TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Speaks to Reporters After a Federal Reserve Tour - 7.24.25

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President Trump: Well, thank you very much, everybody. And it feels very good, actually, to be back on a construction site. You know, if you remember not so long ago, we rebuilt the old post office into the Trump Hotel and we sold it to Waldorf Astoria. And it was a great success and we had great luck with the building. We did a good job. We built it quickly and relatively inexpensively and for about $200 million. And that was a big hotel, a big, big project. But we looked around, and Tim Scott's here someplace. Tim, come on up. Just, you saw what we saw. And the big thing is to get it done. They have to get it done. They have to get it finished. And very importantly, we have to get interest rates lowered in our country. Our country is the hottest in the world right now, but the one section people are pretty much unable to buy housing because the interest rates are too high. We have no inflation. We have a lot of cash coming in, the tariffs have been unbelievable now.

Tim Scott: Thanks to your leadership.

Trump: People that didn't even believe in tariffs are saying, what a great move that was. We have hundreds of billions of dollars coming in. Japan, just on one deal is paying us $550 billion and they opened up their economy. It's incredible, the deal, and they're happy, we're happy, everybody's happy. But we should have the lowest interest rate of any country and we don't. And we should have. Every point is worth $365 billion. So we want to get the rates down, but we also want to get the Fed building finished. So I met with the contractors, we toured it with the chairman and we had a very good tour and we'll talk to you about it some time. But Tim and I, we sort of understand what happened.

Scott: Too expensive. I mean, the bottom line is this, that Americans deserve to become first time homebuyers. President Trump has created the best economy in the world. The one thing that would make it better is lower interest rates. Full employment is even more possible. Wages rise faster as interest rates come down. When your employment is at 4.1 percent, because of your leadership, we have revenues coming in at record-breaking, maybe last month, even more revenue coming in than bills going out, which is remarkable.

Trump: Yeah. They found $25 billion, $26 billion. They said, where did that come from? Nobody -- I think that's been many, many decades since that happened.

Scott: I can't remember that.

Trump: They found $26 billion last month and they said, where did that come from? I said, why don't you try the tariffs, and it was true. We took in -- we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars and our country is doing great and we have no inflation. And the numbers, the job -- everything is good. The one thing we have to do is get housing prices down and the interest rates down so people can buy the house, because they're all making money, but they can't get the interest rate down. We have to.

Scott: Amen.

Trump: All right? He's been my friend for a long.

Question: You've been on a number of construction sites. Did you see mismanagement going on or funds that aren't –

Trump: Well, I see a very luxurious situation taking place. Let's put it that way. And I was given a very nice tour by the head of construction and you know, look, if you look over here, they're trying to open up the basement. When you open up a basement -- first of all, it's the worst space -- always, a basement is the worst space in a building. And it's also the most expensive space to build and especially here because you have a water line. You know, they're going down into the water, so they have to build a reverse -- what's called a reverse bathtub. The water has to be kept out. It's very expensive construction. So it would have been good if they didn't build it. It would have been good if they didn't do certain other things. If you look at the kind of protection in the hall, have you been able to get in the hall? You saw the protection of plywood. I mean, that was a lot of money just to protect it for a period of time. I would have done it very gingerly and easily and not have to spend millions of dollars on protection. And there are things that could have been different. Look, look, there's always Monday morning quarterbacks. I don't want to be that. I want to help them get it finished. It's been going on for years and I want to help them get it finished. And what we really want to do and I think I can speak for Tim and I think I can speak for the entire Senate, we can speak for everybody, frankly, is we want to see interest rates come down. Our country is booming and the interest rates is a final little notch. And if you look at Europe, they've lowered 11 times, 11 times in a short period of time. We've lowered zero and they are competition, although we're in the process of probably making a very good deal with them too. They want to make it very badly, very badly. So we're making the deal. We just completed our deal with Indonesia. We just completed our deal with the Philippines. We're making unbelievable deals and the money is pouring in. We want to get interest rates down.

Question: But on interest rates, at some point, does the level of interest rates now slow economic growth?

Trump: Yeah. It never helps it, if it's high, never helps it. Well, it's already -- as good as we're doing. Think of how well we'd be doing. We'd be like a rocket ship. As good as we're doing, we'd do better if we had lower interest rates and we should. We're primed. Don't forget, without us, the whole world collapses so we should have the lowest interest rate. Because you know, you can talk about Switzerland, you can talk about wonderful countries, no debt, no, but without us, everything collapses. We should have the lowest interest rate and if you took it down three points, not a little bit, but three points, if you got us down to one, we would save more than $1 trillion, basically, with just a paper transfer. You wouldn't be cutting costs of anything. You wouldn't be building anything, just a move of the hand, saying, we're going to lower interest rates, you would save $1 trillion a year. And there's nothing you can do to save that kind of money. So –

Question: Did the Fed chairman say why he's not lowering interest rates?

Trump: We had a little talk about it and I thought it was a very productive talk. He'll be able to tell you at his next meeting, but I will say that he did say the country is doing really well.

Question: Mr. President, do you feel better or worse --

Trump: And the country is really doing well.

Question: Mr. President?

Trump: Yeah, please, go ahead.

Question: How would you describe your talk with him? Would you say that energy was tense? [Inaudible]

Trump: No, I didn't think it was tense. No, I thought we had a good meeting. I really -- no, there was no tension. There was no tension. I think he had more tension with my great Senator to the right. He's a pretty tough cookie. He was -- you might say.

Scott: Well, the bottom line is we had an honest, candid conversation about some of the overruns at this building. We had it in my banking committee and he said we were wrong and turns out we were right. Thank God, President Trump and his team took enough time to dig into some of the details and the details are clear. We need to get this project done. We would like to keep it where it is or a little lower. But at the end of the day, the point is that instead of talking about interest rates, instead of talking about first time homebuyers, instead of talking about the heat in our economy, that's a good thing, we're talking about an overrun on the Federal Reserve building as opposed to the Federal Reserve objective of lowering and keeping our economy full.

Trump: You know, as an example, they built parking spots under a building next door. That's very expensive, when you're starting to build parking lots, underground parking lots. That's a very expensive thing. A lot of people I know, they park their car and they walk a block or two blocks or something, but it is a very expensive thing. That is what it is and that's OK.

Question: Mr. President, is this project a firable offense?

Note: [Crosstalk]

Trump: What?

Question: Is this project a firable offense for Jerome Powell?

Trump: Look, I would love to see it completed. I don't want to put that in this category. It's a very complex thing that could have been made simple. I built a great hotel and the great hotel that everybody in this group knows very well. It's called the Old Post Office and it's a much bigger project than this and I spent $200 million building it and it was down -- it was taken down to the steel for the most part taken down, you know, you've seen it go up and I built it quickly and I built it for $200 million, a much bigger job than this. I spent $200 million and it's got marble bathrooms. The top fixtures, the best of everything, all brand new. So you know, this is a very expensive job. I don't know it got out of control and that happens -- that happens. It's a shame.

Question: Are you negotiating on auto tariffs? Your auto tariffs.

Trump: No, I'm not negotiating on auto tariffs?

Question: Will the EU -- EU looking at 15 percent like Japan, well it depends.

Trump: Japan -- what Japan did is they brought down their tariffs. They gave us 300 -- $550 billion because they didn't want to pay 20. They were 28 percent and they gave us $550 billion up front 100 percent, 500. We get 90, they get 10, 90 percent. They get 10 and there's no payment, it's not a loan or anything, it's a -- it's a signing bonus, I call it. But they gave us $550 billion and took down the tariffs a little bit. And then they agreed to open their economy to everybody. This was not easy. This took, you know, a lot of people walked out of rooms and things. Sometimes they walked out of rooms, went back to Japan. I said where are they? They went back to Japan. And then they called and they said can we make a deal? They came back a couple of times this happened. This was, as you know, it was over a period of months and ultimately they agreed to open their economy. Now the opening of the economy is worth more than $550 billion. The payment that they made, it's worth more. So between that and the payment, we reduced it down to 15 percent, but they were at about 28 percent and then they -- they bought it down basically.

Question: But could other countries buy it down?

Trump: Yeah, I would let other countries buy it down, sure.

Question: Do you feel better about your relationship with the Fed chairman after this meeting?

Trump: I feel good about it. I mean, look, I have one dispute and the dispute is there could be some things with money and, you know, where it comes from, how it's come from, how it's printed, where it's printed, all of the standard things with the Fed. But I just want to see one thing happen, very simple, interest rates have to come down. And if the interest rates don't come down, we're -- we're knocking it out of the park with high interest rates. If interest rates come down, then that final little element kicks in. That's housing. And the sad part is that people, wonderful young people, young couples starting off. They can't get a mortgage because the rates are too high.

Scott: First-time homebuyers.

Trump: Tim knows that better than anybody, I think.

Question: Mr. President, if the rates are hurting families in the country, why let that keep going for another eight months? Why not just fire the chair now?

Trump: Because to do that is a big move and I just don't think it's necessary and I believe that he's going to do the right thing.

Question: Do you think --

Trump: -- I believe that the chairman is going to do the right thing. I mean, it may be a little too late as the expression goes, but I believe he's going to do the right thing. The fact is it's -- it's so big what's taking place in America where the king of Saudi Arabia says you have the hottest country anywhere in the world and I thought you were dead one year ago. I thought we were dead. I just left NATO. As you know, they're agreeing to pay 5 percent. We're not paying anything. We send them the -- they pay for 100 percent of everything now for the war in Ukraine. But I just left NATO and every one of those leaders said every country they said -- and very smart country, very successful, you know, very successful countries frankly and every one of them said you have the hottest country in the world. We did that over a period of a year, less than a year. I mean, if you think -- I mean, they say a year ago we were dead and today, so I'm here six months and we did it over. And we had the help of men like this and people like standing right behind me. They're great -- they're great professionals. They really are -- they're great professionals and in a short period of time, we made it the hottest country in the world. With all of that being said, we'd like to see -- we can always do better and we can do better if interest rates come down. Good job. You do a nice job. I watch you a lot.

Question: Thank you. I appreciate that, Mr. President. Do you have a name in mind to replace the chairman?

Trump: I do.

Question: Do you have one person?

Trump: Two people. Maybe three. I'd pick him, but I think he's not leaving the Senate.

Scott: No, sir, I'm not.

Trump: I picked Tim.

Question: [Inaudible] put pressure on Jerome Powell to [Inaudible]

Trump: No, there's no pressure. No. We want to have, you know, his term comes up soon. Uh, I think he's going to do the right thing. Everybody knows what the right thing is. Even people that believed in, you know, the higher rates, they're all on board. They all want to see the interest rates come down. It's very important.

Question: Mr. President, and if he doesn't do the right thing and cut interest rates, as you said, would you then consider firing him?

Trump: I don't think we're going to do that.

Question: Do you think he changed his mind?

Trump: I don't think so.

Question: -- you think [Inaudible] investigate the newly declassified documents by Gabbard?

Trump: Yeah, that's a terrible thing. The -- I have great respect for Tulsi and the documents they found on President Obama. Frankly, it was an Obama thing, but it was the people that worked under him also working with him and no, it's a very, very serious thing. Thank you very much.

Question: Mr. President, what was the final straw?

Transcript courtesy of Roll Call