President Trump held an impromptu press conference Sunday night on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews as he returned to the White House from Palm Beach, Florida, and he discussed numerous subjects like the newly announced tariffs against Canada and Mexico. One area that stood out was when he lambasted the United Kingdom and the European Union for their unfair trade practices.
They stack the deck, he charged:
[The EU has] taken advantage of, I said, you know, we have over $300 billion deficit. They don’t take our cars, they don’t take our farm products, they take almost nothing, and we take everything from them—millions of cars, tremendous amounts of food and farm product.
…the European Union is really out of line. [The] UK is out of line, but I’m sure—I think—that one can be worked out, but the European Union is an atrocity, what they’ve done.
Asked about his relationship with the United Kingdom, Trump said he felt he could make a deal:
.. Well, Prime Minister [Keir] Starmer has been very nice, we’ve had a couple of meetings, we’ve had numerous phone calls. We’re getting along very well. and we’ll see whether or not we can balance out our budget.
With the European Union, it’s a $350 billion deficit, so obviously something’s gonna take place there.
…I wouldn’t say there’s a timeline, but it’s gonna be pretty soon.
More–> Trump: Tariffs May Hurt, but ‘Will All Be Worth It’ in the Long Run
Europeans Projecting Power and Unity? Don’t Make Me Laugh
Regarding the tariffs he’s already announced and any he may be considering, the president said it’s worth the temporary hit b because we’re getting ripped off:
We may have short term a little pain and people understand that, but long term, the United States has been ripped off by virtually every country in the world. We have deficits with almost every country—not every country, but almost—and we’re gonna change it. It’s been unfair. That’s why we owe $36 trillion. We have deficits with everybody, we help everybody, we’ve been helping everybody for years.
And to be honest, I don’t think they appreciate it.
So we’re gonna change that, we’re gonna change it fast—we’re gonna make America great again.
In order to do that, to make America great again, the commander-in-chief said it’s time to take care of our country and stop putting seemingly every other nation above ours:
We have to focus on our country. We have tremendous potential [that must be] properly used, and we have to focus on our country, [our] tremendous deficits with China, tremendous deficits with the European Union, tremendous deficits with Mexico and Canada and why, what’s the purpose of that? Why would we have deficits? And yet you look at pharmaceuticals and drugs, you can look at various products, it’s much cheaper in other countries.
We’re not gonna allow that much longer—we’re not gonna take it.
This seems appropriate:
