President Trump pledged to maintain tariff pressure on China, as he pushes to end America's steep trade deficit with its largest economic competitor.
During a combative interview with NBC's Kristen Welker, Trump said he sees little reason to dial back 145% tariff rates right now because China's economy is buckling.
"They said today they want to talk. Look, China, and I don't like this. I'm not happy about this. China's getting killed right now," Trump told Welker.
"They're getting absolutely destroyed. Their factories are closing. Their unemployment is going through the roof. I'm not looking to do that to China now. At the same time, I'm not looking to have China make hundreds of billions of dollars and build more ships and more Army tanks and more airplanes."
While Trump has signaled that he sees an off-ramp in the future, he made it clear to Welker that America will not make the first move. And he warned that some tariffs would remain permanent in order to incentivize companies to build in America long-term.
China has already exempted a range of U.S.-made goods, including some pharmaceuticals and microchips, from its 125% tariff rates.
"You're not dropping the tariffs against China to get them to the negotiating table?" Welker asked.
Trump responded, "No."
"At some point, I'm going to lower them because otherwise, you could never do business with them. And they want to do business very much. Look, their economy is really doing badly. Their economy is collapsing."
Trump objected early and often to Welker's "dishonest" framing as she needled Trump on the perceived downsides of his tariff war, at one point asking if Americans could expect to see "empty store shelves" in the future. Trump rebuked her for ignoring positive developments like a drop in gas prices.
"This is such a dishonest interview already. Prices are down on groceries. Prices are down for oil prices are down for oil. Energy prices are down at tremendous numbers for gasoline," Trump said.
Trump repeated his now-familiar argument about trade-offs, conceding Americans may need to pay more for certain "junk" products from overseas during a "transition period" towards a more resilient economy.
"I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs — that’s 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable. We had a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China," Trump said.
When Welker pushed Trump to rule out a recession, Trump rejected the premise as absurd.
"Anything can happen," Trump said. "But I think we're going to have the greatest economy in the history of our country. I think we're going to have the greatest economic boom in history."
