Transcript of President Trump Meets With Veterans and Signs Executive Orders

We have literally trillions of dollars being invested in AI. Somebody today, a very smart person, said that AI is the way to the future. I don’t know if that’s right or not, but certainly very smart people are investing in it heavily.

Workforce Development and Apprenticeships

WILL: Next sir, we have an executive order on workforce development. This executive order is going to charge numerous departments and agencies within the government to reshape the way that we do workforce development. One example from the executive order, for instance, we’re looking to get the total number of apprenticeships, new apprenticeships, up to a million in the country to ensure that in critical jobs areas, in areas where we currently don’t have enough trained workers, that we’re recreating that pipeline to ensure that particularly as we onshore industrial jobs and new industries, that those industries have the workforce they need to be competitive globally.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It’s very important.

In a way, this is like a training center for what we’re trying to do, which is jobs at great salaries. It’s great salaries too.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That’s exactly. All those factories that you bring in because of your trade policy, we’re going to train people in tradecraft, bring back tradecraft to America so that people can work in these factories with great paying jobs and we’re going to train them and we’re going to remake the American dream for all these people we’re working together.

LINDA MCMAHON: Absolutely. This plays right into America at Work Tour, which I have kicked off. We will work with our state partners and work with our businesses to see exactly who they need in that workforce. We will skill and upskill these apprentices so they can get right to work and get in the field and build back this economy for exactly living the American dream. Thank you, sir.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you, Mr. President.

School Discipline Policies

WILL: Next, sir, we have an executive order on school discipline policies. Under, I believe it was the Biden administration, first Obama and then Biden, the Department of Justice issued guidance that made it almost impossible for schools to enforce adequate disciplinary policies. This created issues in the classroom for teachers and students alike. Basically, they focused on CRT and sort of diversity ideology instead of actually just enforcing the rules in classrooms to ensure a safe learning environment. This executive order revokes that prior guidance and puts us back in a place where hopefully the Department of Education can focus on education and teachers can focus on teaching in a safe environment.

TRUMP: And this was important for you, Linda, as I understand it.

LINDA MCMAHON: Yeah, absolutely. Because it gives teachers the authority now to have discipline in their classroom and discipline the person who is being disruptive. We took that away.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Okay. Nice, cool. Feel the leisure over here.

Disparate Impact Theory

WILL: Lastly, sir, we have an executive order on disparate impact theory. This is a theory that underlies a lot of the modern DEI and CRT-driven diversity culture. The basic idea here is instructing your departments and agencies to no longer rely on disparate impact theory as they’re regulating, as they’re issuing guidance, as they’re making rules. We want to focus on results, we want to focus on actual fairness, we want to focus on merit. Not things like disparate impact theory and the whole sort of diversity equity and inclusion cult.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Getting out of that huh?

WILL: Yes sir.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: For being in that jungle for a long time.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you. Very good job. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Very much. Would you like to introduce again Annette and perhaps Annette wants to say something? Annette is right here.

LINDA: Yes please come over. Would you like to have some comments to make? I know you’re a former Charlotte Mecklenburg school teacher. I’m a North Carolina girl.

ANNETTE: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much. I’m so honored to be here. This has been an eight year journey for me to raise awareness to the violence that’s in public schools and the critical need to address violence in public schools. Again been doing it eight years because most administrations like to keep the violence hidden. We have three students that should be here with us today. We have Austin McClath. I’m sorry if I say his name wrong. Serenity Baker and Nysere Taylor from Charlotte North Carolina who was shot in the back as he was getting off of a school bus because they thought he was a part of a big brawl that happened inside a public high school.

So this is very important and critical legislation that we have to keep our educators safe. We have to keep our students safe and public schools have to be safe environments. So I think like I said I’ve done this journey alone. I’ve been on it but I have a whole team behind me now. I spoke at the RNC and I told millions that Donald Trump and his administration was going to make schools great again and I feel that we’re on the right path and I’m just honored to be here.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you our great vets that are with us, and is it OK if I give her one? What do you think? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What an honor. Great job. Could I ask Sarah to speak. Thank you. Thank you.

SARAH: A little bit about these great gentlemen. These heroes Mr. President are extraordinary. This is my husband Michael and so many of our dear dear friends who are here today. Many of them have met you sir in your first administration in the hospital many times at Walter Reed and they’ve had long recoveries.

Tomorrow for my husband marks 15 years since he was wounded in Afghanistan and on that day about six years ago he had his 120th surgery post-Afghanistan and you came to see him at Walter Reed and so many others and we saw a great reform in the VA access same day access to prosthetics mental health care and we know that that is back, we’re going to these gentlemen were saying Alice here earlier was saying in the last few years when he’s gone to get a wheelchair the VA has asked him this gentleman they’ve asked him to prove that he still has his injuries as though maybe his limbs would grow back. And they unfortunately did not yes and we’ve seen that many times, and so we’re excited for you bringing back the VA accountability mission act community care that were the hallmark of your first term. And we’re so excited sir to be here we’re honored to be here and thank you for all you do for our nation’s heroes.

Exchange of Thanks and Gifts

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Who’s that picture on there?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That is Joe Biden that says let’s go Brandon

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I’m saying what was that picture.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I told him he wasn’t allowed to ask you to sign it.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s great, that’s very good well. Thank you all very much would you like to say anything now fellas, there’s a big chance we have a lot of good a lot of good people watching that believe in you they happen to be the media but they believe very much in you like I do anybody.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Mr. President we’re just we’re very happy with the energy that this administration is bringing. And it’s an administration that says does what it promises and so we’re you’re behind you we believe in you and I think we all love you we got to pick for everyone you.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much and I’m going to get you a better hat say I have better hats that’s a good one that was the original that means he was there right before it was cool.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That’s right that was that’s an early one.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We’ll save that one though right.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes Mr. President thank you.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Anybody please.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Well I’d like to say yeah okay I’m just going to say thank you for loving America sir.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you thank you so much very nice thank you very much true thank you sir.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Then just go save Michael Broder’s life and of course he goes immediately to say thank you as he was the one that saved Michael Broder put him in the helicopter and got him off the combat zone so selflessness of these men is unspeakable.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s great to hear he’s alive, because of that man right here and these are amazing people great heroes so that’s really great anybody else.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I’d like to say it was an honor to serve you are worth it this country’s worth it and it’s because of what Christ paid for.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you and we have a spirit that people haven’t seen in many years at least five, they haven’t seen. I think even even then because we’ve been through so much for the last four years together, it was so bad, it was so bad what they’ve done to the borders, what they’ve done all over the place. And it’s really an honor to be with you all of you incredible and I’m going to give you these coins. I think you’re going to really like them I think they’re the best these are the best coins, and you have each this is gun metal . I don’t know soldiers like the black but I think you like this one it’s okay.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: A lot of soldiers like the black.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Here you go what do you like?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I’ll go to black.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: See I told you these are choices. I’ll take a black one look at this take a white one sir that’s great call the military no but is that I always think the soldiers they do like it’s gun metal what do we like that’s what I heard that it was I think the trump gold I’m giving you I’m giving him too we’re gonna fight we’ll get another one okay this is actually fun

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I’ll take the gold okay

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I thought you were gonna take that gold one okay okay gold one sir okay you got it

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I had an opportunity to sail across the Gulf of America two days after you named it right

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh wow is that great it’s been an honor and now people say it routinely yeah they don’t even think about the other they say it routinely that’s been a great honor for me okay I’ll take a gold one okay almost even I think gold is an edge.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I would love a gold one thank you so much

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It picked up at the end right are you all okay that’s good so I want to thank you very much and especially that’s a great story, yeah so what do you think of a guy like that pretty good?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Oh we actually uh him and him we all served together.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Wow so you guys got hit huh pretty good you got hit pretty good amazing amazing.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Their unit had a more than 50 percent purple heart rate sir in 2010.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You deserve it you deserve that and more we appreciate it so much brave really brave brilliant people thank you very much do you have any questions of of the of the guys here.

Questions from Reporters

REPORTER: I want to say thank you to the veterans who are here thank you so much for defending us and then I wanted to ask you Mr. President because you said you want to bring the tariffs on China down soon. How soon do you want to bring the tariffs on China?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well that depends on them. We have a situation where we have a very very great place it’s called the United States of America and it’s been ripped off for years and years. These people know it, we talked about it before you came in we’ve been ripped off by every country in the world practically and friend and foe. And we will — we’re not doing that anymore so what’s happened is we’ve — Howard, how many countries have we spoken to already? 90 and they all want to make deals we’re going to make deals but they’re going to be fair deals. They’re not going to be rip-off deals and you know we were losing almost five billion dollars a year no country can do that and now we have it down.

Almost to even, maybe even better than even because of the tariffs on cars and aluminum and steel. We have tariffs 25 percent on cars, aluminum and steel. It is a rush to build new steel plants, a rush to build new aluminum plants, and the biggest rush I’ve ever seen, that we’ve ever seen, to build car plants. We have like 11 of them or something, big ones, where you guys maybe work, maybe you won’t want to work. You’ll do something else instead of that, but if you like cars, you’d like to work on one of these plants. The biggest plants in the world. Three of them have left Mexico before construction started, one of them during construction, and they’re coming to this country. They’re coming back. Don’t forget. And we get along great with Mexico. But Mexico took 32% of our car building business.

So it’s amazing what’s happened. Remember this number? Anywhere from three to $5 billion a day. That’s not million dollars. That’s a billion dollars a day. Nobody can even imagine it. And that’s what we were losing. And you know, hence, we have $36 trillion in debt and everything else. And in the end, I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to have great deals.

And by the way, if we don’t have a deal with a company or a country, we’re going to set the tariff. We just set the tariff for something that we think that will happen, I’d say, over the next couple of weeks, wouldn’t you say? I think so. Over the next two, three weeks, we’ll be setting the number. And we’re going to pick. Could be for China, too. Could be for China. We’re dealing with almost all of them. Too many to fully deal with, but we’re going to be fair to them.

Trump on China Trade and Fentanyl Crisis

PRESIDENT TRUMP: But we’re dealing with a lot of countries right now and could be with China. But maybe we’ll make a special, you know, a deal and we’ll see what it will be. Right now, it’s 145 percent. That’s very high. It got there because of the fentanyl. They’re sending, you know, massive amounts of fentanyl into our country and killing a lot of people, probably 200,000 plus a year wiping out. You probably all have friends who were killed. Somebody was killed in your family or your friends with fentanyl. And somehow it’s made almost exclusively in China.

And as you know, we essentially tax them 10 and then another 10. We also taxed Mexico 25 and we taxed Canada 25. And that’s the kind of money that’s what’s pouring into our country right now. And it’s gotten us down from losing three to five billion dollars a day to actually making money, but breaking even, let’s say, but we’re going to make a lot of money and that money is going to be used to reduce taxes. We’re going to get big, big tax breaks.

We’re going to, you know, there was a time I said it this morning. I think some of you were there. There was a time from 1870 to 1913, it’s a long time ago. We were an all tariff nation. Foreign nations pay taxes. They paid money to us in the form of tariffs. And that was when we were the wealthiest. We were the wealthiest proportionately that we ever were. And they formed committees in 1887 in particular, but they formed committees to determine what we should do with all the money. We had so much money. You guys would have loved it. We had so much money. They didn’t know what to do with it. We gave it away to different causes.

And you haven’t seen that too much anymore, although we give plenty away. But now we shouldn’t be giving it away. We have to take care of ourselves first. Right. But we were very wealthy and proportionately the wealthiest we ever were. We built the Panama Canal. Jimmy Carter gave that away for one dollar, by the way. One of the most profitable things ever built the Panama Canal. We gave it away for one dollar to Panama. Why? I don’t know. Nobody knows. But that’s what we had. We have people like that sitting behind this desk. And that shouldn’t have happened.

Panama Canal. We spent — it was the most expensive thing ever built by our country in history. I’m talking relative dollars. We’ve never built anything so expensive. I think it was the equivalent of one point seven billion dollars. And we’ve never built anything like that. We built a lot of things, but never so expensive that we started building other things. We had a lot of money to do it all based on foreign countries coming in and paying the tariffs. And we’re doing that again. And I think we’re going to make so much that we’re going to be able to reduce taxes in this country by a lot. And we’re also going to treat those countries very fairly.

But if we don’t make a deal, which is possible, we’re going to just set the price because you remember, they have to come in. They want to come in here and they want to do business with the United States. So we want to set a fair price and we’ll do that. We’re going to be very fair, but we’ll set a fair price and then they can make a determination as to whether or not they want to do business with the United States. And I think most of them will. And I think we’re going to treat them very fairly.

Questions About Tariffs and International Relations

REPORTER: Were you worried about what the 145% tariffs were doing to small businesses here in the U.S.? Is that why you’re bringing it down?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, no, no. I haven’t brought it down. I haven’t brought it, still 145. I haven’t. I said it’s a high tariff. It is a high tariff, but I haven’t brought it down. It basically means China’s not doing any business with us essentially because it’s a very high number. So when you add that to the price of a product, you know, a lot of those products aren’t going to sell.

But China’s not doing any business. They were doing, they were doing $1.1 trillion. Think of that. $1.1 trillion. You know what that is? And it was just very unfair to us. And we were doing very little, relatively very little with them. It was one sided, very one sided, but we get along. I get along very well with President Xi and I hope we can make a deal. Otherwise we’ll set a price and hopefully they’ll come here and they’ll contribute. And if they don’t, that’s okay.

REPORTER: Sir, I have a question for all of you. There’s a lot of leaders attending the post, you know, who also said they’d like to meet with you while you’re there. Do you have any meetings set up?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yes, I do. I have a lot of meetings set up. I don’t know if I can do it. Do you want to help me out, fellas? I’ve had a lot of meetings. I got every leader in the world, which tells you that we have a good product. It’s called the United States of America, and it’s great. And these people know about it better than anybody in this room. But we have a great place and it should be a lot greater. And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to make it greater than ever before. It’s very simple.

REPORTER: Will you be meeting with President Zelensky?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I have a lot of meetings set up. Yeah.

REPORTER: And are you bringing anyone with you in the U.S. delegation to the funeral, like Secretary Rubio or a former president?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We have a couple of people coming. We’ll announce it probably this evening or tomorrow. First lady’s going. And some people are coming with me from staff. But we’ll have a number of people going. I’m sure it’s going to be a beautiful ceremony.

REPORTER: I had one on Ukraine, but I wanted to ask you one about veterans, since they are here today. And thank you for your service and sacrifice. I wanted to ask you about the cuts that have been made, including with the V.A. Can you assure that veterans like these men here, those that have been suffering from mental health issues or burn pits, for example, will be taken care of?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, very much so. In fact, they will tell you it’s been better with me than any president in history. We had a 92 percent approval rating, which is unheard of, up 50 points from the previous administration in my first four years. And we’re doing better now. In fact, now they have something to call in doctor stuff where it’s really become…

PRESIDENT TRUMP: know, it’s really become modernized and great. We don’t have to go and travel sometimes long distances to get to a clinic or get to the V.A. And I just heard this morning, I was listening to Doug Collins, who’s the secretary. He was being interviewed. And the numbers are incredible. The approval ratings are the highest. I’ve never heard numbers like this. It’s better than the first four years. So, no, there’s nobody. There’s no group of people more important than the people in this room. And I’m not talking about the media. I’m talking about these people right here. There’s no group and they’re going to be taken really well care of. That’s very important to me.

REPORTER: And on the war in Ukraine, are you going to be meeting with President Zelensky? He’s asked to meet with you this weekend. Will you be meeting with him?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don’t know. I don’t know that he’s going to the funeral or not, but I just hope he gets this thing solved because we’re losing about. Think of this. Five thousand. I was saying two thousand five hundred. And everyone was telling me that’s low. Five thousand soldiers are being killed every week, approximately. Think of that every week. Five thousand soldiers. But let’s say from three thousand to five thousand are being killed. They’re Russian and Ukrainian. They’re not Americans, but they’re Russian. But they’re people and they’re humans. They’re human beings. They have families. They wave goodbye to their son. And then they get a call that the son’s no longer there. It’s a vicious war.

And if I can help solve it, you know, we’re not losing our soldiers, but we’re losing soldiers, a lot of people. And if I can solve it because of a certain ability, that would be great. And if it doesn’t happen, I will say that I think Russia is ready. And a lot of people said Russia wanted to go for the whole thing. And I think we have a deal with Russia. We have to get a deal with Zelensky. And I hope that Zelensky—I thought it might be easier to deal with Zelensky so far. It’s been harder, but that’s OK. It’s all right.

But I think we have a deal with both. I hope they do it because I’m looking to save. And, you know, we spend a lot of money. But this is about a lot of humanity. This is the worst. I get the pictures, the satellite pictures. I’ve never seen anything like it of the fields after some of these battles. It’s horrible that it’s going for nothing. We would have never had this problem. You would have never had that war if I were president. I guarantee that. And for four years you didn’t have it.

REPORTER: Are you going to meet in Saudi Arabia?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It’s possible, but most likely not. I think we’ll meet with them shortly thereafter.

Federal Reserve and Economic Policy

REPORTER: What is going to present to the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell during the Biden administration in the campaign with inflation raging, he lowered interest rates two times. And so now with two consecutive months of inflation being down, all economic theory you learn in the eighth grade says it’s time to cut rates when inflation is down, right? He’s not done that. Have you had any direct conversation with him?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, I haven’t. I haven’t called him. I might call him. I haven’t called him, but I believe he’s making a mistake by not lowering interest rates. And I think as well as we’re doing would do much better. He’s keeping rates too high. He historically has been late, except when it came to Biden. He was recommended by a certain person that I’m not particularly happy with, but he will hopefully do the right thing. The right thing is to lower interest rates. So we’ll see what happens.

I think we’re sitting on something that’s going to be very good with all the tariff money starting to come in. Our country is going to be doing really well and hopefully he’ll be here. We don’t have inflation. Grocers are down. When I first came in, you people were there and they hit me with the first day that I was president. Somebody started screaming at me that eggs are up. I said, I’ve just, I just got here. And in the first week they were going crazy. You remember that, Linda? Yes. They were going crazy. They’re saying egg prices. I said, I’m here for one week. Just leave me alone. This is fake news. And I said, you know, what can I say?

But Brooke Rollins, our secretary of agriculture and a group working with her have done an amazing job and egg prices have gone down 87%. Energy now is down $65 a barrel. They have some energy selling gasoline for less than $2 in a couple of States, Alabama, a couple of great States and, but all over the country, it’s way down from what it was six months ago, three months ago. And that has a lot to do with the war.

You know, when Biden allowed energy to skyrocket, it just skyrocketed it was out of control. Russia made a lot more money because they make their money on energy. And I kept saying, you know, he supposedly wants to end the war, but he lets energy go out of control. Well, I’ve gotten it done. We are drilling like crazy right now. And we have it down to $65 a barrel. It went up to almost a hundred dollars a barrel. And at that number, Putin and Russia made a lot of money. So, I think one of the reasons, look, I think he has a certain respect for me, but one of the reasons, one of the big reasons is oil prices are down. I think this is a good time to get the war settled.

REPORTER: For those of us that live here in the district, you said when you came in, you were going to make Washington DC great again. Right? One of the issues we’ve got right now is we understand there might be an imminent deal between the owner of the Washington football team, whatever you want to call them now commanders and, locally in getting the Redskins back to DC and RFK stadium. That’s on federal property, right? Are you going to be involved in that negotiation? And would one of the stipulations be they changed their name back to the president?

Trump on Washington Football Team Name

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, I say, well, that’s a little bit, nobody’s asked me that one. Look, I think the Indian population is a great part of this country, great heritage. And we were talking about Massapequa, Long Island, the chiefs, they call themselves the chiefs or the Kansas City Chiefs. That’s not changing. And they have a great team, great people, great owners, great coaching quarterback. I love the quarterback, like his girlfriend too. And his wife, his wife is great. She’s been a big fan as his quarterback’s mother is incredible. I like that team. They’re called the Chiefs.

And frankly, I see nothing wrong with it. They call them the warriors and not that team, but a lot of other teams and all of these Indian surnames and different names. And I’m saying that I think that’s a positive thing. And when you go back to India, they don’t know why these names are being taken off. They’re trying to, I think it’s degrading to the Indian population and it’s a great population. And they like when they’re called by various names now.

Washington, the Redskins, perhaps that’s a little different, a little bit different, but I can tell you that I spoke to people of Indian heritage that love that name and they love that team. And I think it’s a much superior name to what they have right now. And it had heritage behind it. It had something special, but a lot of the names having to do with, you know, different places, not just Indians, but I think they changed the name of the Cleveland Indians. Why would you take the name Indians off the Cleveland Indians? And now it’s called the Cleveland something else, right? Guardians. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

So, you know, we’re about bringing common sense back to this country and it may be popular or unpopular what I’m saying. And I’ve just said to you, she’s a nice guy. He got a lot out of me on this one, but I

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Think most people agree with me. It’s, I think it really is demeaning to Indians, but to change the name of the Cleveland Indians as an example to the Cleveland Guardians. It’s not the same and I’m sure it has an impact on the team.

REPORTER: Thank you, sir. He’ll be stepping back from his work with those a little bit and only get that again, maybe a day or two weeks. How long would you like to see that continue? And how involved would you like to continue?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, first of all, I can’t speak more highly about any individual. He’s an incredible guy. He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a wonderful person. I’ve seen him with his family. I’ve seen him with a lot of his children. He’s got a lot of children. He treats them good. He loves his children. But he’s a brilliant guy and he was a tremendous help both in the campaign and in what he’s done with DOGE. And, you know, we’re talking about almost $200 billion and rising fast because many of the things that we were looking at are now being found out to be fact. It’s terrible. I mean, the fraud, the waste, the abuse, everything that’s happened is just terrible.

So, I also know that he was treated very unfairly by the, I guess you’d call it the public, by some of the public, not by all of it. I said, he makes an incredible car, makes everything he does is good, but they took it out on Tesla. And I just thought it was so unfair because he’s trying to help the country, but he has helped the country.

I also want him to make sure that he’s going to be in great shape. And I know he is. I mean, he’s going to be, he’s going to do great. He loves the country. He didn’t need to do this. He did it. And I told him, I said, you know, whenever you’re ready, I’d like to keep him for a long time, but whenever you’re ready, he’s an exceptional guy. When you see those rockets go up and come back and land in the same gantry, nobody else can do that, but this man. So he’s just an incredible person. And he’s a friend of mine and he’s a nice person too. He’s a very nice person.

He really helped the country, saved us a lot of money. And, I heard him say that he’ll start easing, which is always, he was always at this time going to ease out. And, when he goes back to Tesla, that’ll be taken care of. It was just, it’s artificial. These were sick people that thought they were doing something. He’s, he really, he’s a great patriot and it should be, it shouldn’t be the way that should never have happened to him. And I will tell you right now, he makes a great product. He makes a great product. It’s a great car. It’s great. Everything. Starlink is great. What he does is good. He’s doing medical things that are amazing. And, we have to, at some point, let him go and do that. And we expect him to be doing it about this time. And, but I’ll talk to, I’ll talk to Elon about it.

Thank you for the question.

Trump on Canada and Trade Relations

REPORTER: How do you have a prediction for that? What do you think the results with respect to Canada?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, I don’t want to predict other nations elections. It’s tough enough doing this one. Look, I love the Canadian people. I like Canada, but it’s costing us $200 billion a year to support Canada, 200 billion. And I say, why are we doing that? You know what? We can make our own cars. We have more energy than they do more energy than anybody in the world. We don’t need their lumber. Obviously we have more lumber. We have a lot of lumber. We have a lot of everything that they sell us, but in particular cars, they took a large percentage of the car making and I would bring it back to this country.

I really don’t want cars from Canada. So when I put tariffs on Canada, they’re paying 25%, but that could go up in terms of cars. When we put tariffs out, all we’re doing is we’re saying, we don’t want your cars in all due respect. We want really to make our own cars, which is what we’re doing in record numbers. Now, you know, we’re going to be at record levels in a very near future because of all the plants, the car plants that are being built. And I’d rather see a made in Michigan and made in South Carolina and made in different States, Tennessee. We have a lot of great car making States and we have some that aren’t car making yet, but there will soon be car making States. And that’s what I want to see for our country.

At the same time, I want to help Canada, as to, I have spoken to the current prime minister. He was very, very nice. I will say very late. We had a couple of very nice conversations, very good, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to get involved in their election.

REPORTER: Does it include recognizing Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, everything is good. Look, I just want to see the war end. I don’t care if they’re both happy. They both signed an agreement. I have no favorites. I don’t want to have any favorites. I want an agreement. I don’t want to have any favorites. I want to have a deal done. I want to save their lives.

Now, with that being said, we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars through Biden. Biden should have never let that war happen. We’re spending hundreds of billions, maybe $350 billion we’ve given to Ukraine. And we could use that money right here. So I’d like to see that. But most importantly right now is when I see the pictures, the satellite pictures of the battlefield, if I can stop that because of an ability I have to do things, I want to see if I can do that.

REPORTER: Mr. President, on tariffs, you just mentioned that 25 percent could go up on cars in terms of Canada. Does that mean that you’re considering changes to the auto tariff?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, we’re not considering it now, but at some point it could go up, yeah, because, again, we don’t really want Canada to make cars for us, to put it bluntly. We want to make our own cars. And we’re now equipped to do that. They took a lot of our car business. Mexico, too, took a lot of our car business. We want to make the cars here.

I’m running this country. I’m not running Canada. And that’s why I asked Trudeau, who I call Governor Trudeau, affectionately, but I asked him, why are we spending $200 billion to support Canada, to subsidize Canada, and he was unable to answer the question. I mean, why are we doing that? And I have to be honest, as a state, it works great. As a nation, considering the fact that most of the nation, you know, 95 percent of Canada, what they do is they buy from us, and they sell to us. They sell to us. If we didn’t buy their oil, if we didn’t buy their, and we don’t need their oil. We have more oil than anyone, but we don’t need their oil. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their cars. We don’t need anything.

So I said, why are we doing this? Why are we spending $200 billion? It doesn’t make sense. If we needed something, that would be a different subject. So I’m working well with Canada. We’re doing very well. We’re working on a deal. We’ll see what happens. But again, you know, why, representing this country, why are we spending $200 billion to support and subsidize another country? Because if they didn’t have us, and if we didn’t spend that money, as Trudeau told me, they would cease to exist. He said that to me. They would cease to exist, which is true, certainly as a country.

REPORTER: Now on tourism, on tourism, there’s been a steep drop off in international travel to the United States. It was down 12 percent last month, down even more from Western Europe. Why do you think that there are fewer people suddenly who want to travel to the United States?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, there could be a little, you know, there’s a little nationalism there, I guess, perhaps. It’s not a big deal. But, you know, with the dollar being where

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It is, because China would always fight for having a low dollar. Japan would always fight for having a low dollar, meaning a low yen, or in the case of China, the yuan. They’d always want to have China. I’d speak to President Xi a lot. I’d say it’s unfair that your yuan is so low. I’d call up a great man, Prime Minister Abe, great, great man, Shinzo, who was unfortunately assassinated. And I used to tell you, he was a good friend of mine, I used to say, “Shinzo, you can’t let your yen go down. It makes it very hard for us to sell tractors. It makes it very hard for us to get tourism.” And our dollar is a little bit on the low side, and that means that a lot of tourism is going to come in. But I could see a little bit of nationalism at work, and I could see it likewise with us, not wanting to go to certain countries, but that will work out very easily.

REPORTER: Do you think some people are scared to come here because they hear the stories of tourists who are detained for a few days or even a week or two?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, we treat our tourists great. We’re the tourism capital of the world. There’s nobody, no place like this. And there may be a little bit of nationalism, but I doubt it. I actually doubt it. Yeah.

REPORTER: Mr. President, has there been any direct contact between the U.S. and China?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, of course. Every day. Every day.

REPORTER: And then secondly, would you support a millionaire tax?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think it would be very disruptive because a lot of the millionaires would leave the country. You know, in the old days, they left states. They’d go from one state to the other. Now, with transportation so quick and so easy, they leave countries. You’ll lose a lot of money if you do that. And other countries that have done it have lost a lot of people. They lose their wealthy people. That would be bad because the wealthy people pay the tax. Okay?

Foreign Negotiations and Trade Deals

REPORTER: Sir, how did the talks today go in London? Do you think that the asks from Ukraine and Russia…

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think they went well. I mean, you know, we’ve got to get two people, two strong people, two smart people to agree. And as soon as they agree, the killing will stop. But yeah, I think they went well. Pretty well.

REPORTER: Mr. President, your economic team, many of them are here today. J.D. Vance has negotiated what’s been called a monster trade deal with India, the biggest one ever. Can you share with us what some of the framework of that might be?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You said England?

REPORTER: India.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: India? India. They’re not very complicated, these deals. It’s about the tariffs. India charges almost more than any other country in the world. And believe it or not, we do very little business with India. Other than the fact that I like the prime minister very much. He’s a friend of mine. He was here two weeks ago, as you know. And we stood right outside, did a news conference. Unfortunately, the grass was very wet. It was very hard for people to stand on the grass. They got their shoes all ruined. But other than that, it was a very good news conference. And he’s a great guy.

But we do very little business. You know why? Because the tariffs are so high. They have among the highest tariffs, higher than China. They have among the highest tariffs in the world. And I understand they’re going to reduce those tariffs. But it’s really sort of their problem, not ours. We do very, very little purchasing in India. And selling. We do very little selling.

I mean, Harley Davidson, I said, “How are you doing in India?” This is about six years ago. They came to lunch as a great American company to make their motorcycles. And I said, “How are you doing in India as an example?” “Well, we don’t do any business there.” “Why?” “Because the tariffs are too high.” I said, “That’s interesting. Well, what are you going to do?” He said, “Well, we’re going to build a plant in India.” And that’s what they did.

I don’t want that to happen. They were forced to build a plant. Remember, there’s no tariff when they build their plant here. And everybody wants to build because they don’t want it. And the higher the tariffs go, the more likely it is they come in and build a plant. You know, I mean, if it’s 25 percent, that’s fine. If it’s 50 percent, you’ll get more plants. Seventy-five, you get more. And a hundred, you get more than that.

And they’re all coming in at numbers that nobody’s… I don’t think there’s ever been numbers like we’ve seen. No. Seven, eight trillion dollars worth in two months because, you know, it took me a month to get started in all fairness. But in two months we did this and now we’re coming up with a hundred, a hundred days, first hundred days. And I think we’re going to be close to eight trillion dollars. There was never any precedent that did even a tiny percentage of that. OK, any other questions?

REPORTER: One of the deals signed by your 100 day mark and China is saying that we’re threatening and blackmailing them into a deal. What would be your response?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I mean, China, look, I have great relationships in China with President Xi in particular, but China has been charging us massive tariffs for many years. That’s one of the reasons they were able to steal so many of our companies. They took our companies out of America and they built their plants in China. And one of those things. So now we’re reversing it. But at levels that nobody’s ever seen before. No, we’re going to get along great with China. I have no doubt about it.

Thank you very much, everybody.

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