TRANSCRIPT: Donald Trump Speaks to Reporters After Air Force One Arrival, 7.15.25
[VIDEO]
President Trump: Hello everybody.
Question: Welcome back. Hello.
Trump: Hello, Doug. Hello, everybody.
Question: President, uh –
Trump: How are you? We had a big day in Pittsburgh. Uh, $92 billion, but it's gonna be closer to $100 billion is gonna be invested by the biggest financial people in the world where we had everybody there from Larry Fink to everybody else you could imagine. And it was a really great day, and a very productive day. Uh, I think we're over now, as a country, we're over $15 trillion of investment and there's never been anything like that. In the history of our country, there has not been anything like it --
Howard Lutnick: No.
Trump: – or even close. So, uh, okay, do you have any questions?
Question: Mister President, are you w – Mister President, you, uh, you announced the Indonesia deal today. You announced the Indonesia trade deal today. How many more trade deal beyond the letter will you announce before August first? Or –
Trump: We're working on probably five or six. Of the five or six, I'm not sure I really wanna do them, you know. You want somebody that knows how to negotiate, but, uh, we'll probably have two or three. You know, we insist on opening up the country, which is a big deal. Uh, Indonesia was great. He's a great president. Uh, we made a, a terrific deal where they opened up the entire country to trade with the United States. We weren't allowed to go in and trade. Uh, I think something similar will happen with i- with, I would say India, and we have a couple of others. But I, I have to tell you, for the most part, I'm very happy with the letters, you know. The letters are a deal, you know. I, I can't explain it any better. The letters are a deal. The press doesn't wanna pick that up, but I will veer from those deals on occasion when somebody is willing. Like if Japan would open up their country, they don't do that. They just don't do that. And I don't either, uh, I don't subscribe to it one way or the other, but they won't do that. So, we might just stick with a letter. But South Korea is inclined to maybe do that, so we'll, we'll let you know, but we have letters out. Every time I send out a letter, essentially that's a deal.
Question: Mister President, are the, are – But with, with, with the date you gave, August 1st, with the date that you gave of August 1st –
Trump: Right.
Question: – why stick with the date if your thing that you're not able –
Trump: You know, payments, payments start on August 1st.
Question: Right.
Trump: The only thing about that's really sacred about August 1st is that's when payments start. So, they have to start paying billions of dollars to you and people. Are you a citizen of the country?
Question: Yes, sir.
Trump: All right, good. You'll be very happy 'cause you're gonna be getting a lot of money. Just like they found a budget surplus, we have a budget surplus of $25 billion. Everyone said, "How did that happen? It hasn't happened in many years." It happened because of good management and tariffs.
Question: Mister President. Do you have, sir – Do you plant to release b – Sorry. Do you plan to release more details with Vietnam, China deals? You're, is there gonna be a paperwork release to the public? W –
Trump: Well, I, I might. I don't think it matters how much you release of the deal. Uh, we have a Vietnam deal.
Question: Right.
Trump: And I would say that that deal is being pretty well set --
Lutnick: Yeah.
Trump: – pretty well set. Again, that's an opening of their country. They've opened it up. Just so you know, these were closed countries. They were wonderful people, wonderful leaders, very strong, smart leaders, but their countries were closed to us, but our country wasn't closed to them. And so, I said, "You gotta open up your country." So, we're gonna see. But the Vietnam deal, we may open it. I mean, I don't know. I can't tell you. Is it necessary?
Lutnick: No.
Trump: Yeah, I don't think so.
Question: Mister President, on Ukraine, why did you settle on giving Putin another 50 days? It seems like he's had a lot of time to come even close –
Trump: I don't think it's, I don't think it's a long time. I think really the question should be asked, why did Biden get us into that ridiculous war? Why did Biden bring us there? That should never, ever have happened that war. This is Biden's war. I'm just trying to end it –
Question: What do you –
Trump: – because we're saving a lot of lives.
Question: Why do you think his opinion will change in 50 days when it hasn't over the last six months?
Trump: A lot of opinions change very rapidly. Might not be 50 days, might be much sooner than 50 days.
Question: Well, to that end, when do you think the first Patriot missiles, some of these weapons that our allies supply –
Trump: They're gonna, uh, they're already being shipped.
Question: From what countries?
Trump: They're coming in from Germany, and then replaced by Germany. And in all cases, the United States gets paid back in full.
Question: Uh, ch –
Trump: So, what, what's happening is, you know, is the European Union, if you look, mostly European Union stuff, but let's put it in, in the form of NATO.
Question: Right.
Trump: It's very similar, but NATO is gonna pay us back for everything. In some cases, we're gonna be paid back by countries of the European Union directly.
Question: Are we starting see those e –
Trump: But we're always getting our money back in full, so we're not gonna have any more investment to make. We're getting our money back in full. And if we can make a deal, that'd be great. We're saving 5 or 6,000 soldiers a week. They're Russian and they're Ukrainian soldiers. They're not American soldiers. And we won't have boots on the ground, but, uh, it's a shame, 5,000. Last week they say 7,100 soldiers, both Russian and Ukraine were killed.
Question: Can I ask you about Iran? Have you seen any progress in talks with Iran? We haven't really heard about that in a while.
Trump: Well, they wanna talk. I'm in no rush to talk. Uh, they would like to talk. I'm in no rush to talk because we obliterated their site. They'd have to start all over. In fact, it's so obliterated to the point that it's not usable anymore. They'd have to pick a different mountain.
Question: Mister President –
Trump: That mountain is so blown up inside and so unstable that they would have to pick a different mountain.
Question: M –
Trump: Ours, our people really did the job. Yes, please.
Question: On the Fed, sir. Uh, would you fire, uh, Jerome Powell over the Treasury renovation?
Trump: Well, he spent two and a half million dollars building this place. I- I have to say this, I think he's terrible. I think he's a total stiff. But the one thing I didn't see him is a guy that needed a palace to live in. You talk to the guy, it's like talking to a nothing. It's like talking to a chair. No personality, no high intelligence, no nothing. But the one thing I would've never guessed is that he would be spending two and a half billion dollars to build a little extension onto the Fed.
Question: Is that a fire-able offense, sir?
Trump: Nobody's ever seen that. I think it sort of is because if you look at his testimony to the House, to the Senate, you take a look at the testimony, it's under [Inaudible] That whole thing is, and he's not, you know, he's not talking about the problem. It's a big problem. Two and a half billion and that's two and a half billion now. That's gonna be a lot more money than two and a half billion to expand and with all of that to house thousands of people to give him information. And yet, out of the 71 economists, and they included me, me and one other person got it right. I got it right. And one other genius got it right. They had everybody else was wrong, 69 were wrong, and two were right. I was one of them. And I don't have a lot of people. I have our -- I have, uh, Doug, I have a few people. He has thousands of people and he got it wrong. No, I think when you spend two and a half billion dollars on really a renovation, I think it's pretty disgraceful.
Question: On the [Inaudible] sir – Sir, have you – have you spoken to President Putin since your announcement yesterday?
Trump: No, I have not.
Question: Do think when you speak to him on the phone, does he say that he wants peace?
Trump: Yeah, he does.
Question: What does he – What does he say to you?
Trump: He says he wants peace. He does. No [Inaudible] all talk and no act.
Question: You believe him?
Trump: But you know, if you think about it, India, Pakistan, we did so many. The Congo, and I mean look at- look at the deals we've made. We made all these peace deals. Look at Rwanda, it was an impossible deal to make with the Congo. I made that. I made all of these deals, Serbia, Kosovo, and here's the one deal and actually Vladimir called me up. He said, "I'd love to help you with respect to making a deal with a couple of them." Like Iran. "I'd love to help you." I say, "Vladimir, I only wanna help with one deal, Russia, because you're the only deal that we're not doing too well on." He oftentimes, oftentimes he said, no, he wants peace. And I think he does. I hope he does. We're gonna find out soon. And it could be before the 50 days.
Question: Mr. President twice yesterday when you were talking about this, you mentioned conversations you had with the first lady after talking with President Putin. Has she influenced your thinking on this at all?
Trump: She's very smart. She's very neutral. She's very neutral in a sense. She's sort of like me. She'd like to see people stop dying. You know, people said, "Are you for one side or another?" I'm for the side of people stopping dying. We have 5,000, 6,000 and 7,000 people a week at least and that doesn't include people from the cities and towns that are having rockets lobbed in there. I mean, people are dying in the cities and towns too. But we're talking about 7,100 in the last eight days died. And I'm for- I'm for stopping that
Question: On the [Inaudible], sir. Uh, is Scott Bessent your Treasury Secretary, your number one option whenever Jerome Powell leaves or –
Trump: Well, he is an option.
Question: Is he your top option? And he is very good?
Trump: Well, he is not because I like the job he is doing. That's why he's not –
Question: Right.
Question: [Inaudible] sir.
Trump: I like the job. I don't know if he was on the plane. Was he on the plane? [Inaudible] Maybe he wasn't, but I do like the job he's done.
Question: Right.
Trump: So in that sense, probably he's not that much of an option.
Question: Right.
Trump: Scott's been great. He's been terrific. He did a good job today. He's a very soothing part – you know? It's soothing. All right.
Question: Mr. President, –
Question: [Inaudible] the pharmaceutical [Inaudible]
Trump: The pharmaceuticals will be tariffed probably at the end of the month. And we're gonna start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical company a year or so to build. And then we're gonna make it a very high tariff because -- We gotta move 'em and look, there's two ways you do it. You make money and- or- and/or you have them move here so they don't have to pay the tariff. Those are the two ways. The pharmaceutical companies are moving back to America where they should be.
Question: Semiconductor sir, that in the same timeline, the semiconductor tariff?
Trump: Uh, similar, uh, actually less complicated, but similar, semiconductors and chip.
Question: Mr. President –
Question: [Inaudible]
Question: I know you've urged people to move on, but I'm curious, why do you think your supporters in particular have been so interested in the Epstein story?
Trump: I don't understand –
Question: So upset about how it's been handled. Why do you think that is?
Trump: I don't understand it. Uh, why they would be so interested in–- He's dead for a long time. Uh, he was never a big factor in terms of life. Uh, I don't understand what the interest or what the fascination is. I really don't. And the credible information's been given. Don't forget, we went through years of the Mueller witch hunt and all of the different things. The Steele dossier, which was all fake, all that information was fake. But I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. It's pretty boring stuff. It's sordid, but it's boring. And I don't understand why it keeps going. Uh, I, I think well, really, only pretty bad people, including fake news, wanna keep something like, like that going. But credible information, let 'em give it. Anything that's credible. I would say let them have it.
Question: Mr., Mr. President, a question on AI. How do you want Americans to think about it? Are you concerned about job loss or –
Trump: No.
Question: — privacy, or do you think this is a new technology?
Trump: What's interesting, because we need jobs. We need a lot of people to work. You know, we're building, we're gonna be building very shortly hundreds of factories, including AI. We're building a lot of car factories. They're all coming in from other countries now in order to avoid paying the tariffs. And we need people working. So if AI can help us with that, that's a positive. 'Cause we're not gonna have enough workers to take care of it if we don't create something. So whether it's robots or whether it's AI, we need somebody to take care of. Do you agree with that?
Lutnick: I agree. So many jobs to fill. I mean, think about $15 trillion dollar. That's 5 million people working in these factories, building them, great high-paying jobs in America that President Trump has brought back. So those jobs, of course, are in the wing. So let's go, let's train America and let's get it going.
Trump: What do you [Inaudible] That, what would you say --
Doug Burgum: Well –
Trump: – about this job?
Burgum: Well, I think what, what AI as Howard and the President said, we're gonna need more workers in this country because President Trump is the greatest economic developer that this country's ever had, that's brought back this record amount of foreign direct investment and a record amount of US investment going back into job creation. But the mix is gonna change. AI will take jobs away like software development 'cause AI can write code. But AI can't wire a building, do plumbing. I mean, th- the kids go into the trades today, they're all gonna be making 150 grand and they'll have amazing lives, build companies, start businesses. I mean, this is, this is part of the boom of America because middle class, working class, working Americans have, will never have had it as good. They have a lower taxes, lower regulation and more opportunities to go to work to build things.
Trump: We need people. We really need, 'cause we're building so many factories in the country. And so AI can help with that. But what also is gonna help are gonna be robots. You know, the robots I think are gonna be a big deal and that's gonna help also.
Question: [Inaudible]
Question: On Russian sanctions, sir, on the, the secondary tariffs –
Trump: Yeah.
Question: Are you concerned that uh, secondary tariffs on buyers of Russian oil will hurt American consumers, higher gas prices –
Trump: I don't think so. I think that whole thing is gonna go away eventually. It should have gone away. And Putin does say, "Oh, I want peace. I want peace," but so far he hasn't lived up to that. So I think it's gonna go away. But we're gonna find out soon. We're gonna find out soon.
Question: Can you give us more details on the sanctions? Is it 100% sanctions?
Trump: No, I don't wanna do that. But they're very biting, they're very significant and they're gonna be very bad for the countries involved. I mean, they'll be very, very powerful and, uh, very bad for the countries involved. And I hope we don't have to pull that string and maybe we won't. We'll see. Gotta end. Gotta stop the killing.
Question: Mr. President, were you frustrated today that the House wasn't able to move on that crypto legislation?
Trump: No. You know, the interesting thing is that 12 votes were votes where they wanted it to be stronger in terms of crypto people. I figured. Oh, wow. That's sort of interesting. 'cause I was focused really on today's meeting, not that, but the interesting is the votes, so negative votes were because they wanted it to be, and the safeguards, they wanted it to be stronger for people with Bitcoin or crypto. They wanted more strength, which is interest.
Question: What do you want to refine in the UK trade deal?
Trump: We have, uh, a little bit discussed, but the deal is really very well done. But I'll meet with the Prime Minister, we have a good relationship, and I think it's gonna be, uh – And it'll be very shortly, and it'll be probably in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Question: [Inaudible] Mr. President, at the event –
Burgum: [Inaudible] do you want to –
Trump: Yeah.
Burgum: [Inaudible]
Question: When state decide statutes, would you like [Inaudible] gerrymanders?
Trump: Say it again.
Question: When state decide statutes, would you like Republicans to redraw the Congressional?
Trump: Well, there's about four of 'em. I'll let you figure that one out. (laughs) But we have about four of them. Uh, in three cases it's one, and in, uh, one case it's two or three.
Question: Where [Inaudible]?
Trump: And Texas would be five.
Question: Are you concerned California will turn around, and do the same thing?
Trump: Well, we'll fight them. You know, they're so corrupt in California, (laughs) you never know what's gonna happen. But we've done pretty well in the courts in California, as you see. Uh, we're batting about a thousand, ultimately. We start off a little slow (laughs) and then we get a lot of hits.
Question: Uh, Mr. President, y- you said today at the event in Pittsburgh that if it wasn't for Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Bessent who want to do more deals, that you would basically just go with the letters. You've said that a few different times. I just wanna clarify, do you just wanna go with the tariffs, and- and --
Trump: No, I think they would like to make deals more than me. I'm satisfied with --
Lutnick: (laughs).
Trump: But they would like to make deals more than me.
Lutnick: (laughs).
Trump: I'm not saying i- they're wrong, I'll put it nice. I in my opinion, he and Scott, and maybe even Doug to a certain extent. You're more like me, (laughs) I think. But --
Lutnick: (laughs).
Trump: But, they would like to make deals more than me. I'm very happy with the deals the way they are.
Burgum: [Inaudible]
Trump: Those are very – Right? Those are very simple deals that – Whatever the percentage is. And we base that in a lot of things, including the deficit and, you know, various things. And we, you know, I think it's a much faster way. Don't forget –
Question: Right.
Trump: -- we'll be releasing a letter soon, talking about many countries that are much smaller, where you're not gonna do letters per se. You might do an individual letter, but it's gonna go very quickly. And the number will also be less.
Question: Which countries are those?
Trump: These are countries that are, uh, many of them, you know, like 200 countries.
Question: Right.
Trump: You understand –
Lutnick: Arabian countries, [Inaudible] African countries. You have a huge amount of countries that are small and the president's just gonna deal with them sort of the way he thinks is the right way to deal with them. A big class.
Trump: We'll, we'll, probably set one tariff for all of them.
Question: Over 10%? Over 10% tariff?
Trump: Uh, um, probably a little over 10%, yeah.
Question: 15? 20?
Trump: We don't do a lot of business, but we do, you know, it's still significant.
Question: What about Israel, Mr. President? Is that related to your other -- Like the Gaza negotiations, is that tied up in other issues?
Trump: No, I think Israel's gonna be, uh – Israel's gonna be fine. We had a great victory with Israel. That was a great, great victory. What we did with, uh, the B-2 bombers and all of that. And, you know, I never thought of it, but so many people are thanking me. They say, "No president had the guts to do it." Because, you know, this has been going on for 25 years. In fact, when the pilots came to the Oval Office, they said, "Sir, we and our predecessors have been working on this attack for 25 years." Uh, have a good time everybody.
Question: Thank you [Inaudible].
Trump: Thank you.
Question: [Inaudible] thank you.