Transcript: Maria Bartiromo Interviews President Trump – 6/29/25

And a year ago we thought your country was dead. It could never come back. It was so incompetently run by a very bad president.

And I said, you’re right, this country is hot. And that was a couple of months ago. You know, now we’re talking about what we’ve done recently. So the country is really going, the numbers are great. I watch you in the mornings and you’re given those numbers and they’re really good. No inflation.

Now we have a bad Fed chairman, but other than that, we have great numbers. It doesn’t even matter. The numbers are so good. It doesn’t matter that he keeps the rates artificially high. But it’s been an amazing period of time.

The Decision to Strike Iran

MARIA BARTIROMO: When you went to the Middle East and you strengthened those relationships with all of those countries you just mentioned, did you have an idea that you would have to do something with regard to Iran? Because you teased it a little. You said, look, they’ve got to come to the table and talk. Something’s going to happen.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, it was getting a little bit hot and we knew they had a lot of sites, probably three plus the one, but it said they had three main sites and we knew they’re going to have to either give them up. And I thought we could do it during negotiation and we just about had it done.

And then they said, we want enrichment. Enrichment doesn’t mean like air conditioning and it doesn’t mean to jack up your car. Enrichment is a bad word. And I said, you got so much oil, what do you need that for? And they said, well, we need it, we need it. And I wouldn’t let that happen. I think people wouldn’t have understood it if I allowed that to happen.

So we had a 60 day talk and that delayed them a lot. And then we said, let’s go at it. And it just worked out. And we wanted to work out also for Iran. They were beaten up and so was Israel and all friends, they were both very tight. We call it the 12 day war. That was an intensive war.

But the thing that I wanted to do, and I’ve said it on your show, if you look back 30 years ago or 25 years, we’ve been doing your show a long time, nobody like you, but you look back at the early interviews, I would say, Iran cannot have another weapon. They’ve wanted this for years and they were weeks away from getting it.

The Precision of the Military Operation

And those pilots went in there with those beautiful planes and the most sophisticated bombs anywhere in the world. Think of it, they can go 30 stories deep into granite. Who would think that’s even possible? And they did obliterate it.

It turned out that we had to suffer the fake news, where the fake news and CNN and the New York Times was saying, well, maybe it wasn’t as good as Trump said, maybe it wasn’t totally obliterated, but it was destroyed, but not, you know, just horrible. And I could see it happening. And they tried to build that into a story and then it turned out, no, it was obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before.

And that meant the end to their nuclear ambitions, at least for a period of time. And, you know, a lot of people have said, well, do you think they’re going to start again? I said, the last thing they want to do right now is think about nuclear. They have to put themselves back into condition and shape.

Intelligence Leaks and Security Concerns

MARIA BARTIROMO: You tweeted the Democrats leaked intelligence.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: They should be prosecuted.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Who specifically? I know people are able to find out, you can find out.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: If they wanted, they could find out easily. You know, you go up and tell the reporter, national security, who gave it, you have to do that. And I suspect we’ll be doing things like that.

Honoring the Pilots

MARIA BARTIROMO: Well, those pilots were so courageous and, you know, you want to honor them. Are you going to do something for them?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yes, they’re going to come to the White House. But what you said is right. These people flew 36 hours in a small space, a big plane, but a small space that was mostly occupied by bombs. And they flew so brilliantly.

And they hit a target the size of this circle, a little target, they say, half the size of a refrigerator door, from 50,000 feet up in the air, going at a rapid speed, because they’re going very fast when they’re over a pretty rough territory and they hit it every single time. And then they knocked out two other sites aside from that.

Iran’s Nuclear Materials and Capabilities

MARIA BARTIROMO: Do you think that the Iran regime hid some of the enriched uranium before the strikes?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No. You mean, did they take it out of a deep one?

MARIA BARTIROMO: No, because you were pretty clear, you can’t have a weapon. You’re going to have to come to the talks. Something’s going to happen.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don’t think they did. No. I think, first of all, it’s very hard to do. It’s very dangerous to do. It’s very heavy. Very, very heavy. It’s a very hard thing to do. Plus, we didn’t give much notice because they didn’t know we were coming until just, you know, then.

And nobody thought we’d go after that site because everybody said that site is impenetrable. You can’t, you know, you’re not going to be this way. They did. It’s at the bottom of a mountain and it’s granite. You know, granite’s the hardest stone, and it’s granite.

So, no, they didn’t. But I do believe they had people there. Because you had cars. You know, they were saying cars, and those were masons. Those were people working with concrete. They were trying to seal up the entrance to where the bomb would most likely go in. And they did that. They were working on that. And the bomb went through it like it was butter, like it was absolute butter.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Because I saw reports that there were 400 kilograms, 800 pounds that they moved. But I wonder if it’s traceable. I mean, if they were to have…

PRESIDENT TRUMP: They didn’t move anything. You know, they moved themselves. They were all trying to live. They didn’t move anything. They didn’t think it was going to be actually doable, what we did. And what we did was amazing.

And they, you know, we went. There were energy commissions that went there. Now it’s just thousands of tons of rock in that room right now. That room, the whole place was just destroyed. And the other two also. Now Israel was able to do damage, but we did the final damage. And we have the greatest submarines in the world. We launched 30 rockets from submarines. Every single one of them hit their target.

Monitoring Iran’s Future Nuclear Activities

MARIA BARTIROMO: How will you know if they try to start things up again? Because Iran just said that they are halting cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: The last thing they’re going to be doing right now, for a period of time at least, is nuclear. They’ve had it. They’ve been trying it for 25 years. The last thing they’re going to do is nuclear. We had to hit them, though. They were close to getting a nuclear bomb. Absolutely, yeah.

MARIA BARTIROMO: I mean, look, I’ve heard from people inside Iran that the regime in Iran has executed more Iranian civilians in the past 48 hours than the number of Iranians who died in the 12 Day War. So, I mean, you’ve got a regime that’s been building ballistic missiles, building or trying to build a nuclear weapon. Why should we think that they’re actually going to give up on this?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, they might not give up, but they’re going to give up on it while they’re exhausted. They are exhausted. They took hits like nobody’s ever taken. And frankly, Israel is tired. They wanted to. It was the perfect time. We went in, we destroyed their nuclear capability and we stopped. It was a beautiful thing. And they couldn’t have gone on much further. And Israel was very… That was a very intense 12 days. Very, very intense.

The Abraham Accords and Regional Diplomacy

MARIA BARTIROMO: Has any other country suggested to you recently as a result of this that they want to join the Abraham Accords?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yes. So we have some really great countries in there right now, and I think we’re going to start loading them up because Iran was the primary problem. I actually thought Iran would… I actually thought we had a period of time where I thought Iran would join the Abraham Accords along with everybody else. And frankly, they would have been better off than where they are right now.

MARIA BARTIROMO: And what about the Abraham Accords with Syria?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I don’t know. But, you know, I did take off the sanctions at the request of some of the other countries in the area that are friends of ours. I took off the sanctions on Syria to give them a chance at, you know, the sanctions are biting. They’re very strong. And we have sanctions on Iran, too.

And, you know, you take them off when I sort of gave the expression, today you get more sometimes with honey than you do with vinegar.

Sanctions Strategy and Economic Leverage

MARIA BARTIROMO: But you waived the sanctions on the oil with regard to China. So you’re allowing China to still buy the oil from Iran.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, I didn’t say that. We have the sanctions on. And if they do a job and if they can be peaceful and if they can show us they’re not going to do any more harm, I would take the sanctions off and the sanctions would make a big difference, as you know.

You know, when I was… We had a great success in the first time with the greatest economy in the history of our country, by the way, it’s going to be absolutely… This is better. This is going to be, I think, even much better. But we have the greatest economy in history and we use sanctions. You use them very carefully.

You know, sanctions cost us a lot of money. It’s not just, gee, we’re going to put sanctions on. When you do sanctions, it costs a lot of money. But I would… One of the things I was thinking about doing, you start waiving them for countries like, if they behave themselves, like Iran, where they can sell oil and they can do the things that you want to be able to do.

The sanctions are very powerful and it makes it difficult. I’m not looking to make it difficult. I want them to have a good life. But they were trying to develop a bomb, and the reason you try and develop a bomb like that is to use it.

China Trade Relations and Rare Earth Minerals

MARIA BARTIROMO: But I want to get your take on China, really, because you’ve announced an agreement with the Chinese Communist Party where China will export the rare earth minerals.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

MARIA BARTIROMO: What does that mean in terms of this upcoming tariff structure? You’ve got a pause in terms of the more steep tariffs that ends August 12th. Are you going to extend that? Are you going to keep that in place or go back to a higher tariff on China?

Trade Relations and Tariff Strategy

PRESIDENT TRUMP: China is going to be paying a lot of tariffs, but we have a big deficit. They understand that. I have a great relationship with President Xi. We have to do something about the deficit because we have a big trade deficit with China. So Biden let it get up to $1 trillion. Think of it, a trillion dollars deficit with one country. He let them just take them over the calls.

We’re not going to do that, but we’re doing a rare earth deal. But we’re also doing, remember, we have all of the airplane parts. They can’t fly their airplanes without us. So we had, you know, some guards also. But it should have never gotten that way because we should have been doing the. They call it magnets. It’s rare earth, but they call it magnets, a specific type. And they’re making those magnets for us right now. And things are well.

And we have a deal with China. It’s a good deal, I think, hopefully for everybody. We had a deal with China where it was 145% tariffs. And I will tell you, everything stopped in China. I saw that everything stopped. And we did China a favor. But we’re getting along well with China. I think getting along well with China is a very good thing. But they are paying substantial tariffs.

MARIA BARTIROMO: I noticed that because it seems like you go so far with China, but you don’t sort of use the leverage that you can use.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I mean, look, if I ever had to use it, I’d use it. But when there’s no reason to use it, that’s good, too.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Well, we did just arrest three or four Chinese nationals who tried to bring a pathogen into the country that gets people sick and destroys food supply. We’ve got hacking.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You don’t know where that came from, though. I mean, did that come from the country or is that three wackos that happen to carry something? You know, you just don’t.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Well, there was one that he signed that he would be one of them, signed a paper saying that he would value Mao Zedong’s value system. So there was that. And then they hacked and they hack into our telecom system. They’ve been stealing intellectual property. They fentanyl Covid. I mean, you know, all of this stuff. So how do you negotiate with obviously a bad actor?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You don’t think we can. You don’t think we do that to them? We do. So we do a lot of things.

MARIA BARTIROMO: That’s the way the world works.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s the way the world works. It’s a nasty world.

MARIA BARTIROMO: And then you just do it. A trade deal.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We do. Well, we made a lot of money with this trade deal. You know, I do a trade deal, if it works. We made a lot of money with the trade deal.

Corporate Relations with China

MARIA BARTIROMO: You think that China is going to stop bullying companies to give them information in terms of. In exchange for getting those rare earth minerals? Now what?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: The company. Companies shouldn’t put themselves in that position. You know, they really shouldn’t. Now, I will say this. China right now needs those companies much more than they needed them two years ago. Two years ago, China could do that. Today they can’t, because they need those companies. They need Apple. They need all of, you know, Apple’s building, spending, $600 billion, $700 billion in the United States building plants. They were never going to do that. Think of it, 700 billion.

But a lot of the companies that are in China are now relocating back to the United States. So, yeah, China is going to treat them much better as they need them. They didn’t need them under Biden because they were ripping us off left and right. They need them under Trump.

NATO Defense Spending

MARIA BARTIROMO: You just had a big success at NATO, getting the members to agree to spend more on defense. Is there anything you can do to get Congress to codify this, to get their governments to codify it?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You can. What you do, the best insurance is if they don’t do it, you leave. You don’t do business with them anymore. You know, you don’t do business. You have to have a certain trust. But you can also say trust but verify. But we’re making unbelievable.

Tariff Litigation

MARIA BARTIROMO: There is litigation around the legality of those tariffs. Are you going to be able to get more trade deals done before you hear from the International Court of Appeals in August?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Sure, but we won the litigation and we had the delay and we had some radical left judge, and then we had it overturned. And we’re doing well in all of our litigation. We’re doing well on the tariff litigation. Look, if some judge said we can’t do tariffs, we would fall prey to the rest of the world who would do tariffs and are doing tariffs on us. If we couldn’t fight them back with tariffs, this country would be in terrible shape. We would be like this innocent lamb being led to slaughter.

So, no, we’re doing great on economics, we’re doing great on tariffs. Tariffs is just a part of it. We’re drilling like never before. That’s how the oil got down low.

MARIA BARTIROMO: The Supreme Court victory that you got today, Friday, do you think that could apply to the tariff litigation that’s pending here? In terms of the legality of your tariffs, does that affect that at all?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It could. But again, the tariff litigation, if you look at it, there are alternatives. If we have to use them, they’re not as good because they’re not as direct, they’re not as biting, but they’re very good so that you have alternatives. But we want to use this particular asset, this particular grouping. The words of this are so beautiful. They were meant for it.

But what happens with the tariffs is that if, if a judge ruled against us. And this is part of how you win fairness. Fairness is also a part of the law. If a judge ruled against us on tariffs, we would fall prey to other countries destroying us. We can’t do that. If they do tariffs on us, we do tariffs on them. If they charge us, we charge them, then they never charge us.

The Big Beautiful Bill

MARIA BARTIROMO: I move on to the big beautiful bill. And you have asked to have this on your desk by July 4th. You think you’re going to get it in that time?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don’t know. I mean, I can’t tell you that. I hate to say yes, I’d like to say yes. But the problem is if we’re two days late or five days late, everybody says, oh, you had a tremendous failure. Whatever it is, as long as we have it, it’s very important. If we don’t have it, there’s a 68% tax increase. If we don’t have it, you know, the debt ceiling extension is very important.

They gave a debt ceiling, the Republicans gave a debt ceiling because of the importance of doing it. They did that for the good of the country, and Republicans voted for that. They did a big favor. I don’t know that I would have done it, to be honest with you. But whatever. They did a favor, now the Democrats won’t do that favor back. In other words, you never want to violate your debt covenants.

MARIA BARTIROMO: They.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So they gave, you know what I’m saying? They gave this four months early. It was due on September 28th. Right before the election, a group of Republicans got together and said, you know what, this is so serious. We should do this for the good of the country. I understand that. Now it’s their turn to do it and they won’t do it. There are a lot of bad people in the Democrat Party.

Federal Reserve and Interest Rates

MARIA BARTIROMO: How are you going to deal with the $9 trillion that’s coming due this year?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Just turn it over. Oh, well, let me tell you that we’re going to do it this way. We’re going to turn it over short term because we have a stupid person at the Fed if he would lower the rates. But I don’t want to have to pay for 10 years debt at a higher rate. And then when you get somebody into the Fed who’s going to be able to lower the rates, we should be at 1% or 2%.

You know, if you look at Switzerland they’re the lowest right now. They’re at much less than one point. And frankly, we should be there, too, because without the United States, the whole world doesn’t work.

MARIA BARTIROMO: And you’ve teased a couple of names. You talked, you said you have a couple people in mind as a successor to Jay Powell.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: They’re all very good.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Yeah, but you’re not going to do that right now. So why do that? Just to put more pressure on him to come.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: People. No, because reporters ask me, I mean, do you have other names? I say, yeah, I do. Anybody but Powell. And would it be Kevin or he’s a bad person. Kevin is very talented, but I don’t know it’s going to be him. But he’s a very talented guy. He wouldn’t be doing what Powell is.

Tax Policy and Legislative Priorities

MARIA BARTIROMO: Mr. President, I think I know your priorities in the big beautiful bill. I mean, obviously you want to get the tax cuts extended and you’ve got other tax cuts.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Any other things that takes care of the border. The border also, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime.

MARIA BARTIROMO: But I’ve spoken to a few senators and they’ve gotten together like Rick Scott and, and Ron Johnson and Mike Lee. You know, Rick Scott’s worried about the overall cost and Mike Lee is worried about the Inflation Reduction Act.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And you know, the Inflation Reduction Act is what caused a lot of problems.

MARIA BARTIROMO: So why don’t you just take that.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And it was the Biden administration.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Why are there still green subsidies?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I’m all for that. I think we shouldn’t be giving money to all of these scams. But what happened is some of them have been started like projects and if you stop in the middle. So I understand that, too. And people work there and they’re, you know, working there and they’re from the district of a congressman or a senator.

But, but no, no, the Inflation Reduction Act was another Biden scam. And when I say Biden, it’s not Biden. It was the lunatics that work around the, you know, in the Oval Office, around the beautiful Resolute desk. It’s not Biden because I don’t think Biden knew what was happening. I think that the autopan is one of the biggest scandals in the history of this country because the person that operated the auto pen was the President of the United States. And I think think that that’s going to be sought out and we’re going to find out what happened.

Biden Administration Investigation

MARIA BARTIROMO: Well, I believe it’s this week, that’s one year ago, which was the debate where his mental capacity was exposed to so many people who didn’t know it. Many of us saw it, obviously, in advance. And now James Comer at the Oversight Committee wants lots of people to come in. Who would you like to see come in and testify on that under oath?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I would say Lisa, who was in there.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Is that the Deputy AG at the time?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Who’s Lisa Monaco?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It was a big supporter of Andrew Weissman. These are people that I think are very bad people. They had radical left lunatics working there, and they took over that office. They didn’t want Biden, and then after a little while, they realized, he’s incompetent. This is really a good thing. And they ran that thing.

Look, Biden was never for open borders. Biden was never for transgender, for everybody. He was never for men playing in women’s sports. He was never for that. Biden is a disaster. This is a disaster. But the worst thing that he’s done to us. Inflation is terrible, but I’ve solved that problem already. Inflation is bad, and other things are bad and many things. And the fact that we have no respect all around the world for the country, but now we do at a. I think maybe at the high. We took it from the lowest to the highest level in. In six months.

Border Security Crisis

But if you look at what he did to the border is so bad. So much of my time is spent on the border. You know, last month, we had no people coming.

MARIA BARTIROMO: I know.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: But the bad part is he let in 21 million people, and we have to check those people. Totally unvetted, totally unchecked. And 11,888 have murdered people. Half of them have murdered more than one person. People come in from gangs, from prisons they emptied out. Venezuela emptied out its prisons.

Immigration Policy and Farm Workers

MARIA BARTIROMO: Even backing away from this, though, because recently you said, let’s ease up on, you know, taking in people who are working, hardworking, like in farms and hotels.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don’t back away. What I do have, I cherish our farmers. And when we go into a farm and we take away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years, who are good, who possibly came in incorrectly, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge.

The farmer knows he’s not going to hire a murderer. But, you know, when you go into a farm and he’s had somebody working with him for nine years doing this kind of work, which is hard work to do, and a lot of people aren’t going to do it. And you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away. It’s a problem.

You know, I’m on both sides of the thing. I’m the strongest immigration guy that there’s ever been, but I’m also the strongest farmer guy that there’s ever been. And that includes also hotels and, you know, places where people work. A certain place, group of people work.

So we’re going to. We’re working on it right now. We’re going to work it so that some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away. But no, I want. The criminals are going out of this country.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Right? You said it from the beginning. You wanted to first focus on the criminal. But I’m wondering if this change and giving people a pass is a response to the critics who said the execution was a little clumsy. People were afraid to go to work. They were afraid to run into ice. They said, you know, look, if you give a quota to somebody and say, go get me 600 people who are here in the country illegally, we’ll come back with 600 people, even if it’s not the right 600.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So the execution was unbelievable because you had. You have no people coming through our border anymore. That’s part of the execution. So it wasn’t clumsy. What was clumsy is the fact that they allowed millions and millions of people to pour into our country.

Take a look at some of the scenes, it’s on your show all the time, where thousands of people are trying to bust through a wall. They literally break down walls. There’s so many people and they have no idea who those people are. This, to me, is the worst part of Biden. The worst thing he did was the whole thing on immigration.

Now, with that being said, we know who they are. A lot of them, you know, it’s hard when they come in. They have no papers, they have no nothing. Just go ahead and everybody can come in. They were empty, I’m telling you, a lot of the Congo. We just made a deal with the Congo to stop the war. They would empty their prisons into the United States.

Many other countries, not just South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, parts of Europe, rough parts of Europe. Their prisons were emptied into the United States. And the people, you saw the people, they run into the country. To me, that’s a sin that we can never forget. We can never forget what Biden and that group of lunatics that work for him have done to our country.

Congo Deal and Cobalt Development

MARIA BARTIROMO: I believe, pardon me, I believe that half of the world’s cobalt is in the Congo. Are you going to be able to help develop that? Will the U.S. participate in developing that cobalt?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, they want me to. They actually want me to the head, who is a very respected guy. You know, look, I just stopped a war. This war was going on for 30 years. Six million people were killed between Congo and Rwanda. And my people came to me and they say they want you. They don’t want China, they don’t want Russia.

Tariff Policy and Trade Deals

MARIA BARTIROMO: So July 9th is coming up. What are you going to do about the end of the pause in the tariffs?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It’s so simple. We’re sending letters out. I’d rather do it now. My guys, hey, I have great guys, Scott Howard, other people, Jamison, they want. They’re talking to all these countries. We made a deal pretty much with India, we made a deal with China, we made a deal with UK. Great people who made deals.

But I’d rather just send them a letter, a very fair letter, saying, congratulations, we’re going to allow you to trade in the United States of America. You’re going to pay a 25% tariff or 20% or 40 or 50%. I would rather do that.

So when I say, well, I’m trying to extend the pause, I don’t think I’ll need to, because I could. There’s no big deal. It’s like TikTok. I’m extending that, you know, but no big deal. We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way. I think I’ll need probably China approval, and I think presidency will probably do it. I’ll tell you in about two weeks. A big technology company there, very, very wealthy people. It’s a group of very wealthy people.

But what I want to do is, and what I will do just sometime prior to the 9th is we’ll send a letter to all these countries. There’s 200 countries. You can’t talk to all of them. No matter how many people you have, you can’t talk to all. We’ll send a letter and we’ll say we would consider it a great honor. And this is what you’ll have to do to shop in the United. We’d like a department store to shop in the United States, and you’ll pay a 25% tariff. And we wish you a lot of luck.

And that’s the end of the trade deal, because we have something that nobody has. But if I didn’t get elected, I’m telling you, we wouldn’t have had a country left. You know that better than anybody. Nobody covers it better than you. If I didn’t turn this thing around, this big ship around, we turned it around just like those ships coming out of China. They were coming and loaded and in the middle of the ocean, they were forced to go back because at 145% tariff, Wal Mart, nobody wanted their product. And that caused a big problem for China. And then I helped China. I helped China. So by reducing it.

MARIA BARTIROMO: We still don’t know, we don’t have the clarity on what you’re going to do with these expiration of these pauses. July 9th.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, I think I just thought I just said it. You ready?

MARIA BARTIROMO: You’re going to send letters.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I’m going to send letters. That’s the end of the trade deal. I could send one to Japan. Dear Mr. Japan, here’s the story. You’re going to pay a 25% tariff on your cars. You know, so we give Japan no cars. They won’t take our cars. And yet we take millions and millions of their cars into the United States. It’s not fair. And I explained that to Japan, and they understand it. And we have a big deficit with Japan, and they understand that, too.

Now we have oil. They could take a lot of oil. They could take a lot of other things. But basically, and I’m for doing it right now, we send letters out to all of the countries explaining to them, we’ll look at the deficit we have or whatever it is with the country. We’ll look at how a country treats us. Are they good? Are they not so good? Some countries, we don’t care. You know, we’ll just send a number out.

But we’re going to be sending letters out starting pretty soon. No, we don’t have to meet. We understand. We have all the numbers. Listen, what we’re going to do is we’re going to send and we’ll say, congratulations, we’re allowing you to shop in the United States of America. You’re going to pay a 25% tariff or 35% or 50% or 10%.

MARIA BARTIROMO: I’ll tell you what the US automakers are worried about. They don’t want Japan and Korea to have a lower tariff if you do a deal with them than the US Automakers are paying.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, the US Automakers are going to be so busy selling cars in the US they’re not going to even have to worry about it. But that won’t happen because I set a tariff. Let’s say I take a certain country and I set a tariff at 25, and they’re charging 35 or 40. I’ll raise the tariff to 35 or 40. I mean, they’ll come down.

AI Impact on Jobs and Economic Growth

MARIA BARTIROMO: I want to ask you about AI because there are a couple of companies that are announcing layoffs. They’re actually cutting people. Some of these companies are blaming tariffs. Some of these companies are buying. Are blaming. They’re blaming a consumer slowdown, and other people are blaming AI. Okay, you’ve got Proctor.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Tariffs is what’s bringing the companies in. We have auto companies building plants where they wouldn’t have built here in 100 years. We have more investment in the United States right now than we’ve ever had before. Think of it. Yeah, up to almost $15 trillion. Look at this guy from last year. What. What kind of numbers they were to people leaving? They weren’t coming in. Now they’re coming in.

MARIA BARTIROMO: Like you’ve said, you brought wealth back to America.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Wealth and spirit back. We have spirit. People respect our country again. You know, it’s very important. I’m a cheerleader also for the country, aside from everything else like you are. We brought spirit back. We brought respect and dignity back.

When I went to the European Union, I was in that beautiful place with the king and the queen, and it was like, beautiful. Everything is so nice. But when I went to the Netherlands and I looked, everybody was coming up. Mr. President, Mr. President. They didn’t do that a year ago or two years ago or three years ago. These are the big countries. This is Germany and France and all of them. I mean, a big group of countries, they respect America again.

They laughed at us. They thought we were a joke. He had a president. They kept falling downstairs and falling on stages and couldn’t find an entrance to. Couldn’t find out. He makes a little speech that lasted for about half a minute. And he looks around, he’s looking for stairs. There’s like six different stairs that he can’t figure out which stairs we were left at all over the world.

More importantly than that, on what they did to the country. What they did to the country with allowing 21 million people is. Will never be forgotten. And I have to rectify that problem. And we’ve done it, and we’re getting all the criminals out.

MARIA BARTIROMO: I just want to ask you about the job cuts from these companies. Some of them are blaming AI and one CEO told me that AI, artificial intelligence, allows engineers to be at least 25% more productive. It’s helpful in contract management. It’s helpful in repetitive jobs. It’s helpful in data, what can you do to offset the job cuts that will no doubt come as a result of AI efficiency?

Energy Independence and AI Infrastructure

PRESIDENT TRUMP: One thing very simple. Bring more companies and more jobs. You know, the truth is we don’t have enough people to take care of these jobs. So it’s like perfect timing. We don’t have enough people. You know, my biggest problem is they’re coming in and they have to hire thousands and thousands of workers. This is perfect timing. We don’t have enough people.

If AI is so good, which I hear it is, and there’s a lot of money being bet by very smart people, I’ll tell you, we are dominating AI. That’s the other thing. And they all said, well, we’d have a problem because of electricity. We don’t make enough electricity. We would have to double our electric power. Can you believe that?

Revolutionary Approach to Power Generation

And you know what I did? I had an idea. I said, when you build your plant, spending billions, you’re going to become a utility, an electric utility. You’re going to also build a utility. You’re not going to take it from an old grid that’s been here for 100 years. You’re going to take it right from a new facility.

And they said. They actually looked at me. They said, you do that? Of course I would. It’s a national emergency. I’m going to approve everything. And you’ll have your approval in two weeks. And Lee Zeldin is doing an amazing job, the environmental commissioner. I said, Lee, you got to approve this stuff fast, make sure it’s safe, make sure it’s good. But you have to get it done fast.

Because in China, you know how long it takes one day. It’s called President Xi Boom. It’s okay. Over here, we’re going to have almost the same thing. We’re getting fast approvals.

All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy

And you can do nuclear because nuclear now is safe and good and inexpensive. But you can do oil and gas. You can do coal. And the reason we do coal is because. And I call it clean, beautiful coal. You can really do things with coal today that you couldn’t have done.

But the beautiful thing about the coal and. And the thing that I look at, you know, who uses coal? China. 59 plants. They’re opening this year. Coal. You know why? It’s very powerful. It’s very powerful.

So we opened up coal. We were closing all our coal mines all over the country, and yet we still have a lot of coal. We use the generating plants of coal because it’s the strongest, and we’re doing coal. So we have everything. Every form.

I don’t want windmills destroying our place. I don’t want, you know, these solar things where they go for miles and they cover up a half a mountain that are ugly as hell. And by the way, the panels are all made, and the windmills, they’re all made in China, okay?

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