President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. could eliminate trade deficits by simply refusing to trade with countries like Canada and Mexico. Trump also said America’s trading partners need the U.S. far more than the U.S. needs them.

REPORTER: Mr. President, in the last numbers today, have you spoken with Kevin Walsh? And you said that lower the rate or I’ll stop trading with countries which with with which we have a deficit. So have you spoken to Kevin Walsh? PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have countries that are considered elite financially, like Switzerland, like others. But if we didn’t trade with them, they would be bankrupt countries, so they’re considered elite because we have massive deficits with them. We have the right not to trade, we have the right to put tariffs on them, but we have a much more powerful right than that, we have a right not to trade with them. So if we don’t trade with Switzerland, and just to use it as an example, watch his things, if we don’t trade, we have no deficit. Now, we have a big deficit with a lot of countries that should never have been allowed to happen. I had it very much corralled, starting to corral it. My first administration, then Biden let it go to hell, and we took it over. We’ve cut our deficit way down, we’ve cut our trade deficit way down, tremendously down. Nobody’s ever seen cuts like this. But we have the right to take a so-called financially elite country that’s paying a much lower interest rate. You know, we have countries paying, some countries are paying a half a point, and we’re paying four points. And yet, we’re a much stronger credit than they are, because if we don’t trade with them, they don’t have any money to pay the bills. And if we’re not going to be treated properly, we’re going to do that. And all we have to do to cut our trade deficit with a country is not trade with them. Canada is one. If we don’t do any trading with Canada, we just end all trade with Canada. We’d save ourselves $ 90 billion, all trading with Canada. Don’t forget, they do all of their business, almost all of their business with the United States. And we do a relatively small amount of business with them. But if we didn’t want to, if we were playing hardball, all we’d do is say we’re going to do no trading with Canada. If we did no trading with Canada, we’d save $ 90 billion. And so what I’m saying very simply is that we should be paying the lowest interest rate in the world. Each point in interest in this country that we pay costs us $ 650 billion. We should be at 1% or a half a percent. We shouldn’t be at 4%. We have other countries at a half a percent. And yet, if it weren’t for us, they’d be bankrupt countries. We should be the lowest in the world, as we were 25 and 30 years ago, under any circumstance. We were the lowest in the world… REPORTER: Mr. President, back to interest rates. A rate hike could reassure the bond market. If you’d like to see more rates. TRUMP: To me, it doesn’t reassure a bond market. To me, it’s your rate cut. Because we should be at 1% or a half a percent. We should not be at 4%. Because everything, as I explained, we could do tremendous good for ourselves by just not trading with countries. We lose with the European Union $ 200 billion a year. If I didn’t trade with them, we’d lose nothing. Just one swipe of the pen. We lose with Mexico $ 195 billion a year. If I don’t trade with Mexico, they have nothing that we have to have. I mean, hot tamales, tomatoes, a couple of things. But basically, they have nothing that we need. We have oil. We have everything. I don’t want to do that because we get along very well with the president. We like the president. We respect her a lot. But if we didn’t want to trade with Mexico, if we didn’t want to trade with Canada, we’d save from $ 60 to $ 90 billion a year just by not trading with Canada. Now, Canada would be in a heap of trouble. I don’t think they’d exist. Because again, they do 95% of their business with us. So if I say we’re not going to trade, that means 95% of their business gets wiped out. I don’t know what they do. So we should have the lowest interest rate, as we used to 25, 30 years ago when we were smart.

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