At today's White House press briefing, Stephen Miller responded to the CEO of GM discussing the cost of President Trump's tariffs.
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00:00Stephen, this morning GM is putting a dollar figure on how much the president's
00:05tariffs will impact the company. The CEO says tariffs will cost GM between four
00:10and five billion dollars this year. The CEO of Ford says he can't commit to not
00:14raising prices because of tariffs. Is the administration open to doing more to
00:18give automakers relief? The question, unfortunately, misses the entire point,
00:23which is that U.S. automakers have announced dramatic investments and
00:28expansions inside the United States. American auto plants are growing, they
00:32are expanding, they're opening new facilities, they're expanding existing
00:36facilities that are already in operation because it is now the case that for the
00:40first time in our lives that American cars receive preference in America's
00:45markets. The U.S. auto industry used to control the entire world. I believe the
00:51number during the heyday was that 70% of all cars in the world were made in
00:56Michigan. And now, of course, we've become a tiny fraction of the global market. And
01:01the reason for that is because the United States opened its markets to every single
01:05foreign cheater and every single foreign nation that subsidized its goods on the
01:09face of the earth, and their markets have been closed to ours. Japan closed our
01:13market to our cars, the entire EU closed our market to our cars, South Korea closed
01:18our market to our cars. All of the countries I just mentioned have tens of
01:22billions of dollars of annual trade deficits on automobiles with the United States.
01:24These are supposedly pure nations, nations that have at least a somewhat
01:29equivalent per capita GDP. So it is impossible under the terms of fair trade,
01:34if you have two nations with similar per capita GDP, to have such uneven trade
01:38flows in automobiles. What the president has done with his car tariff, we have the
01:42most desirable market in the world, is if you want to sell cars tariff-free, tax-free,
01:48to our market, your plant has to operate in the United States. The only alternative to that is to have no U.S.
01:54automobile industry whatsoever, which is where this was headed. To be clear, if we
01:58stayed on this current path within a few years, there would have been no U.S.
02:03automobile industry. And what little was left of it would have been in Mexico,
02:06because U.S. auto companies have steadily been shifting their supply chains to
02:11Mexico, where they believe it is cheaper to make their products. In reality, it'll be
02:15cheaper to make them here, because there'll be no tariff for anything made in the United States, and we'll have the cheapest energy and the best regulatory environment in the face of the earth.
02:20But in the meantime, while manufacturing ramps up, American consumers may pay more. Do you agree?
02:26No. Not on cars they won't, because again, there's now a massive economic incentive for automobile producers to expand production in the United States, and whatever they make here, there will be no tariff.
02:38No tariff.
02:40No tariff.
02:44We'll go to the back.
02:46I'll come to the back.
02:48No tariff.
02:50Alistair C inadm была.
02:54No tariff.
02:58We'll go to the back.