President Trump Gaggles with Press On Air Force One, Apr. 6, 2025

Hello, everybody. Mr. President. Are there any questions?

How was the ghost tournament?

Very good, I guess I won. It's good to win. You heard I won, right?

What was yours?

Just to back it up there.

What's your handicap?

I like to win very low. I have a very low handicap. Okay, let's go, sir. Chinese foreign backup.

Sure.

Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the market has spoken. When asked about the tariffs. What do you make of that? The market is smoking. When they look at the fact that we have a billion dollar trade deficit. When you look at the trade deficit that we have with certain countries, way over a billion per country. But with China, it's a trillion dollars. And we have to solve our trade deficit with China. We have a trillion dollar trade deficit with China, hundreds of billions of dollars a year. We lose with China. And unless we solve that problem, I'm not going to make a deal. Now, I'm willing, but they have to solve their surplus. We have a tremendous deficit problem with China. They have a surplus of at least a trillion dollars a year. I think it's like a trillion one. And I want that solved. And no other president's taking it on. I had to take it on the last time. Then we had a rigged election. No other president's taking it on. And so China is, you know, they say the market's spoken. The market. China is right now taking a big hit because everyone knows we're right. They have to pay tariffs because otherwise we have a surplus and they have a surplus with us. That is not sustainable, Mr. President. And we're talking about a trillion dollars. You know that, right? We're not going to lose a trillion dollars for the privilege of buying pencils.

From China on the idea of crashing the markets on purpose. There's been some speculation, partly because of the video that was posted on Truth Social, that there was some sort of deliberate effort on your part to have the market sell off. Can you talk about that?

Whether that's not so? But I do want to solve the deficit problem that we have with China, with the European Union and other nations. And they're going to have to do that. And if they want to talk about that, I'm open to talking. But otherwise why would I want to talk? And as you know, because of the tariffs, we have $7 trillion already committed to be invested in the United States. Building auto plants, chip companies and all sorts of companies are coming into our country at levels that we've never seen before. Biden had nothing coming and he was. This was a dead company. This was a dead country with Biden. He didn't know what he was doing and that's now been proven at least.

You talked to a lot of leaders this weekend. Can you tell us, were there any deals made?

I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world. They're dying to make a deal. And I said, we're not going to have deficits with your country. We're not going to do that because to me, a deficit is a loss. We're going to have surpluses or we're at worst going to be breaking even. But China would be the worst in the group because the deficit is so big and it's not sustainable. And you know, I was elected on this. This was one of the biggest reasons I got elected, was exactly because of this. And we're going to put tariffs. We've already put them on. It's not a question of we will, we're going to put them on. And those tariffs next year will make us $1 trillion. In addition to the $1 trillion, thousands of companies are going to relocate back into the United States. In North Carolina already, furniture people are starting to move back in, in Detroit and Michigan, which I won because of what I said, what I'm telling you. Car companies are starting to open up in Indiana. A big one is under construction as an example, hon, but they're moving in like nobody has ever seen this before. So it's unsustainable for us to allow China to have surpluses of a trillion dollars. We will be taking in over a trillion dollars over the next short period of time. With the tariffs that I've already instituted, they're already in place now. What's going to happen with the market? I can't tell you. But I can tell you our country has gotten a lot stronger and it'll be a country like no other. It'll be the most dominant country economically in the world, Mr. President, is what it should be.

Is there a Trump put, though? Is there a mark? Is there pain in the market? At some point you're unwilling to tolerate this idea of a Trump put. Is there a threshold?

I think your question is so stupid. I think it's, I don't want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something. And we have such a horrible. We have been treated so badly other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen. They took our businesses, they took our money, they took our jobs. They moved it to Mexico, they moved it to Canada, they moved a lot of it to China. And it's not sustainable. We're not going to do it now. We have hundreds of billions of dollars that's pouring into our country on a monthly basis. It's pouring. It's already started because I put tariffs on it. And eventually it's going to straighten out and our country will be solid and strong again.

Elon Musk has said he hopes zero tariffs between the US And Europe. Is that a place you'd like to also get to?

Well, the problem is that Europe has made a fortune with us. You know, Europe also has had a tremendous surplus with the United States. Europe has treated us. It's a little smaller, but they've treated us very, very badly. China has. But Europe has also. Europe has been very, very bad to us. Europe has taken our leaders for a ride. They don't take our cars. They don't take our food products. They don't take. And we take their cars. Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW. You know, we take their millions of cars. They take no cars. They don't take our farm product. They don't take anything. Europe's treated us very badly. We put a big tariff on Europe. They are coming to the table. They want to talk, but there's no talk unless they pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis. Number one for present, but also for past, because they've taken a lot of our wealth away and we're not going to allow it to happen.

Sir, have you talked to any tech leaders over the weekend about the tariffs?

Yeah, I talked to the biggest in the world. I talked to the biggest of them all, many of them, but I've talked to, I would say four or five that are considered the biggest. They don't, you know what they said? We don't blame you.

Who did you talk to?

I don't want to say. I'll put it out. I may give it to you.

CEO.

I have to find out if they mind. You know, I don't know if that was a confidential call or not, but we had five or six. I've spoken to many countries. They all want to do. Just so you understand the power of what I'm doing. Every country is calling and being very solicitous of us. Very, very nice. They're being very nice. And we have to be able to justify. This is not sustainable. The United states can't lose $1.9 trillion for trade. We can't do that and also spend a lot of money on NATO in order to protect European nations. We cover them with military. We lose money on trade. The whole Thing is crazy. And I got elected on that basis. We explained it. You know, the American people understand it a lot better than the media, but the media understands it and much of the media writes correctly about it. I must say, sir. Okay, sir, when are the next set of talks with Russia and who will participate and where are we in terms of making progress in terms of peace? We're talking to Russia. We'd like them to stop. I don't like the bombing. The bombing goes on and on and every week people, thousands of young people, are being killed and it's a horrible thing that should have never started, would have never started if I were president. 100% on the tariffs.

Is it a negotiation?

Who you with?

Bloomberg, sir, is it a negotiation or rules of the road?

Go ahead. Another question, please, sir, about TikTok. She has too many questions, sir, about TikTok.

There was a report that there was about to be a deal, but China changed his mind because of the TikTok.

I'd say it was largely true. The report is that we had a deal pretty much for TikTok. Not a deal, but pretty close. And then China changed the deal because of tariffs. If I gave a little cut in tariffs, they'd approve that deal in 15 minutes. Which shows you the power of tariffs. Right.

Mr. President, former New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu is saying that he'll win the open Senate seat in New Hampshire and that he has no doubt you'll support him if he runs. Is that true?

True. I told him. He came to my office, came to the Oval Office and met with Chris Sununu. And I support him fully. I hope he runs. He's been very nice to me over the last year or so. But no, I hope he runs. I think he'll win that seat. Sir, when we get into late summer, early fall, and people are doing their back to school shopping, do you think they'll have inflation to worry about at that point? I think it's not going to be. I don't think inflation is going to be a big deal because if you look at me, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars. This is not new to me. I took in, during my four years, hundreds of billions of dollars from China. And we also took in a lot of money countries, but in particular China, because it was just getting started and there was. We had no inflation. Who had inflation was Biden. Biden had the worst inflation in the history of our country. I had no inflation. We had a perfect country. We had no wars. I ended them all. I defeated isis Everything was good. And then when this numskull got in, they really call themselves now numskulls. But when he got in, bad things happened to our country, including our open border. And now we're doing very well with, you know, we have the best numbers on the border that we've ever had.

Speaking of the border, have you talked to Attorney General Pam Bondi recently about the cases going on with the deportations?

Yeah, sure. It's really sad when you think that Biden allowed millions of people to come in. And if they find one now, I will tell you the one. Somebody said he's a member of Ms. 13, not Tren de Aragua. He's a member of Ms. 13 and therefore he should immediately be brought back. Well, Ms. 13 is just as bad as Tren Nicua. So they say, oh, we made a mistake because he's not with them. He's with Ms. 13. Bring them back. Bring them back. Ms. 13 is a very bad group, sir. How concerned, Maybe as bad, actually. How concerned are you about the measles outbreak? There was another fatality today. And what else would you like to see in terms of the response? Well, I think they, in doing reports on it, it's so far fairly small number of people relative to what we're talking about, something people have known about for many, many years. And measles has been, you know, this is not something new and we'll see what happens. But certainly if something, if it, you know, progresses, we'll have to take action very strongly.

El Salvador's president said on X that he'd been invited to the White House on April 14 for a working visit to discuss Trenda, Aragua and Ms. 13 and other ways we can support each other in the US And El Salvador. I was curious if you could expand more on what some of these other ideas you have for El Salvador.

I think, yeah, I think, you know, you're in the way of that. Came. By the way, you should at least say that the camera operator should probably say that. She's shooting the back of your head. I don't know why she doesn't say it. I have to say it instead. I have great respect for him. I know him. I've known him for a long time. He's a young leader and he was very tough on crime. Very, very tough on crime. And in their system, their prison system, they spend a tiny fraction of the money that this country spend.

So.

But he is coming in. I don't know when, but he is coming in. Sometime over the next couple of Weeks.

What are you and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Going to speak about tomorrow? We're going to talk about trade and we're going to talk about the obvious subject. You know what the obvious subject is? Do you have any news for us on the topic? I'm trying to do trade, just to keep it down. There's a lot of things going on with the Middle east right now that happen to be silenced. You know, we had no problem with the Middle East. Everything was done. We had no problem. We had no problem with Iran. We had no problem with anybody. And then you had October 7th, and that was all because Iran, as you know, was not giving money to anybody because they had no money. Now they have a lot of money. So we'll see what happens. You guys, El Salvador.

The president there said he would be willing to take American citizens in the federal prison population. Is that one of the ideas you're going to be discussing?

I love that. If we could take some of our 20 time wise guys that push people into subways and that hit people over the back of the head and that purposely run people over in cars, if he would take them, I'd be honored to give. I don't know what the law says on that, but I can't imagine the law would say anything different. If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us, I'm all for it, but I'd only do according to the law. But I have suggested that, you know, why should it stop just at people that cross the border illegally? We have some horrible criminals, American, grown born. And if we have somebody that bops an old woman over the head, if we have somebody that is in jail 20 times and goes back and shoots people all over the place and then has a bad judge or a bad prosecutor that do nothing about him, all they worry about is politics. They don't worry about that. I think if we could get El Salvador or somebody to take them, I'd be very happy with it. But I have to see what the law says.

Okay, what else can you say? Did you agree to lowering tariffs for any of the countries that you spoke to today?

What you understand, Jennifer, you have to understand this. We have massive surplus countries, countries that we're dealing with. We have massive deficits. We've got to straighten that out because you can't continue to be that way. It's been that way for years now and it can't go on any longer. And we're the piggy bank. We have all the advantages. Forget Parkins. For a second. We have all the advantages. We're going to straighten out. We're going to become a wealthy nation again. Wealthy like never before. And we're not going to let other nations that have been ripping us off, whether it's China or the European Union, with all of the European nations that have just made. It's been like a feast. Look, the European Union was formed for one reason. You know what that was? To rip off the United States. So put that in your bonnet. I hope you had a good flight. Have a good time. Thank you for your time, Mr. President.

Thank you, sir. See you tomorrow.