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Thank you, the Economic Club of Chicago. Thank you David particularly. I want to say two things at the beginning. The first is just for the record and for those people watching on television, the Economic Club of Chicago and Bloomberg both invited Vice President Harris to a similar interview about her economic plans that she has declined so far. And second, just to set some parameters about this interview, which I was just discussing with President Trump, We're going to focus
on business and the economy. And that's partly because this is a business audience, but it's also because voters insist that the economy is the main issue that matters when they vote. So on that note, let me invite onto the stage President Trump.
No, thanks, thank you very much.
Have a see.
I like that crowd. That's a name.
Thank you, very standing ovation. Thank you, President Trump. Thank you for doing this, as we said, and you had the reception there. The business people of Chicago, like everywhere else, they like a lot of the things you want to do in terms of tax cuts and some of the spending proposals. But like many business people, what they're often worried about is the cost. And the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is a bipartisan outfit, put out
some predictions the other day. If you add up all the promises you've made and your plans would add seven five trillion dollars to the debt. That's more than twice the total for Vice President Harris. You're on course to push up debts up to one hundred and fifty percent of GDP. This is a very business like audience. Yeah, why should they trust you with that?
Because we're about growth. She's got no growth whatsoever, and we're all about growth. We're going to bring companies back to our country. You look at even today as I was driving over, I see these empty, old, beautiful like steel mills and factories that are empty and falling down. Some have been converted to senior citizens' homes. But that's not going to do the trick. And we're going to
bring the companies back. We're going to lower taxes still further for companies that are going to make their product in the USA. We're going to protect those companies with strong tariffs. Because I'm a believer in tariffs. I'm not sure that you are. I don't think you are but I congratulate you in your career. But to me, the most beautiful word in thection areas tariff, and it's my
favorite word. It needs a public relations firm just to help us, but it's to miss the most beautiful word in the tariffs.
Do you think that will bring in the revenues to use another bipartisan group, Yeah, piece and institute. They said, I only bring in two hundred billion dollars. That is only that's barely the cost of two of your promises.
Yeah, but that's like for what company you're talking about. Okay, Look I brought in with tariffs and I was just getting started. Then COVID came and we had a which you know, because I tell you what, I did a very good job in COVID, nobody knew what the hell it was. I call it the China virus because I like being a little more accurate. But when that came, but we got hundreds of billions of dollars just from China alone, and I hadn't even started yet. But tariffs
are too two things if you look at it. Number one is for protection of the companies that we have here and the new companies that will move in because we're going to have thousands of companies coming into this country. We're going to grow it like it's never grown before. And we're going to protect them when they come in because we're not going to have somebody undercut them. And I could give you an example of this if you want, would you like me to, because it just and I
will come back. Just found out about it. So I've been talking about for the last year about Detroit and how horribly it has been. You know, it's just horrible because we've been talking about Detroit's coming back for forty years and it's never come back, and it's very dependent on the car industry. Well, they've lost sixty percent of the business over a long period of time. And what happened is I found out friend of mine builds auto plants.
That's only does he builds autoplants. That's what he's good at. He doesn't want to build an apartment, only wants to build and he builds the biggest in the world. And for the last year and a half of anybody who's heard me speak, I was talking about Mexico is a tremendous challenge for us right now, tremendous China is building massive auto plants in Mexico, and they're going to build them, and they're going to take those cars and sell them
into the United States. They're very near the border, and they're going to have all the advantages and none of the disadvantages. And that's going to be the end of Michigan. It's going to be the end of Frankly, South Carolina, going to be the end of everything. So I've been talking about this and I said to him about nine months ago, I said, you know what I want you to do me A favorite John, his name is John. I don't want to give his last name because he might not like it, but I said, I want to
see an auto plant. I want to go and see one of these, you know, you press a button and everything works, right. I want to see one of the big ones. He said, all right, good. I said, where do we go? I'd like to go to Michigan. I'd like to go to some place in the United States. He said, no, we can't do that. Why we're not building anything big in the United States. That's not what we don't build the big ones here. I said, where are you building the biggest ones? He said, in Mexico.
We're building giant plants, the biggest plants anywhere in the world in Mexico. I said, so, you mean they're going to make cars cheaply, they have advantages over labor and other things, and they're going to sell them into the United States and they're going to put Michigan out of business? Is that? What? I don't know anything about that. All I do is build the plants. If you want to see a plant, we'll go to Mexico. I'll show you the biggest plant in the world. That was nine months ago.
I saw him, and I talked about it all the time because I think it's a serious threat to our country because not only outos but other things. So then I see him two days ago. I was talking at another club, very nice club, and like this, except I don't know. I think you people are probably even wealthier. Okay. This was in Detroit, Okay, which was appropriate, and I was talking. I was showing them all sorts of charts about how they are called. You know, it's just gotten down.
It's like terrible. And I saw him and I said, oh, how are you doing? How have you been? I said, could I ask you how are those plants that you mentioned? Those giant plants that you're building in Mexico. How's that coming along? Have you finished them? No, sir, they abandoned the project when they heard you're running. They abandoned the project when they saw that you were winning and doing well.
I said, well, I don't do it well. The thing if I told them, I told them, and I said it publicly, They're not going to sell one car into the United States. I said, if I run this country, if I'm going to be president of this country, I'm going to put a one hundred, two hundred, two thousand percent tariff. They're not going to sell one car into the United States because We're not going to destroy our country by so because I know you're an anti tariff guy,
but I'm the exact opposite. If I had there is no other way I could have stopped them, other than what am I going to do negotiating with Mexico with China. You're not going to get anything from that. I said, I'm going to put a one hundred, two hundred or three hundred. I'm going to put the highest tariff in history, meaning I'm going to stop them from ever selling a car into the United States. So I just see the guy by accident. I see him. He says, sir, they've abandoned.
And by the way they built foundations, they were really rocket They were going to do it. They thought that I was going to win, or maybe they're just hold them off. I tell you this, if I don't win, those factories are going to wipe out this country. They're the biggest factories ever built for cars. They're going to wipe out our country. If she wins, and she wanted,
if she doesn't know what the hell she's doing. If she wins, she's and she's not going to be thinking about I couldn't every speech I made having to do with cars, but every speech I made having to do with tariffs, I'd mentioned that our country is being threatened by Mexico. Now all of those things, beyond even the car companies, all of those things are now dead. They're dead. I asked them, Will they start Probably not their dead as a door nail. If she gets in, it'll start up again.
Trump. I let you give your example. You talked a lot about tariffs. You look at the American economy. Forty million jobs rely on trade. It counts for twenty seven percent of GDP Okay that off. That's also going to effect on many many business people here. Tariffs also have another side. Isn't that something that you have to acknowledge. You could be plunging America into the biggest trade war since Smoothall you're going to stop, You're going to there are tariffs already.
There are no tariffs. All you have to do is build your plant in the United States and you don't have any tariffs.
People, there's a lot of places, a lot of places like this, they rely there are a lot of jobs that rely on foreigners coming here. You're going to basically stop trade with China. You're talking about sixty that sixty plent tariffs on that. You're talking, as you said, one hundred, two hundred percent on things you don't really like. You're also talking about twenty ten, twenty percent tariffs on the rest of the world. That is going to have a
serious effect on the overall economy. And yes, you're going to find some people who were gained from individual tariffs. The overall effect could be massive.
I agree, it's going to have a massive effect. Positive effect.
It's going to be a positive Let me just no no, let me give a committed You are to this, and it must be hard for you to, you know, spend twenty five years talking about tariffs has been negative, and then have somebody explained to you that you're totally wrong.
It'll have a negative, it will have other if you don't forty million jobs, there's a lot of jobs to rely on. They're all coming back foot million jobs. There are forty million jobs in America that rely on trade.
Ready. John Deere, great company. They announced about a year ago they're going to build big plants outside of the United States. Right, They're going to build them in Mexican.
You threaten they're all in a building. They still that's right.
I said, if John Deere builds those plants and not selling anything into the United States. They just announced yesterday they're probably not going to build the plants. Okay. I kept the jobs here, and I'll keep them. John Dee will stay here, and I'll tell John Deere if you do build outside of the United States, you can if you want. For instance, India is a very tough country.
It's not only China, you know, China is is the I would say probably the toughest, but there are a lot of tough you know, it's very tough European Union. Our beautiful European country is wonderful, wonderful. If you add them up, they're almost the size of us. They treat us so badly. We have a deficit. I said to Angela Merkel when she was there. She's not there anymore. I wonder why. But when she was there, I said to Angola, how many Chevrolets do we have in Berlin? Why? Donald,
you have none? He said, that's right. How many Fords do we have in Frankfurt? I don't know none. I said, that's right. You know how many cars we have, Mercedes, Benz, BMW and all of the different VOLKSWAG and millions and millions, of course. And then I said, farm products. You know, they don't want our farm They don't want anything from us. We have deficits that are crazy. We're not going to have anymore. We're going to put tariffs on them, and they're going to do and you know what they can do.
The Mercedes Bends will start building in the United States, have a little bit, but you know what they really are assembled like in South Carolina. But they build everything in Germany and then they assemble it here. They get away with murder because they say, oh, yes, we're building. They don't build it. They take them out of a box and they assemble them. We could have our child.
Don can we come back, Let's come Let's come back to the Europeans. In the second what about consumers people out there, they're going to be the biggest TAXI critics say, your tariffs will end up being like a national sales tax because the country add if you have America the moment has three trillion dollars worth of imputs. You're going to add tariffs to every single one of them. That is going to push up the cost for all those
people who want to buy foreign goods. Is just simple mathematics, President Trump.
It's not. Yeah, it is, but not the way you've figured that was always very good in mathematics. Let me tell you. You're saying three trilia's.
Trillion dollars worth of it and they don't have to pay.
And the higher the tariff, the more likely it is to have them come into.
Higher the tariff, the more you're going to put on the value of that those goods, the higher people are going to pay in shops.
Ready, the higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States and build a factory in the United States so it doesn't have to pay the tariff that will.
Take That will take many many as you know, that will take many years.
In fact, I'll tell you know. There's another theory is that the tariff, you make it so high, so horrible, so obnoxious, that they'll come right away. When I do the ten percent ten percent is really first of all, ten percent when you collect it is hundreds of billions of numbers that you're talking all reducing our deficit. But really so, there's two ways of looking at a tariff. You can do it as a money making instrument, or
you can do it as something to get the companies. Now, if you want the companies to come in, the traff has to be a lot higher than ten percent, because ten percent is not enough. They're not going to do it for ten But you make fifty percent tariff, they're going to come in. Let me tell you the other thing about tariffs that's great are steel companies. As you know, three four years ago, they were all gone. When I was in office, I saw a man from a big
steel company and he was devastated. I knew him for a long time, and it's been a tough business. It was a great business many years ago. And I would not let you are steel be sold to Japanese by the way, it just psychologically I think it.
Was steel as you Yeah, I wouldn't.
Let Yeah, I would have let it be sold, but I would if I would stop it if it hasn't been completed by the time I'm president, because I think it's such a horrible tone. But I had a lot to do with steel. We were going to lose all our steel companies because China, as you remember, was dumping steel at levels that nobody's ever seen before. And I put a fifty percent tax on that and tariff on that all dumped steel. And it was also bad steal.
It was dirty what they call dirty steel was a good steal, which is a bad thing for structural components of building and planes and things like that. They were dumping crap into our country. And I put a fifty percent tariff. I started at twenty five. I raised it to fifty because the twenty five didn't quite do it. I raised it to fifty and that did it. They stopped dumping steel, and I saved our steels by having that, we saved it. We saved our steel. Now what was
left because we've lost so much. But there are certain companies you have to have. There are certain things you have to have. Steel you have to have if you go to war. You know there's a possibility you go to war. I kept us out of where I was the only president in eighty two years that kept you out of a war except I defeated Isis. But I inherited that one. I mean, no wars. And by the way, by the way, and I think it's very important you can go. You know, I caught the weave. You can
call it. You have the weave as long as you end up in the right location at the end. But while we're talking about it, we have never been so close to World War three as we have are right now with what's going on in Ukraine, in Russia, in the Middle East. Well, let's no wars in the whole world, think of it. And I talked about a wars. I talk plenty of countries at a wars. I had the whole world other than Isis, which I inherited and I knocked out Isis. And a matter of wiks, it was
supposed to take four to five years. I did it in a matter of weeks. And we actually have a great military. We don't know how to use it.
You present Joun with great respect. I was asking about tariffs. You've gone off by that. Seeing you've brought up tariffs and foreign policy, many people would say the biggest problem with your tariffs is actually geopolitics. You in your first term, you got some credit for effectively saying that there was a Cold War against China. That's what America was in You look at the last Cold War against the Soviet Union. America won it in part because it rallied allies to it.
You're talking about slamming allies with thirty tariffs. Isn't this time you're going to end up trying to rally the West and you're dividing it instead. Isn't that the real problem with tariff, even beyond all the problems to the economy, where you you keep on bringing out these individual examples, but the overall effect is going to be dramatic. Answer first about foreign policies.
I'll do that.
How does it help you take on China? Turning all your allies.
Again tremendously because China things were a stupid country, a very stupid country. They can't believe that somebody finally got wise to them. Not one president Bush Obama, Barack Husein Obama. Have you heard of him? Not one president, not think of it. Not one president charge China anything. They said, Oh, they are third world nation, they are developing. Well, we're a developing nation too. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at our cities. We're a developing nation. We
we have to develop more than they do. We're way behind them. You take a look at what's happened to our cities.
So my question is about your allies, not about China. You aren't going to annoy the allies behind you.
But our allies have taken advantage of us more so than our enemies. Our allies are the European Union. We have a trade deficit of three hundred billion dollars with the European Union. Our allies are Japan. You know, Abby was a very good friend of mine. He was a great guy, great and I said to him in Japan he was assassinated and he was a great man, he really was. I didn't see too many like him, and he was. He got very sick and he had to take off, and then he was actually making a comeback.
He was going to make a comeback and he would have won easily. But he was a great gentleman, handsome, wonderful man, respected by everybody. And I went to him and I said, Chinzo, we have to talk what trade and he goes, I'll never forget it, I know. I said, what do you know? I knew you'd come to me. Why do you say that, because I can't believe I wouldn't tell the survey was alive. Actually said, I can't believe how many years it's been that nobody even negotiated
with us in America. I said, Shinzo, you have to pay for your cars. You're sending millions of cars. You don't accept the car from US. You don't have one car that you accept, and yet we're selling three million, four million of your cars. I said, Shinzo on agriculture, you won't even accept our agriculture. And I renegotiated a whole trade deal from a little disadvantage because I was stuck with a bad deal. I mean, I got we have trade deals that were so bad that I said,
who are the people that are doing it? They're either very stupid or are they getting paid off? Okay, it's one or the other. It's very simple. We have the worst trade deals all over the world. South Korea. I love South Korea. They're wonderful people, extremely ambitious. They have a money machine. We protect them from North Korea and other people. North Korea is very nuclear. I got along with him very well, Kim Jong. But wait, they don't
pass anything. And I said, this is crazy. If I didn't put tariffs on you know, the the car companies, they make most of their money at small trucks. I put tariffs on China, but I put twenty seven point five percent. Otherwise we'd be flooded with Chinese cars and all of our factories were clothes, would have no jobs at all in the auto industry that goes for electric by the way, which is a killer, which I've explained and I don't think I have to bore anybody by
talking about it. But I put tariffs on South Korea because they were sending in trucks, and I put tariffs on fairly substantial tariffs. Do you know that our car companies make almost all of their money with the small trucks, SUVs and small trucks. If I took those tariffs on you would be inundated. Every car company would be out of business. And I got calls from Ford, I got calls from everybody saying, Sir, I can't believe you only
this for us. You saved our company. We were going to they make all their money with us if they make most of their money with a small truck. And you know the sun is.
Many consumers ended up with more expensive cars. But let me just let me just come at you and foreign policy.
You wouldn't have at our company.
You have said that Taiwan should pay for US protection. I asked, because this morning you just mentioned North Korea. The Chinese Army literally as we speak, are engaged in rehearsals for a full naval blockade of Taiwan. So I suppose my question is if China invades Taiwan, would you send American troops to defend it.
Well, the reason they're doing it now is they're not going to do it afterwards. Okay, it's you know, so they're doing it now. They want to do a chain. Now. Look, I had I had a very I had a very good relationship with President. She had a very good relationship with Putin and a very good relationship with Kim Jong on, who has a nuclear force that you won't even believe. And by the way, today it was announced for those that he just blew up the railroad going into South Korea.
That means South Korea is now cut off from Russia and China and various other places.
I mean, you just mentioned these are big things.
I have to mention that you just mentioned.
You just mentioned Putin though, and this has been this controversy of the past week. Can you say yes or no whether you have talked to Vladimir Putin since you stopped being president.
Well, I don't come into that, but I will tell you that if I did, it's a smart thing. If I'm friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that's a good thing, not a bit. I think in terms of a country, He's got two thousand nuclear weapons, and so do we. China has a lot less, but they'll catch us within five years very much. I don't talk about No, I don't talk about that.
I talk about I can tell you what these people, Russia.
Has never had a president that they respect so much. But more importantly or less importantly, I guess I went into Russia and people said, no, he likes Putting, and put likes him. Let me tell you. The first thing I did was terminated North Stream to nobody ever heard of Nordstream too. It's a pipeline from Russia to Germany and all over Europe. I said, wait a minute. To NATO, I said, so, let's get this straight. My first meeting, I said, so, Putin's building the biggest pipeline in the world.
He's going to Germany, but all over Europe. And you're paying him billions of dollars a year, billions of dollars a month. You're paying Germany spam billions of dollars a month. And we're supposed to protect you against the guy that you're paying all this money to. So is there's something
wrong with my thinking. So he's building a pipeline to Germany and we're spending And by the way, until I got there, we were spending almost one hundred percent for NATO because we had all these delinquent countries they weren't paying. When I got there, I said, you know what, And by the way, my biggest fan is Stoltenberg, just leaving Secretary General of NATO. He said. When Bush came in, he made a speech and left. When Obama came in,
he made a speech and left. When Trump came in, he made a speech, and he said, let me see you books. And I found out in the books that nobody was paying. There were only seven countries that were paying. We were supporting NATO. They screw us on trade so bad, the European nations, and then on top of that, they were screwing us on the military. So they'd take you a tremendous advantage of US three hundred and fifty billion dollars on trade, and we're then supporting them. In other words,
it's not sustainable. You can't keep doing this. You can't have that China, all of these countries, and stupid people made these deals. I saw trade deals that were so stupid that you have to be excuse me. That was so bad that you'd have to be an idiot to sign them, and we signed them for years. We had we had I could tell you trade that I have never seen anything. I said, who would agree to this. They had to be corrupt. They had to be corrupt to make those deals. They had to be corrupt, because
there is no way a rational human being. I always say, either corrupt or extremely stupid, because there's no way a rational human being would ever sign the trade deals at this country signed, and I got out of many of those deals. I told South kore I'm sorry, you're gonna have to pay for your military. We have forty thousand troops over there. You're gonna have to pay. You become a very wealthy country just to finish. You become a very wealth They said, no, no, no, we will not pay.
We will not We haven't paid since the Korean War. I said, no, you got to pay. I said, would five billion dollars a year to start off with? No, no where. They went crazy. They agreed the two I got two billion dollars for nothing, and I said, here's what we're going to do. They said, we can't agree to this because we have to go through parliament. They have the parliament or whatever their legislature is. They said, that's okay, I fully understand that. Make it two billion dollars.
But next year I'm going to talk to you again. And I was going to make it five billion. And they knew it was coming. The happiest people to see that it was Biden instead of Trump with them. South Korea. You know they did. They cut off the deal that I made where they were paying us. They backed to nothing because they went back to Biden and they gave it to them for nothing. They were willing to pay. We have forty thousand troops in harm's way, very serious
because you have North Korea's very serious power. They have tremendous nuclear power. And I said to South Korea, you gotta pay, and they agreed to do it, and Biden then cut it back. And it's a shame. And I could tell you fifty deals and if I were there now, they'd be paying US ten billion dollars a year, and you know what, they'd be happy to do it. It's a money machine. South Korea. You're going to mention Taiwan. You wanted to mention that you mentioned.
You mentioned Taiwan, you said you would defend them. You also seem to imply that Putin you would not putin. You seem to imply that you had talked to him without actually confirming I said those things. What about? Can I ask you a particular thing about the dollar? You've actually you talked about wars at the New York Economic Club. You said that if you lost the dollar as a reserve currency, it would be like America losing a war.
You look at what you're going to do in terms of protectionism, drive countries to use the other currencies, and all that debt is also going to lessen the dollar's status as of the world's reserve currency. Do you worry about that?
The dollar is so secure, your reserve currency is the strongest it'll ever be.
And Trump at the moment, there is a thing called the Trump trade in the markets. Do you know what that is? The Trump trade is very simple. People are betting that your policies, they're going to drive up debt. They're going to drive up inflation, so they're going to drive up inflation interest rates. Are the investors wrong?
Yeah, I had four years no inflation. I had four years now, but.
That was that was when you had much.
I had four years. It's better than that. And Biden, who has no idea where the hell he is? Okay, Biden went two years with no inflation because he inherited from me. And then they started spending money like drunken sailors. They spent so much money. It was so ridiculous. The money they were spending. They were spending on the green new scam, A green new scam, the green new deal. You know it was conceived of by AOC plus three. She never even studied the environment in college. She went
to a nice college. She came out. She just said the green new scam. She just named all these things.
She meant. The markets are looking at the fact you are making all these promises. Latest one was carloans. You're flooding the thing with giving giveaways. But when I was actually I was actually quite kind to you. I used seven trillion. The upper estimate is fifteen trillion. People like a Wall Street Journal, who's hardly a communist organization. They have criticized you on this as well. You are running an enormous debt.
What is the Wall Street Journal? Now I'm meeting with them tomorrow. What is the Wall Street Journal? That they've been wrong about everything? So of you, by the way, you've been wrong.
You're trying to turn this. You're trying to turn this.
You've been wrong.
Now you're trying to turn You're trying to turn this into debate. There are business people You're wrong.
You've been wrong. You've been wrong all your life on this stuff. You've been let me tell you about currency. You're gonna you know, you're going jumping a lot of a lot of different subjects to the subject stick their reserve currency. That's where you start, right. The reserve currency is under threat because you have Iran, you have Russia, you have China. Once China is the one that you have to worry about because they want it. They want to have the wand be the you know, thing of power.
So here's what I'm doing again. I hate to go back to it. If somebody says, and I know countries want to get out because they don't respect our leadership, they look at this guy, they say, you've got to be kidding. And she's worse than him, by the way she's I never thought i'd say this. She is not as smart as Biden. If you can believe, this is not what we had four years of this lunacy, and we can't have anymore. We're not gonna have a country left. Okay.
Currency very important, yes, And if you want to go to third world, if you want to go to third world status, lose your reserve currency. We have to have that. We cannot lose it. If you'll go to third world status in this country because you take a look at the way things are running. If a country tells me, Sarah, we like you very much, but we're going to no longer adhere to being in the reserve currency. We're not
going to salute the dollar anymore. I'll say that's okay, And you're going to pay one hundred percent TERI for everything you sell into the United States. And we love your product. I help you sell a lot of it into the United States, but you're going to pay one hundred percent tab. He will then follow it up by saying, sir, it would be an honor to stay with the reserve current and say I will be That will be like just playing that's not even chess, that's checkers. But you
don't have other listen to this. You don't have other people that can talk that way. You know a lot of people say, we love Trump's policy, but we would like to have another messenger because we don't like him. He's a little bit crass. And then actually it was Lindsay Graham. I must say he was a progressive in all fairness, but Lindsay Graham said, but Trump's policy doesn't work with that Trump and there's a lot of truth
to that. Macron was going to nice guy Emmanuel. He's a wise guy, but he's for France and we're for the USA. You know this story. He was going to tax American companies doing business in France a very substantial tax. And I told my people, I'm not I didn't even like the companies, but I'm representing American companies and this guy. So I said, call Macron and call his people and say we're not going to stand for that. And I got the Mnuchin and you know a lot of guys,
smart guys. If I can finish, I'll go longer.
If you want about the Federal room.
You've got to be able to finish a thought because it's very important. You know, this is big stuff we're talking about. You can't go that.
You've gone from the dollleuts.
Let me just tell you so. I said, no, I'm just telling you basic. It's called the weave. It's all these different things happen him. So let me just say so. I said to Mnuchin, call him up and say no. Way. He did, and he came back to see me. He said, they won't do it. So it's too late. I said to somebody as you call him. Then I said, let me do it. And I called him and I said, Emmanuel, you're taxing American companies very substantially. You're not doing it
with other companies. You must think we're stupid. It's not going to happen. But doing all doing what I cannot do anything it's too late or it was approved by a legislature. I said, that's okay. Here's the story. Every bottle of wine and CHAMPI that you sent into the United States effective immediately, and I'm signing it as I speak. I'm charging you one hundred percent. Want every bottle of
wine and champagne. You know they like the wine and champagne. Right, Every bottle of wine and champagne that comes into the United States of Americas has a tax on starting on Monday morning. This was a Friday of one hundred percent. And that's better than you're doing, okay. And he said, no, no, no, you cannot do that. I said, I've done it. It's already signed Monday morning, be goes. May I call you back, yes, of course, me back in about three minutes. We have
decided to remove the tax from the communism. I did this all day long, but you don't have you think Biden does that.
I don't think so let me let me, let me change. Let me ask you a very factual question. The Federal Reserve. Yeah, you say you don't want interest rates to go higher. You've gone back with some forwards about depends what you want to keep, whether you want to keep your own Powell's chair at the Federal Reserve. His term as chair runs on to May twenty twenty six. Would you seek to remove, remove or demote him?
Look, I think it's the greatest job in government. You show up to the office once a month and you say, let's see flip aical and everybody talks about you like you're a god. Oh what will he do? I mean before the guy used to walk into my office, he was like began host. He was fine.
You did talk about him, You talked about removing him once.
I did because he was keeping the ridge too high, and I was right.
And you would do that again.
In fact, he actually dropped them too much when I did this, because I said I was threatening to terminate him. There was a question as to whether or not you could, and there was an article on the New York Times two hair pages one page that I can do it by lawyers one hair page that I couldn't, and that was enough for him, and he dropped the hell out of the rates. He dropped them too much, he went, so he dropped them actually too much. Okay, here's the story.
I think that if you're a very good president with good sense, you should be able to at least talk to him. I don't say make the decision at all, but I mean I've been a very successful businessman. I've done really good, much better now people are understanding how good I've done because they're seeing it much better than the fake news wants to give me credit. What I think I have the right to say. As a very good businessman and somebody that's used a lot of sense,
I think I have the right to say that. You know, I think I'm better than he would be. I think I'm better than most people would be in that position. I think I have the right to say I think you should go up or down a little bit. I don't think I should be allowed to order it, but I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether or not interest rates should go up.
You, when you looked at the Supreme Court, you came up with a list of people, I did, who you thought of replacing bringing in a Supreme Court justices? Would you do that with the federal.
Well I no longer needed well I it was a great thing. In fact, a lot of people said I got elected because of that. I was an unknown quantity. I was very known as a business guy, but I wasn't known as a political person or the leader of a country. And people were very worried about you know, actually they were worried, am I going to be liberal? If you want to know the truth? And somebody said, would you come up with a list of twenty or twenty five justices in this case, mostly judges that you'd
put in in case it were necessary. Now it's amazing because I got three in four years. Most people get none because you know, you put them in the young. You tend to put them in young. Only super people put old. You know, you don't put old in because they're there for two years or three years you.
Were you know, I got three.
Most a lot of judges, a lot of presidents get none. I got three, and I think they've been three great choices too, by the way, But they by the way, I think they have. I think they have been really great choices. But I got three judges, and and you know what they want to do. They want to put up they want to now put up up to twenty five justices into the Supreme Court, the radical left, and that can't happen. So I think I've done a great job in putting injustices and three hundred judges, and that
made a tremendous difference in the country. You know, I was a little lucky because baracusay and Obama did not get his judges approved a lot of them. So I ended up with one hundred and twenty five judges before I got there. So most again, most presidents don't even get to put a Supreme Court judge in because it's nine and you know, they're there for a long time. Most of them are there for a very long time. And I got three, which is a very unusual situation. I got three in four years.
Maybe we can change the subject's technology thing you wouldn't talk about the Federal Reserve. The US Justice Department is thinking about breaking up alphabet because Google likes to be known. Now, should Google be breaken up?
I just haven't gotten over something. The Justice Department did yesterday where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes, and the Justice Department sued them that they should be allowed to put those bad votes and illegal votes back in and let the people vote. So I haven't gotten I haven't gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that. They can't even believe it.
The question is about Google, President Chump.
Yeah, Look, Google's got a lot of power. They're very bad to me, very very bad to me. I mean I can speak from that standpoint. They only have bad stories. In other words, if I have twenty good stories and twenty bad stories and everyone's entitled to that, you'll only see the twenty bad stories. And I called the head of Google the other day and I said, I'm getting a lot of good stories lately, but you don't find them in Google. I think it's a whole rig deal.
I think Google's rigged, just like our government is rigged all over you.
You would break them up.
In other words, I do something, but you have to have Look, I give them a lot of credit. They've become such a power, such a power, and you've got to give them credit for that. How they became a power is you know, really the discussion. At the same time, it's a very dangerous thing because we want to have great companies. We don't want China to have these companies. Right now, China is a friend of Google right now. You know, China is a very powerful, very smart group
of people. I will tell you that from very personal.
Example of a Chinese tech company at the moment. TikTok. Yeah, you initially wanted to ban TikTok. Now you like it, apparently for some reason to do with Facebook. There is a decision coming up. If you became president, it's Chinese parent would have to sell it. I think it's by January the nineteenth. Would you force them to do that?
So I originally had it all done, and then I said to Congress, your decision. I said, I'm not going to, you know, pull any strings nothing. Your decision. You make it. But I had it all done and I said, you make it, and they decided not to make it. I didn't care if they made it or not, because to me, it was a flip of acquiring. You know, you have some real First Amendment problems. You have a lot of problems.
You just talked about Chinese technology, the need to defend against it, TikTok and the threat people see too many kind of American children and things like that. Why do you no longer see the security threat?
I think it is a threat. Frankly, I think everything's a threat. There's nothing that's not a threat. But sometimes you have to fight through these threats. You know, you can't just like Google. I'm not a fan of Google. They treat me badly. But if you are you going to destroy the company by doing that. If you do that, are you going to destroy the company. What you can do without breaking it up is make sure that it's more fair. They do treat me very badly. Oh and
he told me, no way. You're the number one person on all of Google first stories, I mean, which probably makes sense, to be honestly, I actually agreeve most of them are bad stories. But these are minor details, right, And it's only bad because of the fake news, because the news is really fake. That's the one we really have to straighten And we have to straighten out our press because we have a corrupt press, and.
That's the one we really can I ask you, can I ask you about Silicon I was in Silicon Valley recently you talk to the tech bosses and the tech people, and that seems to be real fear that what you would do with tech is you would hand it over to Elon Musk and say you sort it out.
No, No, I have great respect for Elon. Look. I saw that rocket ship come in yesterday and go right back to where it took off to the gantry. I guess they call it. And I said, what the hell. I was on the phone talking about probably politics and the television, and the television's on, and I'm seeing this big thing where the white paint was burned off it from that, you know, thousands of miles an hour they eat. And I see this big, massive tube that's ten stories
twenty stories tall come down. I told the person on the phone, wait a minute. I'm seeing something that's I don't believe it, neither does anybody else here. And I said, wait a minute. I put the I forgot the guy was on the phone. He waited for a half hour, and I watched I watched that come down, and I watched it come down and come right in between those big levers, and I said, and it looked to me
like I was going to crash. It was coming in hot and all of a sudden, boom, you see the motor the fire kick in and I called it elon. I said, that's the most incredible thing. I said, Can Russia do that? Nope? I said can the United States do it? Nope. He's the only way they can do it.
And I said, you know, I want to put him in charge of deregulation, not deregulation, cutting cutting wasteful spend, cutting everything which deregulation.
When you every.
Predial, every president comes in and talks about cutting wasteful spending.
Oh, there's tremendous wall.
Give me an example of something you will do that will get rid of government spend.
Well, let me give you an example. When I came into government, I.
Was the first example coming forward.
This is going forward because it's the same thing. When I first sat down, a general came into my office and he said, sir, it's nice to meet you. Will you please sign this? I said, what is it? It's a contract for a new air force one which is actually two planes, not one two Boeing seven forty seven. And I said, how much is it? Five point seven billion dollar? Dollar said, it's a hell of an expensive plan, but there's reasons for that. He said, Nope, I'm not
signing it. I said, who negotiated Barackus, say Obama. I said, I'm not signing it. Why because he because there's a lot of fat. He said, I'm not signing. It's got to have a three on it. Anyway, long story short, some of you have heard this. I got it down too, because first week they cut off four hundred million, he said, I'll cut I met with the head of going Wait, Dennis. I said, Dennis got to have a three. Five point seven is too much? Five point seven billion. He said,
the most I'll takeoff is four hundred million dollars. I said, well, that's not bad for one conversation. So he got it down. I said, nope, I'm not accepting. Then he took off two more. Then he took off anyway. Two months went by, three months went by. I thought we blew the deal, and I was okay with me. I didn't care, but we should have a new air force. One when we see these planes from Saudi Arabia, from different countries brand new, and ours is like thirty two years old, and it's
a very different plane. It's a much smaller plane near the whole thing. The United States should have the best plane. I will tell you, not for me, but we should have.
Let me. Let me give you his own, would you.
So he said, he calls up after like two three months. I didn't call him, which is the best way to buy something. Don't call back, and he goes in fact what he called me. I said, I wonder what the hell he wants. That's a good way to negotia. Let me tell you. So calls back said, sir, three billion, nine hundred and ninety nine million, nine nine and ninety nine cents one penny above below four billion. Now, so I said, you got yourself a deal. Then I said
to him, let me ask you a question. So you had a deal at five point seven billion, and in a period of two months I got one point seven billion off. That means you're going to make one point seven billion dollar profit on an airplane. Did nobody ever negotiate with you? Well, not really, sir. They just this is the price, and they said we'll take it. And I said, you know, and then I learned. That was my first experience from that, But then I learned everything
is like that. There is so much way so I'm getting think of this the exact same plane for one point seven billion, less exact except to have a better pay job. Okay, much better pay job. A different co Red, white, and blue was beautiful. And if you look at every contract that's one contract and relatively small compared to most, think of it. You save one point seven billion because you negotiate every deal is like that. We're building ships
that are costing two three times more. A tremendous waste, fraud and abuse in our contract and if you could cut it, you would have a surplus without even going into growth. But growth, we will grow. We're going to bring companies and jobs in at levels that you've never seen. And you would never be able to do it because you're not a believer.
I'm not running for president.
Let me tell you the only way you can do it is through the threat of tariffs. It's the only way you can do it.
Can we can we come back to one thing on that deal making. You look out across this room. There are a lot of there's some big businesses, but a lot of small ones. Like the way you've given us, You've given us a lot of examples of things where you've negotiated with the heads of big businesses. Give you an example, when you put the tariffs on China, much smaller than your planning to do at the moment. When you put them on Apple came, you negotiated a difference for them.
I do.
That's much harder for small business people. Isn't the problem with the way that you do these kind of deals. You're bound to deal with the big companies. It's the small companies who get hit by all these different things and can't find exceptions.
Oh, we have exceptions. No, no, we had an exceptional. I gave Apple an exception. Tim Cook is a great Apple.
Apple is not a small company, and please please think it. But here's what question is about small business? Yes, but what would we do for them now?
But we have a very talented group of people. Bob Leitheuser did a very good job. We had great people, We had central casting. These are and a large group of people. We made exceptions. In the case of Apple. They need an exception. You know why because of Samsung. He came to me. He said, Samsung makes a product similar to ours, very good product, the phones and other things, and because they're in South Korea, they don't have the tariffs.
Because we're in China. We have the tariffs. I said, you happen to be right, You're not going to be able to compete. I said, look, I'm going to give you a one year break, but I want you to start building your factories in this country, whether it's Texas or any other place anywhere in the country. He said, what does that mean. I said, you have everything in China. I want you to move it from China back to our country. And he started doing that and he built
a factory, a big one in Texas. He built another one, and this was all a process. It was all happening. But I did give him an exception. And the reason was he said, as soon as he said Samsung, I said, how is that product compared to you? As he said, it's a good product. I said, then you really can't compete. You can't have a twenty five or fifty percent tariff and compete, right, Yeah, And I said, I'm giving you an exception. And I did it for many companies. When I had some.
Businesses come and say, that was the question.
But we do it for small businesses too. We do for small business I'll give you who I didn't know, but he came to me. He was at a meeting and he built kitchen cabinets and he was pretty big in the business. That's all he did is built kitchen cabinets. He said, Sir, China and South Korea are building kitchen cabinets for one third of what I can make. I said, what's the quality. They're not as good, but they're good enough. I can't go. I'm going out of business. I'm going
out of business. I put a twenty five percent tariff still on one kitchen cabinets. I saw the guy two three days ago. He said, I'm the man that saw you about kitchen cabinets. You saved my company when you did the tariff, and you saved thousands of jobs. And my company is now doing very well. And he started to cry, so to cry. And this guy hasn't cried too much. I will tell you. He said, you saved my company. There's nobody that could have done that.
Maybe I can ask you Ben about something else. Business people here in this room, business people, capital markets. They all like the rule of law. They like certainty. The Chinese who you mentioned other dictators, right, they don't like it when things go but they like it when things go wrong in America. If you look at the events of January sixth, twenty twenty one, it showed to many people America's democracy was unruly and violent only three weeks
to go to the election. Will you come it now to respecting and encouraging a peaceful transfer of power?
Well, you had a peaceful transfer of power.
You had a peaceful transfer power. You had a peaceful come on present Trump. You had a piece, You had a piece. You had a peaceful transfer of power compared with Venezuela. But it was by far the most the worst transfer of power for a long time.
Thank you. I appreciate that because this is the you know what they like to do. This is what they like to do.
And question question question President Trump is would you respect the decision?
When I found out about this interview, I did a little check. He is a man that has not been a big Trump fan over the years, So I had a choice. Do I do this interview or not. I'm glad I did it. But do I do this interview or do I disappoint a lot of people? Because I know a lot of people in the audience, but his view is very different than mine.
Let me just say I'm asking questions.
We had a term peacefully and patriotically. These were people. If you think an election is crooked, and I do one hundred percent. If you think the day it comes when you can't protest, you take a look at the Democrats. They protested twenty sixteen. They're still protesting it. Nobody talks about them. But if we protest, we want to have honest elections. You think the last election was honest, well do you think.
All the times it went to courts? The courts, no, it didn't govern.
They went to court and the courts all said, you don't have standing. Nobody had standing. And it's hard, frankly after an election for a judge, but they all said, you don't. Nobody ever had standing. But the facts, if you take a look, I'd show you hundreds of pages of facts. People were angry, people went there, and I'll tell you what they never show that. The primary scene in Washington was hundreds of thousands, the largest group of people I've ever spoken before, and I've spoken before, and
it was love and peace. And some people went to the Capitol and a lot of strange things happened there. A lot of strange things with people being waved into the capitol by police, with people screaming go in with it. That never got into trouble. You know, I don't want to mention names, but you know who they are, a lot of strange things happened, but you had a peaceful, very peaceful I left. I left the morning that I was supposed to leave. I went to Florida, and you
had a very peaceful transfer. This was not a And I'll tell you what those people that did go at which was a tiny fraction of the people that went to Washington. I mean you're talking about of very very small because hundreds of thousands of people and I don't know what you had five six, seven hundred people go down to the capitol. But those people that was not that was not one of those people had a gun. Nobody was killed except for Ashley Babbitt. She was killed.
She was killed. She was shut their head by a policeman that we had know. What he did was hard present. So I think we should be allowed to disagree on that.
And let's return.
Do you see by the reaction.
Let's return, Let's return. Let's return to one other big subject you bring up repeatedly. Immigration. I know, it's a very emotive issue for you, But just from the point of view business people here, you look at the full effect of taking a lot of people out of the workforce, removing a lot of people. The federal the Congressional Budget Office is banking on the fact that there'll be nine trillion dollars added to the GDP of America over the
next ten years by immigrants. You want to stop that process. For all the people who run businesses in the audience, I'm just focusing on the economic thing. Are you prepared to say, Look, it's fine to have a slightly smaller economy in exchange for having the immigration controls.
A simple answer. I want a lot of people to come into our country, but I want them to come in legally. I don't want to have.
But that means that means you will have. That means you will have to You know, you are talking about deposting eleven million people. That is a lot of people's take out.
It came out last week that four hundred and twenty five thousand people are horrible criminals at the highest level, But it came out that thirteen thousand and ninety nine were let in during their administration they tried to say longer wrong. During the Over the last three and a half years, thirteen thousand plus people came in. Murderers, they're in jail for murder. Some were having the death penalty. They were all released into our country. Thirteen thousand and
ninety nine people were released into our country. We had drug dealers released, we had street gangs released. Look at what's happening in a A. But now I don't have to go with Aurora anymore. Look at what happened yesterday last night in Times Square where rough migrants from all over the place. You know, it's not just South America. We have people coming in from the Congo, large numbers from the Congo in Africa. They came in as of last night, I was speaking to Tom Homan one hundred
and eighty countries. People came in. They came from prisons and jails. They came from mental institutions and insantus ALM's a step above. They came from the terrorists. We had large numbers of terrorists come in. When I was present, we had the strongest border in the history of a country. I built hundreds of miles of wall, and wall's work. By the way, hundreds of miles. We had the best numbers we've ever had. Now we have the worst numbers. And here's the problem. We have some of the worst
criminals in the world coming in now Venezuela. There time has gone down at levels that nobody's ever seen before because they've taken their street gangs and their drug dealers, and they've emptied their prisons, not fully because they can't get enough buses. They've emptied their prisons. They load up the buses and they drive them into the United States and they're dropping their prisoners into our country. Their crime is down. Their numbers are are crazy how low it drops.
I heard seventy two, seventy four percent. They've taken their they've taken their gangs, they've taken their criminals off the street. They've taken their people out of mental institutions, which costs them a fortune, and they've taken them and dropped them into the United States of America. Those people have to be returned. We can't live with thousands of murderers.
And the issue I asked you about was the idea that if you reduce immigration. Every economist will tell you, if you have fewer people, there is a smaller economy.
I don't I like immigration, but it's they've got to come in legally.
Okay, Okay, Well let's let's finish on two too.
I want to make sure. Look, I don't want to I don't want to have people that have killed nine people and they're you know, a sadistic, crazy nutshup. We have to have people that that can love our country, that can you know, that will obey the laws of everything else. You have hundreds of thousands of criminals being dropped in and then as well as one country.
Look at what they have done though in Aurora.
They've taken over apartment complexes, They've taken they've gone into the real estate business. See, they're like us, except they've done it with MK whatever the hell they're called, right, I mean they have they have taken they have weapons that are so sophisticated our military doesn't happen. They've taken over parts of of cities in Colorado. You have a
place called beautiful Aurora. Take a look at what's happened to Springfield, Ohio, where they dropped thirty thousand people into a community of fifty thousand people and it's total bedlam. The hospitals can't be used anymore by the residents. The schools can't be used by the children that were there last year because other people that don't even speak the langage.
The issue I asked you about. Many companies here have a shortage of labor.
Yeah, that's good to take care of that. We're going to get people in here rapidly, and they're going to be people that want to be in here, and they're going to be people that can love our country and won't kill people because they have because they don't like the way they look.
These are killing me.
These some of these killers are among the most evil killers. They will look at you down the beautiful woman there, They'll look at you and they will kill you. These are seriously sick people. And no, I don't want them in our country. And they are in our country right now, and they're in there because Kamala Harris, who's our borders are, isn't incompetent present.
For the records. As you know, the crime rate is lower. Can I finish with two questions. The first you've just said it. You don't do old you own and run businesses. Would you appoint a CEO who was seventy eight. You didn't give you up.
Yeah, yeah, what it depends on I made people like Biden who's in bad shape. I wouldn't appoint him he's eighty one or eighty two. He's four years older. But at a point, I know some of the smartest people I know. I know man that made all of his money from the time he was eighty to ninety, and he was a failure all his life. He was in the drinks business.
The strange stranger. You didn't bring this up when but you were running against Joe Biden.
No, I never attacked him for his age. In fact, I used to defend him on his age. I think I attacked him for his lack of competence.
I asked you, I've asked you all these questions.
Just because I think it's important, and I know you do too. I know so many people in their eighties that are among Bernie Marcus is ninety five, a founder of Home Deeople. You have the conversation with him. He's just as sharp as he mentally, he's just as sharp as you have was he's ninety five. I could tell you that in the nineties. I don't want to get into the ninety staff. But you know what, I know
many people in their eighties. I know guys in their eighties that won't leave the company, like family companies where they don't want the kids to take government because they're much more competent than their kids. I know them both, right, So no, I would have no problem. And you do have another factor.
You know, we've had some of our great on the Supreme Cool.
You just said some of our great world leaders are in the eighties, and if you look throughout history, some of our greatest world leaders were in their eighties. No, that would bother me. But you know, I took two cognitive tests and I aced them both. I think that, frankly, people regardless should take if they're fifty or forty or I think people should take cognitive tests, not because of the age, but because of something else. Now here's the problem.
They say it's unconstitutional, Okay, but I would love to see cognitive tests. I don't think she could pass a cognitive test. I mean I've watched I don't think she could pass a cognitive test.
President Trump, You're gone over many issues on this. I asked you, I asked you many questions about things. One thing I am asked at all about is the state of the race. Yeah, I had a question for you on election night? Which state would you look at first? Which state do you think this race is going to be decided by?
So they say Pennsylvania, I would say most. I think we're doing very well there. I think you look at Michigan too, and I'm doing very well there. You know, we don't have to look necessarily. The votes are starting to come in now, so you look at poles, but you can also look at the votes that are being cast right now. People get a pretty good indication. And based as we discussed backstage, you know, based on the votes that are coming in so far, we're doing very well.
I mean we're way up in Pennsylvania, We're way up in Michigan. We're doing very well in Arizona. So Arizona. In fact, somebody said they're going to pull the plug in Arizona. They're going to give it up because it looks like we're quite quite a ways ahead. I think we're doing well. Look, this is a party, the Republican Party of common Sense. I forget about conservative liberal. We're let's say conservative, but we're really a party of we need borders. We need fair elections. We don't want men
playing in women's sports. We don't want transgender operations without parental consent. You know, it's there's so many things, but it's ninety nine point nine is common sense. It really is common sense. And I like to say it. I don't know if anyone said it in the past, but I say, we're really a party of common sense, and we want to have great people in our country. I want to have a lot of people come in so that you have your choice and so that they have choice.
I want to you know, I have a good heart. I have a heart where I want people to be taken care of. But I don't want to take in people where they millions of people, twenty one million people at least have come in in the last three and a half years, unvetted, unchecked. We don't know anything about him. We don't How about this Gavin Newscomb, he's the governor of California. He signed Newscomb.
Like but do you think he connected he correctly? There is the first time i've there are CEOs out here. If they said those sort of things about a rival CEO, they would be signed to be signed.
Do you think but they don't have to survive like me. They don't have to go through what I have to go through. There has never been a president that's been treated like me, So I have to fight my own way.
You made, you made a You've made a very good you made a very good job.
And he signed bill in California two days ago that you don't even have the right to ask a person for voter ID. And if you ask a person for voter ID, of course you have to show voter ID. The only reason you wouldn't do because they want to achieve. The bill says you cannot. It's against the law for you to ask a person map, please see your voter ID when her votes. What is our country coming to?
Well, you've given us a tool de reason of where that country might be going to. Thank you very much for much you. Thanks you for the conversation.
More than an hour long conversation between former President Donald Trump and Bloomberg editor in chief John Micklethwaite in partnership with the Economic Club of Chicago, a conversation that rains from tax and tariffs and technology to immigration and the Federal Reserve. Welcome Back to Special Coverage, A special edition a Balance of Power here on Bloomberg TV and Radio.
I'm Kaylee Lines alongside Joe Matthew. We are about to break down exactly what we heard there from Donald Trump in terms of his economic policy, including the pushback he gave on what a number of economists or majority of economists would suggest or potential inflationary and detrimental impacts of the policy, pushing back on the idea Joe that tax cuts will add to the deficit, that tariffs will lead to higher costs for the American people, even that it
could influence ultimately the dominance of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. We should point out a lot of those things were fact check in real time by John.
Nicklefwayth Yeah, we have a lot to unpack here, and that was quite an exchange. Sometimes interviews take different forms. With Donald Trump, that was a real back and forth, and I think we all learned a lot by listening to it. John started by citing his very first question research from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, that if you wonk out with us here on a daily basis on balance of power, you're pretty familiar with seven
point eight to fifteen. I believe trillion dollars was the estimate that unless there's something we're not understanding about how to pay for the tax cuts and exemptions that Donald Trump has put forth, that is what it would add to the deficit. Donald Trump wasn't having any of that, Kayley, And that's nothing new in this case.
Yeah, continually pushing back on again what the majority of economists would agree would be the economic impact of his policies. So we want to turn now to an economist Bloomberg Economics is Anna Wong, who leads our US economic coverage, is here with us in our Washington, DC studio. So Anna, you of course have done analysis on what the policies of not just Donald Trump a Kamala Harris could mean
for the US economy. When he says things like we're all about growth, that companies will only be protected by stronger tariffs, is that really how it's going to translate economically if these things become reality.
Yeah, So I think he simplified his own policy impact a little bit. So if we looked at his tax policies, which is all about tax cuts, lowering a corporate tax cut, but of course those would be all economic models would say generally in the short term it would boost growth. That would be where the growth enhancing would come from.
But there's a cost to be paid for that, and which is that over the long term, with higher physical debt to GDP ratio, that would raise interest rates and in ten years those benefits which you see in the first two or three years would dissipate. Also, in terms of tariff policy, he mentioned a lot about how tariffs would bring back jobs to the country, and that's per growth. So I think it's important to know that it's true economists were wrong in his first administration, that all the
inflationary impact economists estimated were overblown. But you know, the economy adjusted to tariff in two ways, either through higher prices if firms can pass through those prices, or through lower investment and lower growth. And in his first administration what happened was it didn't translate into higher prices. However, it did translate into lower growth due to trade policy uncertainty.
We've had conversations on this program, in fact quite recently today.
Joelvornia was on.
Before that interview, Scott Bessont was on a couple of days ago. They returned to the theme of looking at this as a whole, that each proposal taken in a vacuum is not going to add up to what the former president is seeing here when you actually do that, when you combine the tariffs with the tax proposals and drill Baby, drill his idea of lowering energy costs to lower inflation across the board.
Do you see it any differently?
Yeah, I think that if you take it holistically, and Joe LaVarne, you're completely right. You have growth enhancing trade I mean tax policy in the short term, but growth reducing trade policy in the short term. I think in the first two or three years that will about wash out. The effect will be slightly negative over a ten years period.
And thank you so much for being with us Bloomberg Economics, Anna Wong, keeping us honest on some of the issues that we talked about here. And we want to turn from the economy to politics. Of course, it's pretty hard to remove the suicid. We'll do both with our signature panel.
Rick Davis, Partner at Stone Court Capital, alongside Genie Shanzano, political science professor at Iona University, Senior Democracy Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, Rick, you said this was going to be a spirited conversation, that this might be the most challenging interview that Donald Trump would have for the rest of the cycle.
I think you might be right.
Yeah, And I think one of the more sober and serious conversations. I thought John Michols Waite did a fantastic job of keeping focused on the issues that he was asking about, trying to do the follow up that he was requiring. And look, I mean, you know, you got to give Trump credit. He hung in there. He told lots of stories that exemplified, you know, his policy points.
And I think as a communicator, we underestimate Donald Trump's ability to sort of package his argument events in these kinds of storytelling that are easy for people to digest. So his audience wasn't the Chicago Economic Club sitting in the room and dining on rubber chicken. His audience were, you know, blue collar workers in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin who they hear these stories. They can actually understand the economic points that he's making.
But if part of his audience here Jeanie was in Michigan, he again attacked Detroit, as we saw him do in Detroit just a few days ago. He's going to be back there later on this week. He called it horrible, talking about how it hasn't recovered. Of course, it did declare bankruptcy back in twenty thirteen, but it has seen a recovery since then. In fact, the city just announced earlier this year it grew in population between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three for the first time since
nineteen fifty seven. How does that play in a state which ultimately could have a hand in deciding this election.
Yeah, this is something we've heard Trump do over and over again, attack cities from Milton and Detroit and of course New York City, And of course factually there's no basis for it. We know, violent crime, for instance, in Detroit is down to levels we haven't seen since nineteen
ninety six. And I think, you know, as I watched this entire interview, which I agree was so important, Donald Trump missed an opportunity here in my mind, he ended up talking about what defending January sixth, talking about Venezuela and Maduro, this strong man, this autocrat, this dictator as well, what a great job he has done cutting down on violence with the use of a police state. He is making certainly things that Republican leaders at the state and
local level have pushed back against. As it refers to Aurora, as it refers to Springfield. The list goes on and on, and John Micklesoet was trying to have a sober, serious conversation on his economic policies. And I can bet that is not where Donald Trump's campaign wanted him to go to sit there and say those kinds of things. The attacks were all over the place. They were on everybody, from the press to two people who are running these
cities and states, two immigrants. They were as no fact checking that he was going to abide by, and it was off the rails in true Donald Trump's style. And that is a problem for Donald Trump because I know he wants to double down in his base. Rick is right, but he's got to reach sober minded people in the middle who like his policies first term, but are very concerned about this rhetoric. And I don't think he did himself any favors on that front. And of course, top
of the list there is tariffs. He had absolutely no answer to the very serious economic questions about raising tariffs. He said sometimes two hundred five hundred percent.
All right, Genie Shanzino and Rick Davis with their Clutch analysis coming out of the interview, they're going to be sticking with us for the rest of the hour. We thank you both our signature panel here on an important day as we go into overtime here on our special live from Washington. Following Bloomberg's interview with Donald Trump, the former president talked about tariff's quite a bit today in
policies he'd like to pursue if elected. In the conversation we just brought to you in partnership with the Economic Club of Chicago, Let's.
Listen to me. The most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff and it's my favorite word. It needs a public relations firm.
Joining us now for more here on Bloomberg TV and Radio. Anna Ashton, founder of Ashton Analytics, former China analyst for the US Department of Defense, and it's great to see you. Thanks for joining us here. Following this conversation, Donald Trump pushed back pretty hard on the issue of tariff's.
He called tariff's his.
Favorite word, the most beautiful word in the dictionary. Did he change the way you look at this in his conversation today with John Mickelfway.
Well, no, and thank you for having me on. It was interesting to listen to his remarks. I think we can all be pretty assured of where he wants to go with tariff policy, that he wants to raise tariffs, and not just on China. You spend a lot of time talking about Mexico, for example, and he said that, you know, our allies have been more problematic than our enemies, so the EU, Japan.
Well, Anna, as you mentioned Mexico. According to FactCheck dot org, there is only one small Chinese car manufacturing plant in Mexico right now. But something else we heard from Donald Trump was the suggestion, if you make the tariffs high enough, to quote him, so high, so horrible, so obnoxious, they'll come right away, meaning they will come and make things
in the US instead. What is the realistic chance that manufacturers in China are going to be able to suddenly up and move all that business to the United States and have supply come out of there. How does that actually translate in reality?
Well, you know, I think it's going to be really interesting to see if this is you know, a sign of Trump kind of evolving his perspective on China and what he wants from the relationship, because he certainly wasn't really gung ho about inviting Chinese investment into the United States in his first term, and if second term would
he be It sort of sounds like it. It sort of sounds like he sees tariffs as a way to bring foreign investment into the United States to create jobs, and I think a lot of people can get on board with that from an economic standpoint.
However, there are.
Many many people in Washington and both parties who are not particularly enthusiastic about Chinese investment in the United States. And not just in Washington, there are governors all over the country who also are not keen on that. So I'm not sure that it's within Trump's power to change hearts and minds domestically.
I want to ask you about what the former president said about Taiwan Ana. He was asked whether he would send American troops to defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion or a blockade by China. He didn't really answer that directly. He said, quote, I have a very good relationship with President she is his relationship good enough to avoid that scenario if you were re elected.
I think it's less about whether or not his relationship with President she is good enough, and more about the fact that he is a confirmed He does not want to have American forces fighting foreign wars, and he's indicated in other interviews that he's not particularly interested in sending troops to Taiwan unless Taiwan is going to pay more for US defense. He wants more of a quid pro
quo relationship than he believes we have right now. But again, this is where Trump diverges from the majority of minds that are shaping policy in DC, both Republican and Democrat. I don't think that his own party is particularly aligned behind that idea well.
And perhaps the divergence that matters most, at least with three weeks to go and tell election Diana, is how his policy diverges from the policy that Kamala Harris has suggested she pursued. Keeping in mind, she has been attached to this administration that has left intact and in many ways actually in many instances expanded the tariffs put into place under the first Trump administration. Harris, who has also talked about making sure the US is leading the technology
war against China. How realistically are we going to see differences in approach here, and is it just a matter of scale, if you will, Maybe not tariffs of the kind Donald Trump is talking about, but tariffs all the same.
I certainly think we're going to see tariffs all the same. But you know, the Biden administration has, with its increase of select tariffs in the last month, made clear that they're interested in taking a more targeted approach, and you know that that is overall the impression I'm getting from Harris's talking points. So I think that, you know, Yanes,
we will see continued tariffs. We will see a continued emphasis on industrial policy as part of the effort to make the United States more competitive with China and ensure US competitiveness going forward. But I don't think that a Harris administration would be interested in the kind of across the board tariffs on everything from China and things from everywhere else that Trump seems to be enthusiastic about.
Great to have you with us today, Anna, Thank you.
Anna Ashton is founder of Ashton Analytics, former China analysts for the US Department of Defense.
Just the voice we needed today. We thank you again.
And joining us now is Democratic Congressman Sean Caston of Illinois. He serves on the House Financial Services Committee and brings the voice of a Democrat to the table here. Congressman, it's good to see you. Welcome back to Bloomberg TV
and Radio. What you just heard today from Donald Trump is the most complete explanation and most complete presentation we have heard of his economic proposals, making the Trump tax cuts permanent, a series of exemption on things like tips over time, social Security, and others that we might not even have time to list here today. And an overall approach to inflation that starts with energy. Drill, Baby drill, he says, will bring down prices across the board.
Are you on board?
Well, look, it's hard to follow a lot of that because so much of his representations of the economy were just flat wrong. We've seen surges and foreign direct investment over the last four years. We've seen almost a doubling and manufacturing investment in the United States over the last four years. Yes, there's been inflation, but slower than all the other countries in the OECD. We've had record setting job creation. This is an economy to celebrate, and he
seemed to be focused on bad mouthing it. But I want to just talk about the energy piece for a moment. In April of twenty twenty, under Donald Trump, the price of oil collapsed because of COVID. Trump responded by calling the Saudis and threatening to pull all military aid out of Saudi Arabia unless they curtailed production to raise the price of oil to protect US oil producers. He has always put the interest of producers over the interests of consumers.
And you know, when you're talking about drill, baby, drill, we are using a lot less cold than we used to in the United States. We're using a lot we're using We've had basically no growth in oil. That's because we've invested in efficiency. We've invested in renewables. The person with a solar panel on the roof is not paying for electricity anymore. What Trump is pushing for is not lowering costs for consumers on energy, but raising prices to
energy producers. He's done that consistently, and let's not pretend it's something else.
Well, Congressman, is we consider this is a plan he says ultimately will lead to lower inflation. Let's talk about inflation and who all has a role in combating that, because obviously the Federal Reserve is part of that game too. Donald Trump was actually asked about the FED and the influence the president should have on it in this conversation. Let's remind ourselves of what he said.
I think that if you are a very good president with good sense, you should be able to at least talk to him. I don't say make the decision at all.
Congressman, what's your response to that?
I guess you have to really love the economy of the eighteen nineties to want a non independent FED and a massive tariff policy.
J Powell.
You know, I don't agree with J. Powell on everything, but J. Powell has done a masterful job, as he should, of staying above politics. You know, the idea of an independent FED is, as your viewers know well, right you, sometimes it's not politically wise to do the right thing for the economy. Interfering with that is a really really dangerous path to go, and we've been there in our past, right you know, there was a point when we didn't
have an independent FED. Those weren't good times for the US economy.
Well, with that said, where is the economy going to be here in your view, when the next president takes off. As congressman, this is something that we ask a lot of lawmakers and economists here, knowing that we're seeing, or at least feeling, some concerns tied to a slowdown here. Obviously, interest rate cuts are part of the picture, which some could suggest benefit the incumbent in this case, I guess
we could call that incumbent Kamala Harris. But what's your view about where we're going to be in January when you come back to Washington.
You know, I suppose prognostication is a fool's game, but I think you know some of the metrics that we've been watching closely in the economy. We've seen this surge of investment for the last four years. Really, for the first time in decades, we've consistently seen job creation out posting worker creation. Our workforce has not been growing as fast as the jobs have. That was creating some upward
pressure on inflation. Was certainly contributing to it. It's a good problem to have, right because there were so much investments going on in the United States. We have seen
some of that pressure easing. Frankly, thanks to inflation. And one of the concerns that I have personally is that it has become so bipartisan to demonize an immigration, and I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that immigration is substantially what's allowing our economy to create jobs so quickly and not have upward pressure on inflation inflations come down. I do get concerned about that xenophobia and where that might push us, But on balance, I feel
pretty good about where the economy is right now. We're still staying in a four four point two percent unemployment, which is pretty good. The job revisions such as they are, and moving in the right direction, and you know, let's keep a steady hand on the tiller.
Congressman, we just have a minute left here. But it was brought up in this interview and again in our conversations afterward, the deficit impact potentially of Donald Trump's plans and the media and estimate from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget it's seven and a half trillion dollars. Harris's is lower. Yes, three and a half trillion dollars is their base case, but that still does add to
the United States is burden. How do you offend some of those policy ideas knowing the fiscal impact they could have.
Yeah, Like, I think it's a real concern for all of us that these that the deficits keep growing up. Any serious conversation about the deficits, you know, has to talk about you know, we have Social Security, Medicare, in the military's that's the overwhelming majority of what's there. And if we decide politically we don't want to touch those three, then we have to talk about the revenue side of
the equation. What is the single most important thing we can do that still gives people the dignity they deserve in retirement and kill still keeps the United States as the leader of the free world, is to fully fund the IRS. The head of the Trump IRS told us that the under collection of taxes, taxes that are due but not collected, reaches almost a trillion dollars a year. You can go a long way towards cleaning that up if we get there. Trump is not wild about that.
He's a guy who's obviously been found guilty of tax fraud. But we have to We have to fund the police, right, We have to fund the IRS ability to go out and make sure that we collect, and if we do that, we create a ton more headroom. And I think then we can have a conversation around well, if we tweak this tax this way or this tax this way. But it's a purely academic conversation if we're not actually collecting the taxes anyway. And remember, these things are over ten years.
When the CBO does these forecasts, at trillion dollars a year is ten trillion dollars over a ten year forecast. Let's get it done, all.
Right, Congressman, appreciate your time this afternoon that as Democratic Congressman Sean Caston of Illinois, member of the House Financial Services Committee, we appreciate it. We're continuing to analyze Trump's comments made just moments ago during an interview with Bloomberg editor in chief John Mickelthwaite. We should note, as John noted, Kamala Harris has been invited to participate in a similar conversation.
Back with us now for final thoughts. Is our signature political panel, Rick Davis of stone Core Capital and Janie Shanzano of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. I don't know how many more interviews opportunities like this there will be in the next three weeks,
because that's all the time that is left. How many more conversations do you expect Donald Trump to take part of through traditional media means like this when he's been going on podcasts, as has Kamala Harris other means of reaching out to voters.
Yeah, I think they've both been in the bubble, right, so they'll do interviews with friendly outlets. And Donald Trump has been more aggressive in spending time on his friendly
outlets than Kamala Harris has. But as we talked earlier in the show, Kamala Harris has a very big interview tomorrow with Brett Baar on Fox taking herself out of the bubble, putting herself in an environment frankly, probably the equivalent of what we just saw today at the Chicago Economic Club, And so I don't think you're going to see much more of that. I would be surprised if Donald Trump wants to re up on another deal like
he did today. And at the same time, without these presidential debates, we don't really have any way of scoring where we think the president presidential candidates are right now, and this is the time when and a lot of American voters are making up their minds in the last instance, in other words, I'm ready to vote, now who's it going to be? And there are still I know, it's hard to believe after the long slog we've been through, there are still voters trying to figure out who they want.
And I think these kind of events help dictate that.
Remembering, of course, and you remind us of this a lot, Rick, some people are already voting and have already voted, with early voting and absentee ballots in the mix here, Genie, what do you think about what Rick just said. Does Kamala Harris need to respond to what Donald Trump said today?
I think she should, you know, I think these are exactly the kind of forums I agree with Rick in which we need to hear from these candidates and both of them. And I give Donald Trump a lot of credit for sitting down with a one on one interview and taking some tough questions, and I think people should
go back and listen carefully to what he said. I mean, he talked about everything from not wanting to appoint judges who were too old, and when John asked him, well, you're seventy eight, he said, no, no, no, no, no, that was Justice's right. He talked at the end about Republicans himself being a party of common sense, and yet common sense questions like if you in, if you decrease taxes and you don't cut spending, how do you pay for that? He sort of pooh poohed a lot of that,
to use a very formal word. So, you know, I think people should go and listen to what he had to say. You know, he talked about how he weaves, and he certainly weaved a lot today, And the one that really sticks with me is the one about the FED. For anybody who wants Donald Trump to have some voice in the FED, then think about would you want that if it was a Democrat, because historically that is very problematic for democratic economies.
That's Genny Shanzino alongside Rick Davis, our signature panel today. Thanks both of you for being with us as part of our special coverage here on Bloomberg TV and radio.