to happen anymore. We’re going to be, they’ll be met with the exact same tariff unless they drop it. And that’s what reciprocal means.
And we may do it as early as today or we’ll wait until Monday or Tuesday, but that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to charge the same thing. It’s not fair, never has been fair. And they’ve treated our farmers badly.
Global Trade Relationships and Economic Strategy
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] Look, our country has been ripped off by everybody. That stops now. I had it stopped in my first term and we’re going to really stop it now because this has been very unfair. Our country from an economic standpoint, a financial standpoint and a trade standpoint has been absolutely ripped off by almost every country in the world.
Canada, Mexico, and then you just go right down the line. India charges us massive tariffs, massive. You can’t even sell anything into India. It’s almost restrictive. It is restrictive. We do very little business inside. They’ve agreed, by the way, they want to cut their tariffs way down now because somebody is finally exposing them for what they’ve done.
And same thing with China, same thing with a lot of other countries. And the EU has been a terrible abuser of this country. I mean, the EU was formulated in order to take advantage of the United States. And they have taken it, but they’re not taking advantage when I’m in charge.
So sometimes you’ll hear some negative things. It’s always from outside countries. America will be very strong. And if I’m a foreign country, they’re going to do fine, but they can’t do like they used to do because we’re going to bring back our business into this country. We need it from a job standpoint. We need it from even just a psychological standpoint.
Think of it, 90,000 factories are gone since the beginning of NAFTA. So we’re not going to have that. And we’re going to see them build it back.
Automobile and Semiconductor Manufacturing
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] Now we have, we’ve already had five major automobile companies. First time you’ve heard this in a long time, since my first term, actually, where we were really rocking and rolling. And then Biden came in and he stopped everything, like such a stupid thing to do, not even a believable thing.
But we have many auto plants now coming in. We have big chip plants. The biggest chip company in the world, most powerful, probably one of the most powerful companies in the world. When you say Kevin and he’s coming in and they’re building one of the largest chip plants in the world, that’ll be done in Arizona, mostly in Arizona.
And that’ll give us a big percentage.
One plant will give us a big percentage of the chip market, something we have very little of. You know, we used to have Intel, and Intel was run by a man named Andy Grove. And Andy Grove was a tough, smart guy. I used to read about him when I was a young man, and he did an incredible job. He really dominated the chip business.
And then he died, and I guess they had a series of people that didn’t know what the hell they were doing. And we gradually lost the chip business, and now it’s almost exclusively in Taiwan. They stole it from us. They took it from us. And I don’t blame them. I give them credit. I blame the people that were sitting in this seat, because they allowed it to happen. We could have protected that so easily.
So we had the chip business, and now it’s all in Taiwan, almost exclusively, a little bit in South Korea, but mostly in Taiwan. And it’s very important. Everything you do, everything you touch is now about chips. The brake of a car, cars have chips all over the place. I was reading an article the other day where they talk about the brakes of a car are loaded up with chips. Who would think that a brake has a chip in it? But it’s all about chips.
So that was a big thing. And they’ll be investing hundreds of billions of dollars in this country, and we’ll be taking back a big, big portion of that industry. We have others coming in, too. But a lot of car manufacturers are coming in, and they’re coming in fast.
And one of the reasons you see these numbers, and again, Kevin said it, and I said it a little bit, but the fact that they know I won the election, so after I was president-elect, they assumed that I was gonna do what I said, because they do what I say. And so these numbers really reflect a lot of things that took place since November 5th, right?
So, Kevin, thank you very much. Great job.
Any questions?
Questions from Reporters
[REPORTER:] Mr. President, how concerned are you that the large-scale federal government layoffs will weaken the labor market?
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] How concerned are you? The large-scale fence and all what?
[REPORTER:] That federal government layoffs will impact the labor market, will weaken the labor market.
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] No, I think the labor market’s gonna be fantastic, but it’s gonna have high-paying manufacturing jobs as opposed to government jobs. We had too many people in government. You can’t just do that. We had many, many, too many. This is for 40 years. You know, this isn’t just now. This built up and got worse and worse, and they just hire more and more people.
You look at Department of Education, it seems like so many buildings. I ride by, it says Department of Education. They’re all over the place. And we don’t even want it. We want the education to be given by the states. It’ll be much better. It’ll move…
[REPORTER:] Mr. President, I want to ask you about the joint address. Millions of Americans watched your joint address earlier this week where you warned that there could be a little disturbance that Americans could feel as a function of these taxes, these tariffs. How much disturbance are you willing to accept in the near term as a function of that? And how long should Americans expect things to cost a bit more?
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] Well, so far, Peter, there hasn’t been very much because these numbers are coming out. We’re here for just a little over four weeks, and these are fantastic numbers. I was watching some of the reports this morning. They were surprised. There could be some disturbance, a little bit of disturbance. I solved a little bit of that because I have respect for our auto companies, and I gave them a little bit of a one-month reprieve because it was unfair, although I’m sure they’ll take advantage of it. I see they’re driving a lot of cars into the U.S. to try and avoid the tariffs and taking advantage of it a little bit, but they called me, they asked me, they said, could they have a little bit of help? And I decided, you know, they’re American companies, USMCA, and I let them have that.
But this really kicks in, the reciprocals, you know, kicks in on, let’s see, I guess the second, and I wanted it to be the first so badly. It just didn’t want to be on April Fool’s Day, so I made it the second. That’s going to cost a lot of money. That one day is going to cost a lot of money, but that’s okay. But I don’t see it. I don’t see anything. I see good reports. I think we’re going to have good numbers from the beginning.
Now, globalists won’t love this because this brings jobs back to America. So if they’re coming back to America, maybe you’ll lose some in other parts of the world, but the other parts of the world have done very well and they’ll continue to do very well. But I think the United States is going to be doing record. This will bring back a lot of those 90,000 factories that have been lost over the last number of years. It’s hard to believe. Think of what 90,000 is. 90,000 plants and factories are gone. We’re going to bring back many of those plants and factories.
[REPORTER:] One day the tariffs are on, the next day they’re off right now. The markets, as you know well, prefer stability. Are you done going forward with the pauses and the carve-outs? Is that it for those?
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] There’ll always be changes and adjustments. And you know, you can’t just, I could have, for instance, told the American car companies, “No, I’m not going to give you anything.” And then you wouldn’t have had to say, well, they’re getting a little extra. It’s just a little bit of a one-month reprieve. They’re very happy about what’s happening. They won’t have to go across borders. And you see the zigzag, and you have a fender made in Canada. You have something else made in Mexico. We don’t want that. We want it made here.
But there’ll always be some modifications. I mean, if you have a wall in front of you, sometimes you have to go around the wall instead of through it. But I think very little. I think very little. On occasion, if we can do something, we want to help companies. We want to help companies create jobs. So I could have left that, and you wouldn’t have had a minor change. Instead, I was asked by the majors, the real majors, the big majors, if they could do this. And I said, yeah, I’ll do it. I want you to produce a lot of jobs. And numerous of the people, actually all of the people I spoke to have already been, they’re very much on the way to Oregon. That’s why you have auto jobs increase.
And the man, I don’t know him, Sean Fane. I don’t know him, but, and I did great, as you know, with the autoworkers, with the Teamsters, with unions, I did fantastically well. Best numbers ever by a Republican. But, and I have a lot of respect for those people. But Sean Fane, who I don’t know, but wasn’t a supporter, although the autoworkers were big supporters. I watched him last night, and he said, Donald Trump is absolutely right on tariffs. He said, what he’s doing on tariffs is an incredible thing. And it’s about time somebody had the guts to do it, because we’re going to save auto manufacturing.
And I said to people when I was campaigning, you’re going to have so many auto jobs, you’re not going to believe what’s going to happen. We’re going to load up Michigan. I won the state of Michigan, as you know. And part of the reason I won it was I got a lot of autoworkers that voted for me, Detroit, et cetera. But I think people are going to be very surprised.
The CHIPS Act
[REPORTER:] Thank you, Mr. President. You mentioned in your remarks, chips manufacturing, how a significant percentage is now in Taiwan. You also mentioned it in your address to Congress. And you called on Congress to overturn the CHIPS Act, which had bipartisan support in the last Congress. Why would you like to see this particular law overturned?
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] Because it’s hundreds of billions of dollars, and it’s just a waste of money. Now, some people have already taken the money and used it. Actually, it’s very hard to qualify, because they go by race, they go by gender, they go by all sorts of things. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. You won’t be able to find those people. So I don’t even think anybody can qualify. They have so many different categories in order to qualify. You have to have so many of a certain race, a certain gender, a certain this, a certain, and it’s, I don’t think they can qualify.
But if they take the money, they better qualify, because they’ll be watching them. But it’s a tremendous waste of money. I didn’t give the greatest chip company in the world, one of the greatest companies, I didn’t give them 10 cents. They came here because of tariffs, because they didn’t want to pay the tariffs. And they also came here because they like the results of the election, because they know that I’m very pro-business and pro-jobs. I mean, I’m pro-business, not for business sake, I’m pro-business because of jobs, because business is producing the jobs.
Russia and Ukraine
[REPORTER:] You were first on Russia, if I may. President Putin is bombing Ukraine.
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] Yeah.
[REPORTER:] Do you believe him when he tells you that you won’t speak?
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] You know, I believe him, I believe him. I think we’re doing very well with Russia. But right now, they’re bombing the hell out of Ukraine, and Ukraine… I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. And they don’t have the cards. They don’t have the cards.
As you know, we’re meeting in Saudi Arabia sometime next week, early. And we’re talking. I find that in terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier dealing with Russia, which is surprising because they have all the cards. And they’re bombing the hell out of them right now. And I put a statement in, a very strong statement. Can’t do that. Can’t do that. We’re trying to help them. And Ukraine has to get on the ball and get a job done.
Michael, could you come up here? I see Michael back there. Good. I’m glad. He’s traveling all over the world. I just saw him come in the door. Could you give a little definition of what’s going on, please?
[MICHAEL WALTZ:] Sure. Well, the president has been crystal clear, and he’s been clear to all sides. The fighting has to stop. Both sides need to get to the table. We had a good engagement. Both leaders have said only President Trump could do so, and only he has been able to do so. We had an initial engagement with the Russians. The Ukrainians had a great opportunity to bind our economies together through that mineral deal. Unfortunately, that didn’t go so well. But we think we’re going to get things back on track. Secretary Rubio, myself, and the Ukrainian delegation will be meeting in Saudi Arabia next week to get these talks back on track, get a ceasefire in place, and drive peace home under President Trump’s leadership.
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] I think both parties want to settle. I think if I wasn’t president, this war would have had no chance of settlement, zero chance. But I think we’re going to get it settled and stopped. We’ve got to stop. They’re losing, on average, 2,000 soldiers a week. That’s a lot of soldiers. Do you agree, Peter? It’s a lot of soldiers on both sides.
[PETER NAVARRO:] I agree.
[REPORTER:] Do you, Mr. President, think that Vladimir Putin is taking advantage of the U.S. pause right now on intelligence and military aid to Ukraine?
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] I actually think he’s doing what anybody else would do. I think he wants to get it stopped and settled, and I think he’s hitting them harder than he’s been hitting them. And I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now. He wants to get it ended, and I think Ukraine wants to get it ended, but I don’t see it. It’s crazy. They’re taking tremendous punishment. I don’t quite get it, but I suspect, Michael, he probably wants to get it ended.
[MICHAEL WALTZ:] He does, Mr. President. The Russians are taking incredible losses on the front, as the president has said. This is a meat grinder of people, of material, of national treasure. And no one else has any solutions except to let this war continue forever. But I’ll add, the president has had multiple conversations and a visit from President Macron of France, Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom. We have the NATO Secretary General coming next week. We have this meeting with the Ukrainians. We’ve had it with the Russians. All of this in the president’s first month and his leadership. We will engage in the shuttle diplomacy, and we will continue to use his leadership and what leverage we have to get both sides of the peace table. It’s not going to be easy, but President Trump…
On Broader Policy Issues
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] This war should have never happened. It would have never happened if I were president. But it did happen, so a lot of other things shouldn’t have happened, too. We shouldn’t have 21 million people pouring into our country through open borders, many of whom are criminals, very bad criminals, including murderers, thousands of murderers. Many killed far more than one person, and they’re roaming our streets. But Tom Holman and Kristi Noem are doing an incredible job, and we’re getting them out of here. And we’ll get them out. We’ll get them all out.
But all these things shouldn’t have happened. We shouldn’t have inflation. We shouldn’t have had this horrible inflation where the prices have gone up. Look at AIKS. So we’re doing… We’re doing a good job. We’re doing a good job.
[REPORTER:] Mr. President, in regards to the pause on military assistance to Ukraine, you put out on your social media posts today that Russia is pounding Ukraine.
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] That’s right.
[REPORTER:] Why not provide Ukraine with air defenses? And what happens, Mr. President, when Ukraine runs out of…
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] Well, because you… Yeah, yeah. Good question. Because I have to know that they want to settle. I don’t know that they want to settle. If they don’t want to settle, we’re out of there, because we want them to settle. And I’m doing it to stop debt, more important than anything else. Because, generally, way down the line is the money. So we’re in for $350 billion, and Europe is in for $100 billion. They should be in for the same or more than us. And you know, I watched over the last week or so what’s going on in Europe. This thing could end up in World War III if we don’t get it settled. This could really end up in a World War III. We got to get it settled.
[REPORTER:] How confident are you that the Iranians will negotiate with you? And is Israel on board with the hostage?
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] Yeah, I saw the hostages the other day. They came in, people that were not young, some young and some older, much older. And they gave… It was hard for them to do it, actually. They gave statements as to what happened. I was asking, what happened? How was it? I said, did you see anybody in there that was kind? Like, out of the hundreds of people that you were seeing, Hamas. Did some of them wink at you and say, don’t worry, you’re going to be okay? Or give you a piece of bread? No.
I said, were there any people that were, like, kind? I was shocked. The answer was, nobody. There was nobody. Just the opposite. They’d be slapped and punched. One man broke his ribs. He couldn’t breathe for a month. It was brutal. I was so surprised. Did you think there’d be a couple of people that would be kind? That would say, you’re going to be okay. But they had none of that. It’s pretty amazing.
Brian? He’s a kind person. Although not to Zelensky, he wasn’t. But to Trump, he’s been good. Go ahead.
[REPORTER BRIAN:] Thank you. Thank you. I like yours, too. Two questions. One on peace. Why don’t you think any other European countries are offering a peace deal? It seems like no one’s come to the table for peace except for you.
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] Yeah. It’s a very good question. Sometimes questions are answerable. They’re in a very unusual position. They don’t know how to end the war. I think I do know how to end the war. Despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, I’ve always had a good relationship with Putin. And, you know, he wants to end the war. He wants to end it. And I think he’s going to be more generous than he has to be. And that’s pretty good. That means a lot of good things.
Because, frankly, you could have made a great deal. If this war never started, you could have made a great deal. I don’t know that anything would have had to be given up. This was not a war that was going to start, Brian. And it didn’t start. For four years, somebody said, well, how do we know that? Well, for four years, it didn’t start. I used to speak to Vladimir about it. I used to speak to him about it at length. It was the apple of his eye. But there was no way he was going in. And he knew there were going to be consequences.
But it did start. I mean, think of what happened. Inflation. You have the war with Ukraine and Russia. That wouldn’t have happened. October 7th would have never happened. Israel had no money. Iran had no money. Iran was stone cold broke. And now they have a lot of money. But that’s going to be the next thing you’ll be talking about is Iran. What’s going to happen with Iran. And there will be some interesting days ahead. That’s all I can tell you.
You know, we’re down to final strokes with Iran. That’s going to be an interesting time. And we’ll see what happens. But we’re down to the final moments. We’re at final moments. Can’t let them have a nuclear weapon. I think that I would have had a deal with it one month after the rigged election of 2020. They were all set to make a deal. And then when I lost, I saw this person who’s a stupid person, very stupid person. And they said, let’s not make a deal. And they were right. He took the sanctions off. They became rich under Biden. They went from having no money to having $300 billion. All in a short period of time. It’s oil. Oil builds up fast. It’s a nice living if you have a nice oil well. And they do. They have a lot of nice oil wells, right?
So anyway, it’s going to be a big thing. It’s an interesting time in the history of the world. But we have a situation with Iran that something’s going to happen very soon. Very, very soon. You’ll be talking about that pretty soon, I guess. And hopefully we can have a peace deal. I’m not speaking out of strength or weakness. I’m just
[REPORTER:] Saying I’d rather see a peace deal than the other. But the other will solve the problem. Your allies are calling on you to pardon Derek Chauvin. Are you considering pardoning Derek Chauvin?
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] No, I haven’t even heard about it.
[REPORTER:] Mr. President, on peace.
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] I haven’t heard that.
On Nobel Peace Prize Nomination
[REPORTER:] In the first term, you may recall, I broke the news that you were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. And the reason for that was the work that you led on the Abraham Accords. I spoke yesterday with a member of parliament, the Norwegian parliament, that nominated you. And he said what the Nobel Committee is looking for from you, Mr. President, is security guarantees for Ukraine. Is that a possibility, Mr. President?
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] So, before I even think about that, I want to settle the war. Get it finished. Because if I’m not here, nobody’s going to settle it. And President Macron has said that. And every president, everybody said that. The prime ministers and presidents were pushing very hard. That’s all I’m thinking about now. As far as the question about security later, that’s the easy part. The hard part is getting it settled.
We’ve got to get them. We’re losing 2,000 human beings every week. More than that, actually. 2,000 nice young, although they’re getting older because they’re drafting much older now. In the case of one country, much older. Because a lot of the young people have been killed. It’s very sad, and I’d like to see if I could stop that.
On Financial Support for Ukraine
And I’d like to also see if we could stop making these massive payments from the United States. I mean, Biden gave away money like it was water. With no anything. Got nothing for it. Europe did it in the form of a loan. They get their money back. We don’t. So, that’s how we came up with the rare earth deal. But we started, you know, behind the eight ball. He could have gone to Europe. He could have said, come on, you’ve got to put up money with us. You’ve got to put up money with us. But he never did that. They just kept handing money out. Because he was grossly incompetent.
