Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump responded to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's comments on tariffs on China.
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00:00Treasury Secretary Besson suggested that the current rate as high as they are now is effectively an embargo of trade between the United States and China. Do you see it that way?
00:08I'm sure. 145 percent is very high, and it won't be that high. It's not going to be that high. It got up to that. We were talking about fentanyl, where, you know, various elements built it up to 145. No, it won't be anywhere near that high.
00:24It'll come down substantially, but it won't be zero. It used to be zero. We were just destroyed. China was taking us for a ride and just not going to have it's not going to happen.
00:39We're going to be very good to China, have a great relationship with President Xi, but they would make billions and billions and billions of dollars a year and they would build their military out of the United States and what they made.
00:54So that won't happen, but they're going to do very well. And I think they're going to be happy and I think we're going to live together very happily and ideally work together.
01:03So I think it's going to work out very well. But no, it's at 145 percent. There will not be anywhere near that number.
01:09Oh, it's amazing what they've done on the borders. Thank you for the question, because honestly, it's one of the great successes. We have virtually nobody coming in illegally.
01:27We do have people coming in legally because we want people to come in, but we have nobody coming in through the border virtually that we were having hundreds of thousands of people a month come in under Biden.
01:40And they came in from prisons. They came in from gangs in Venezuela and other countries all over the world, not just South America.
01:50They were emptying their prisons into the United States. Venezuela emptied its prisons out, but many countries emptied their prisons into the Congo.
01:59As an example, as an example, in Africa, empty their prisons into the United States and we're getting them out.
02:05And I hope we get cooperation from the courts because, you know, we have thousands of people that are ready to go out and you can't have a trial for all of these people.
02:16It wasn't meant. The system wasn't meant. And we don't think there's anything that says that.
02:21Look, we are getting some very bad people, killers, murderers, drug dealers, really bad people, the mentally ill, the mentally insane.
02:32They emptied out insane asylums into our country. We're getting them out.
02:36And a judge can't say, you know, you have to have a trial that lets the trial is going to take two years.
02:43And now we're going to have a very we're going to have a very dangerous country if we're not allowed to do what we're entitled to do.
02:50And I won an election based on the fact that we get them out and we've done an amazing job.
02:54Look, we've we've stopped. Everybody admits, even the radical left, we have got the strongest border we've ever had, even stronger than what I had for four years.
03:04Because we had a great border. We solved the problem. But it's actually it's a tad stronger, which is I don't know if that's disappointing or not to me.
03:12I said I beat my own record, but I appreciate the question.