Read the full transcript of President Donald Trump remarks on tariffs on the auto industry at a news conference from the Oval Office, March 26, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Trump Announces 25% Tariff on Foreign-Made Cars and Trucks
DONALD TRUMP: And basically, as you know, and as you’ve been saying, not reporting as accurately as it should be reported, because it’s a massive story. Business is coming back to the United States so that they don’t have to pay tariffs. And I think also because of November 5th, the election, they’re very happy. AI is coming back to levels that nobody’s ever seen before. It’s a new sort of business, I guess, when you think about it. But plans are going up all over the United States, and many of them have already been started.
We’re getting early electricity taking care of. We’re getting permits very quickly for them, and we’re going to make their life very happy. They’re coming in with tens of billions of dollars. Individual plants will cost 10, 15, 20 billion dollars. We’re going to let them build electricity generating plants along with their plant, and they can’t even believe it. And we’re going to get very quick permits, as I’ve done always. I did that in Louisiana with two LNG plants. I got them one permit in one day after waiting 14 years and the other one in one week after waiting for 12 years.
Automobile Industry Growth
But this is very exciting to me. This is the automobile industry, and this will continue to spur growth like you haven’t seen. Before I was elected, we were losing all of our plants that were being built in Mexico and Canada and other places. Now those plants largely have stopped, and they’re moving them to our country in Indiana, the great state of Indiana. I love Indiana. Honda is building one of the biggest plants anywhere, and they’ve just started. They wouldn’t have done it without this. In all cases, they wouldn’t have done it without what we’re doing.
So we’ll effectively be charging a 25 percent tariff. But if you build your car in the United States, there is no tariff. And what that means is a lot of foreign car companies, a lot of companies are going to be in great shape because they’ve already built their plant. But their plants are underutilized, so they’ll be able to expand them inexpensively and quickly. But others will come into our country and build, and they’re already looking for sites. They’re looking for mostly sites. They don’t want to take the old buildings that are empty and falling down. They want to build new. And there’s tremendous action.
Semiconductor Manufacturing
There is likewise for other companies and countries like the chipmaking process. Your chip bill was a disaster done by Biden. All he does is give tremendous amounts of billions of dollars to chip companies that will do nothing with the money. They’re not going to use the money here. They’re just going to keep it. They have plenty of money. The one thing they have is they have a lot of money.
In our case, all we’re doing is saying you can’t come in unless you build here. And the largest chip company by far is manufactured from Taiwan is building here. And it will give us almost 40 percent of the chip market just with that. They’re spending almost 200 billion dollars in the United States to build a plant, and they’ve almost started. They’ll be doing much of the work in Arizona. So we have a lot of exciting things. But to me, this is one of the most exciting.
Now, outside of one specific day, and that’s Liberation Day, that’s the real Liberation Day of America. And that’s going to be on April 2nd. And I look forward to it. We’ll have a little news conference. We’ll talk about it. But this is very exciting.
Executive Order on Automobile Industry
So we’re signing an executive order today that’s going to lead to tremendous growth in the automobile industry. As you know, the electric mandate that we did allows you to buy a car now electric or gasoline-powered or hybrid. You can buy any car you want. We had it so that within a short period of time, you had to buy all electric. And the country could never get — they could never provide the money necessary to build all of those power plants that you would need all over the country.
As you know, in the Middle West, they built eight power stations. That’s like — the size of this desk or smaller. And they ended up spending $9 billion on eight. And of the eight, four of them didn’t work. And we’re not doing that. So you can buy electric or you can buy gasoline or you can buy hybrid or you can buy whatever you want to buy. And that’s the way it should be. The market’s going to determine that.
And you’re going to see prices going down, but it’s going to go down specifically because they’re going to buy what we’re doing, incentivizing companies and even countries, but companies to come into America and build. And we’re already setting records for new plants. I think the new plant number, the tally is just within a period of a few weeks. It’s very large. I want to be accurate. It’s very large.
And I’d like to ask Will just to come and give some of the basics, and then I’ll sign it. And it’s off to the races. I think our automobile business will flourish like it’s never flourished before. Yes, please, Will.
Details of the Tariff Proclamation
WILL: Thank you, sir. As you stated, we’ve prepared for your attention a proclamation imposing a 25 percent tariff on foreign-made cars and light trucks. This is in addition to tariffs that are already in place on those goods. In addition to, as you said, spurring increased domestic manufacture of cars and trucks, we expect that these tariffs will result in over $100 billion of new annual revenue to the United States of America in tariff revenue.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think ultimately we could probably — anywhere from $600 billion to a trillion dollars will be taken in over the relatively short-term period, meaning a year from now.
But starting right away, starting right away, I think we’ll go from $600 to a trillion within two years. And I think we’ll be very — I mean, right from the beginning, we’re going to be at a very high number, right from the beginning. And right from the beginning, you’re going to have a lot of construction jobs, but you’re also going to have a lot of automobile jobs. So this is very exciting.
Additional Tariff Plans
But it’s also exciting because of what’s happening with other aspects. We’re going to be doing tariffs on pharmaceuticals in order to bring our pharmaceutical industry back. We don’t make anything here for — in terms of drugs, medical drugs, different types of drugs that you need, medicines. It’s in other countries. Largely made in China. A lot of it made in Ireland. Ireland was very smart. We love Ireland. But we’re going to have that.
We’re going to have lumber. We’re going to free up some of our land. And you’ll be able to meet a lot of other standards, like fire cuts. If Los Angeles had fire cuts, which they didn’t have — that’s a gap of half a football field between areas, you wouldn’t have had the fires. They would have been contained. But you have fire cuts. And, by the way, you sell that wood for a lot of money, a lot of profit that’s made from that. But we’re going to be doing lumber. We’re freeing up our land so that people can — so that we don’t have to use outside sources of lumber.
Energy Policy
Energy, we’re doing fantastically well at. You know, the energy prices have been coming down rapidly as we increase supply, and we’ve already done that. We have — Chris and Doug are doing a fantastic job on that. That’s the Department of Energy and Department of Interior. And they’re working together hand-in-hand because Interior has the land and Energy has the ability to do the drilling and do what they have to do.
Our coal areas are going to be opened up for clean, beautiful coal. Germany is opening up many coal plants now. You know, they tried the wind and it didn’t work. They almost went out of business. They almost went bankrupt. They tried wind, which is a disaster because it’s too expensive and it doesn’t look good. It kills all the birds. A lot of problems.
But Germany is now building a lot of coal plants. China is building one a week. Think of that. And they’re using coal, which is very powerful. Coal is a very powerful energy. And we’re opening up our coal mines again, and we’re going to do — I call it beautiful, clean coal. The technology is so good now that coal can give you tremendous power. At the same time, it can be very clean.
Obviously, doing oil and gas and various other things. You can do pretty much whatever you want. We don’t like the wind because we think it ruins the landscapes, the plains. Ruins them. And it’s got a lot of problems. It’s also the most — by far, the most expensive energy. It looks horrible in the oceans. It’s dangerous in the oceans in terms of navigation. And if you look at what’s happening with whales, you know, in one area, they lost two whales in 20 years washed ashore. And this year, they had 17 washed ashore. So there’s something happening out there. There’s something driving the whales a little bit crazy. But they lost two in 20 years, and now they lost 17 in a short period of time. So there’s something wrong out there.
So this is very exciting. This is going to lead to the construction of a lot of plants, and in this case, auto plants. You’re going to see numbers like you haven’t seen, both in terms of employment. Takes a little while. You’re going to have great construction numbers initially, and then you’re going to have — ultimately, you’re going to have a lot of people making a lot of cars.
Proposed Tax Incentives for American-Made Vehicles
And one other thing. We are trying — we have the Speaker of the House with us, who’s doing a fantastic job. And where’s Mike? And we’re trying to get approved. Mike, thank you very much for being here. We’re trying to get approved. We can. If you borrow money to buy a car, you’re allowed to deduct interest payments for purposes of income tax, but only if the car is made in America. So if the car is made in America, you get a loan, you can deduct the interest. That’s a big saving. A lot of people in that part of the world, in terms of buying cars, a lot of them don’t think in terms of deductions. People that think in terms of deductions are very wealthy people, but people are going to start understanding what a good deduction is all about.
So when you get a loan to buy a car — and I think it’s going to pay for itself. I don’t think there’s any cost. I think that’s going to — you’re going to have so many cars built. But you’re only going to get that deduction of interest if the car is made in the United States of America. So I’m going to sign this. And, Mike, I hope you can get that, because I think it’s going to be amazing in terms of the number of cars that are going to be made because of it.
And I want to thank Howard Lutnick, our fabulous commerce chairman. That’s what he is. He’s a chairman. He’s a very successful guy, a great guy. And we have a big day, Howard, coming up next week. It’s going to be — that’s Liberation Day. That’s going to be on the second. And that’s going to be reciprocal. And I think people will be impressed.
We’re going to be very fair. We’re going to be very nice, actually. We have not been treated nicely by other countries, but we’re going to be nice. So I think people will be pleasantly surprised. But it’s going to make our country very rich, because we’re the piggy bank everybody steals from. And they’ve been doing it for many years, for decades. And we’re not going to let it happen. So — but we’re going to treat people very nicely. We’re going to treat other countries very, very nicely. And I think it’s going to have a very positive effect on everybody, including those other countries.
So I’ll sign this. And we will see you again on April the 2nd. In terms of this, it’s going to be another round. And it’s about making America great again, making it strong and prosperous again. Thank you very much.
Questions from Reporters
REPORTER: So, Mr. President, on tariffs. Can I ask you about tariffs? Mr. President, on the car tariffs, how do you ensure that a car for each of the countries is fully built? Could an automaker in Germany say, leave the tires on the car?
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, we’re going to have very strong policing, and it’s pretty easy to do. If parts are made in America and a car isn’t, those parts are not going to be taxed or tariffed. And we’ll have very strong policing as far as that’s concerned. For the most part, I think it’s going to lead cars to be made in one location. You know, right now, a car would be made here, sent to Canada, sent to Mexico, sent all over the place. It’s ridiculous.
So this is a very simple system. And the beauty of the 25, it’s one number. It’s not up or down, depending on the cost of the car. It’s one number. And that number is going to be used to reduce debt greatly in the United States and to build things, reduce taxes. I mean, basically, I view it as reducing taxes and also reducing debt. And within a fairly short period of time, I think we’re going to have a balance sheet that’s going to be outstanding.
REPORTER: So, Mr. President, are you sure Americans, then, that this will not cause a long-term increase in prices?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, I think we’re going to have a market the likes of which nobody’s ever seen before, not in this country. You know, we had the best market ever in my first term. It was the strongest market ever, the best economy ever. And I think you’re going to — I think this blows it away. But this is something that people have wanted to do. Presidents have wanted to do for a long time. A lot of them didn’t understand it. It wasn’t a priority for them. But foreign countries understood it very well. And they’ve really ripped us off at levels that nobody’s seen before. But that’s not going to happen.
REPORTER: Mr. President, is the second day of April 2nd going to be on the tariff?
THE PRESIDENT: See it?
REPORTER: Do these other tariffs go into effect today or on April 2nd?
THE PRESIDENT: They go into effect on April 2nd. We’re signing today. It’s — it goes into effect April 2nd. We start collecting on April 3rd.
REPORTER: Mr. President, are there any more tariffs that are coming in on April 2nd?
THE PRESIDENT: What does that mean?
REPORTER: Any more tariffs, or any other taxes on April 2nd, for example, chips, the palm seeds?
Additional Tariff Plans
THE PRESIDENT: Not then. But we will be putting a tariff on lumber. We, as you know, have a tariff already on steel and on aluminum of 25 percent. And we’re taking in tremendous amounts of dollars. More importantly, our steel factories and aluminum factories are roaring. They’re starting to roar. They’re building new ones. I just heard from Nucor, which is a big — a big company, a very big steel company, and they’re building a massive — a massive plant for steel that they wouldn’t build without this.
You’re going to see — you’re going to see things that are going to be actually amazing. And I think you already have. You know, we’ve had some news conferences where I can’t — I can’t have enough. They want to do news conferences where they announce they’re going to spend $20 billion, $30 billion, $40 billion. But Apple, as an example, is spending $500 billion. Okay? Do you know? Okay. Hold on one second. Go ahead.
REPORTER: Immediately effective April 2nd on all countries, or will you focus on the worst offenders?
THE PRESIDENT: No, we’re going to make it all countries, and we’re going to make it very lenient. I think people are going to be very surprised. It’ll be, in many cases, less than the tariff that they’ve been charging us for decades. So I think people are going to be very, very surprised. I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised. I think we’re trying to keep it somewhat conservative.
REPORTER: On these auto tariffs, this obviously the NASDAQ, 100 go down 2% at close, at the pace, 500 down 1%, what are you, are you concerned about the market reaction?
THE PRESIDENT: I didn’t say that. I want to see the jobs, I want to see, that’ll all take care of itself, that could take care of itself in one day, two days, or one week.
REPORTER: Are there any conditions under which you’d remove these auto tariffs, sir, or is this permanent for the rest of your term in office?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, this is permanent, yeah, 100%, yeah.
REPORTER: Elon Musk advised you at all on these auto tariffs?
THE PRESIDENT: No, because he may have a conflict.
So we don’t talk, I’ve never talked to him. Elon’s amazing, he’s never asked me for a favor in business whatsoever. I’m actually a little surprised by it. I might do it, I might not do it, I do what’s right, and he’d want me to do what’s right. No, he’s a patriot. He has never asked me for anything regarding mandates or electric vehicle policies. These are significant matters we’re discussing, but I’ve never had Elon come and ask for any favors.
REPORTER: Sir, what’s your response to Republican lawmakers who have said today that your administration should take more accountability and not downplay what’s happened with the Signal that we’ve seen in these messages today?
Well, I don’t know about downplaying, the press upplays it, I think it’s all a witch hunt, that’s all, I think it’s a witch hunt. I wasn’t involved with it, I wasn’t there. But I can tell you, the result is unbelievable, because the Houthis are looking to do something, they want to know, how do we stop, how do we stop, can we have peace? The Houthis want peace, because they’re getting their hell knocked out of them. It’s been very, very strong. The Houthis are dying for peace. They don’t want this. And they’re bad, look, they were knocking ships out of the ocean. In the Suez Canal, they only have about 20% of the ships going through, they have to go through a different way, which takes weeks of travel. And that really affects commerce, but the Houthis have been hit hard and they want to negotiate peace.
REPORTER: Do you still believe nothing classified was shared?
DONALD TRUMP: Say it?
REPORTER: Do you still believe nothing classified was shared?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, that’s what I’ve heard, I don’t know, I’m not sure, you’ll have to ask the various people involved, I really don’t know. I can only tell you this, the Houthis have been horrible to the world, what they’ve done, killed a lot of people, and knocked down a lot of ships and planes and anything else, you know, it’s not just the ships. And they have been hit harder than they’ve ever been hit. And they want us to stop so badly. And they’ve got to stop, they’ve got to say no mas. But I can only say that the attacks have been very successful, even beyond our wildest expectations. We’ve hit them very hard, very successfully. And we’re going to do it for a long time, we’re going to keep it going for a long time.
Investigation Into Signal Communications
REPORTER: Senate Republicans have asked, said that they would formally ask the administration for an inspector general report on the Signal issue. Will you agree to that?
DONALD TRUMP: It doesn’t bother me, I don’t know. I want to find if there’s any mistake, or if Signal doesn’t work. It could be the Signal is not very good, you know, it’s a company, and maybe it’s not very good. I think we’d rather know about it now. There was no harm done because the attack was unbelievably successful that night. And it has been unbelievably successful every single night for the last four or five nights. And that’s the thing that you should be talking about.
This is something that should have been done by sleepy Joe Biden. But he was asleep at the wheel, other than when it came to stealing money, of course. Joe Biden should have done this attack on Yemen, which is basically a certain group within Yemen. The Houthis. And this should have been done by Joe Biden. And it wasn’t. And that’s caused this world a lot of damage and a lot of problems.
REPORTER: He’s also overseeing the investigation to find out what went wrong. Who’s responsible?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, you have Mike Waltz. I guess he said he claimed responsibility. I would imagine it had nothing to do with anyone else. It was Mike, I guess. I don’t know. I was told it was Mike. But again, the attacks were unbelievably successful. And that’s ultimately what you should be talking about. Mike did. He took responsibility for it.
Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do with this. How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do. Look, it’s all a witch hunt. Here we are talking about some of the greatest business deals ever made. The greatest companies in the world are moving into the United States. And you want to ask about whether or not Signal works.
I don’t know that Signal works. I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you. And I think that’s what we have to… Because you use Signal, and we use Signal, and everybody uses Signal. But it could be a defective platform. And we’re going to have to find that out.
REPORTER: Have you been briefed about the soldiers in Lithuania who are missing?
DONALD TRUMP: No, I haven’t.
Auto Industry Response to Tariffs
REPORTER: Mike, what has happened, sir, with the big auto makers about these tariffs? What was their reaction?
DONALD TRUMP: I have.
REPORTER: What was their reaction?
DONALD TRUMP: It depends on whether or not they have factories here. I can tell you, if they have factories here, they’re thrilled. If you don’t have factories here, they’re going to have to get going and build them, because otherwise they have to pay tariffs. It’s very simple. And most of those have pretty big factories here, like General Motors has big factories here. They’re going to move their parts divisions back to the United States, because some of them were made in Canada, and some of them were made in Mexico and other places.
They’ll be moving their parts division back to the United States, in factories where they may be at 60% capacity, so they don’t even really have to build too much of a factory. Generally speaking, if they have factories here, plants here, where they make their cars and equipment, but they make their cars here, they are thrilled. Same thing with the steel industry. Steel industry is now paying a 25% tariff, as you know. I put it on last week. And the business is roaring in the United States.
And we can’t, because of military, we can’t lose the steel industry. If I didn’t put the initial tariffs on steel in my first term, you wouldn’t be able to have a military, because every steel company would be bankrupt in the United States, and every plant would be closed. But now they’re booming. And putting this tariff on, this additional tariff for steel and aluminum, it’s making them thrive. And it’s already happened.
TikTok Deal and China Relations
REPORTER: [Unheard question about TikTok]
DONALD TRUMP: Well, we will have a form of a deal. TikTok is very popular, very successful, very good. We’re going to have a form of a deal. But if it’s not finished, it’s not a big deal. We’ll just extend it. I have the right to have the deal and to extend it if I want. So we’ll see whether or not we have a deal. We have a lot of interest in TikTok.
REPORTER: [QUESTION INAUDIBLE]
DONALD TRUMP: Well, there are numerous ways you can buy TikTok, and we will find the one that’s best for the country, for our country. I’m worried about our country more than anything else with respect to TikTok. And China’s going to have to play a role in that, possibly, in the form of an approval, maybe. And I think they’ll do that.
Maybe I’ll give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done, you know, because every point in tariff is worth more money than TikTok, if you think. Tariff is a much bigger world, and TikTok is big. But every point in tariffs is worth more than TikTok. So in order to get China to do it, maybe I’d give them a reduction in tariffs, as an example. Sounds like something I’d do.
REPORTER: [QUESTION INAUDIBLE]
DONALD TRUMP: Good for who? Well, he is a fantastic Tesla. Will tariffs be good? I think they may. It could be a net neutral, or they may be good. He has a big plant in Texas. He has a big plant in California. And anybody that has plants in the United States, it’s going to be good for, in my opinion.
REPORTER: [QUESTION INAUDIBLE]
DONALD TRUMP: You know, I haven’t seen a mask in so long. You’re wearing a mask. So nice of you. I haven’t seen anybody wearing a mask in a long time. It’s good. You feel more comfortable, right? Good. That’s good. So go ahead. Go ahead.
REPORTER: [QUESTION INAUDIBLE]
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think that California is going to be tougher because they are — they’re doing badly on everything they do. You know, everything…
They touch turns bad. So a place like California would be tougher for education. But what I would see with California is you’d have a Los Angeles department and you’d have Riverside. You’d have various places. And I think you’d have some great areas in California. And you’d have some, like everything else, that doesn’t work so well. But ultimately, I think it would be very successful.
I think in New York, as an example, you’d go to Long Island, Westchester. You may have Nassau County, Queens County. You’d break it up in certain ways so they’d have maybe five departments. You know, because of the size, they’d have five departments instead of one. A state like Iowa, you’d have one. And, I mean, they’re just chopping it to bits to get going.
So many states are chopping it to bits to get education. And it’s going to happen fast to get the education.
