Peter Navarro, President Trump's top trade adviser, speaks to reporters outside the White House.
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00:00It's a great day, not just for America, the world. It's an interesting coincidence that on the same day as you have VE Day, the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe, we have struck a deal with the same country that we were arm in arm with defeating the Nazis and walking and turning that continent into a free continent 80 years ago.
00:28From Liberation Day now to VE Day. What's important about this deal is that it offers a template for how we're going to proceed with the rest of the negotiations.
00:42The way the negotiations are structured, we have the head of that, USTR Jamison Greer, working arm in arm with the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik.
00:56And they work from a number of verticals. Every country is like fingerprints. They're all different in the way they take advantage of America.
01:05So with each country, you have to walk through what are their how high are their tariffs? Where are their tariffs high? How can we get those down?
01:14The non-tariff barriers are much more important in terms of getting a fair deal for America than the tariffs in most cases.
01:24And this is an important thing for the American people to understand. It's like this is not a tariff problem. It's an unfair trade problem.
01:33So there's that. There's the digital trade issue. And then there's a whole issue, all sets of issues, currency manipulation, intellectual property theft and things like that.
01:44So with the UK, this deal is good for both countries. That's the way it's set up. The there's joy in farmland today. We have it's a it's about an eight billion dollar gain for the agricultural community.
02:03We've got beef. We're going to export substantially more beef. So folk Kansas, Nebraska, Texas are going to do very well.
02:13We've got dairy. So folks in Wisconsin and California are really happy. We've got a lot of corn that we're going to sell via ethanol to the UK.
02:25So the folks in Iowa are very happy with respect to autos. We've given the UK a discount on the auto tariff.
02:39They send us a relatively small amount of vehicles in the broader scheme of things.
02:46But to them, it's an important part of their economy. So we're reducing the 25 percent tariff down to 10 percent on the on 100,000 units that they that they will sell us.
03:00And we're going to have a very interesting alternative arrangement with the UK on steel and aluminum, which will help us protect us from from the flood of dumping that often occurs.
03:15Not just directly to us, but from different countries around the rest of the world, like the UK, for example.
03:23So we're in a very good place with this. I think everybody should be happy about this.
03:29And it signals that how we're going to go about these negotiations.
03:34There will be many more to come, and we hope they will come as quickly as this one.
03:40And you all just be patient with us if you can. I take a couple of questions here. Yes, ma'am.
03:48Yes. We're still still in negotiations with that. And that that's a very big deal to President Trump.
03:58The digital tax has spread like a like a bad virus around the world, but it started in Europe and it basically targets American companies.
04:12I can say it in no other way when you look at the digital tax, you know, the Facebook, the Googles and all of that.
04:20It's structured in a way where only big companies are subject to it.
04:25So the smaller ones in these other countries are exempted from it.
04:29So that's that's going to be a work in progress. Yes, ma'am.
04:32Can you say anything on the China talks?
04:34No, can't can't say a word. Yes, sir.
04:36Well, let's see what the market says.
04:50It's our position is in and always has been that behind much of these what they call phytosanitary standards for agriculture is simply a phony tool that's used to suppress what is very fine American agricultural products.
05:09So if if more of that comes into the market and the British people don't want to buy it, that's one set of facts.
05:16We don't believe once they taste American beef and chicken that they that they would prefer not to have it.
05:22Yes, ma'am.
05:23I never never get ahead of the president.
05:32But I do know that that the way the way again the way the process works.
05:39Yeah, you ever been to a deli where you go in and you take a number and you stand in line to order.
05:44It's kind of like that.
05:45I if you ever been across the street with the United States Trade Representative Jamison Greer.
05:52That's kind of where all that magic happens.
05:54He's got hundreds of people who work there.
05:56And every single day we've got representatives from different countries coming in.
06:05I was looking at the calendar today that goes out to July in terms of the different tranches of negotiations.
06:12And I just want to assure the American people that we are moving in Trump time, which is to say as quickly as possible,
06:20with the greatest expectation that we'll get a great result for the American people.
06:27And at the end of that journey, the international trading system will be better off.
06:32It's in disequilibrium now.
06:34It's set up in a way where the World Trade Organization allows other countries to systematically charge us higher tariffs
06:43and to systematically impose higher non-tariff barriers without allowing us any dispute resolution mechanism.
06:51That's an unsustainable equilibrium when we're running $2 million deficits.
06:56Yes, ma'am.
06:57How about Mexico?
06:58Despite of the tariffs, the Department of Commerce reports that the import from Mexico increased over 9% in the first quarter of the year.
07:06Where are your thoughts?
07:07I'm not going to speak to the individual countries because that's the job of Jameson Greer and Howard Ludnick.
07:13I can say that Mexico is one of our great allies and trading partners, and we're giving it a tremendous amount of attention.
07:21Yes, ma'am.
07:22Are you describing this deal as a free trade deal, and yet there are still 10%?
07:26I don't describe, I didn't say a free, what it is, is it's a realignment away from a system where the American people and American producers are being exploited by the system itself.
07:44So if you simply look at the deal itself, say just take it at face value, what are we doing?
07:50We're reducing trade barriers to agriculture, the non-tariff barriers, they're mostly non-tariff barriers that are being lowered.
08:01And we're, with respect to some of the great things that the UK is going to benefit from, we're acknowledging that they're our ally and that we want them to prosper as well, but under conditions which don't allow dumping into our markets.
08:20Yes, ma'am.
08:21Do you have any response to the EU's blueprint that they released the earliest day about the retaliation of the US?
08:28Look, let me just say that any country which retaliates against the United States, which is simply trying to get fairness, is making a grave mistake.
08:41And it's not a road, I think, that we want to go down, and we've opened negotiations with the EU.
08:52We're more than welcome to have those negotiations, but for them to publish stuff like that, I don't think it's in the interests or the spirit of negotiations that really are going to be as effective as they otherwise could.
09:07So I would just caution that retaliation is not a, as they say in game theory, it's not the dominant strategy.
09:15The dominant strategy for Europe and others to recognize is that the United States will not tolerate unfairness to its people and producers.
09:26That the system, I mean, nobody, I don't think anybody standing before me disagrees with the statement that the world charges higher tariffs and has higher non-tariff barriers.
09:39And if that is true, then how could you criticize the United States for simply trying to make that right?
09:45We will help BI!
09:47and if that is true, we are trying to make that right.
09:49BI!