Trump: People Are Respecting Us Again As A Country
President Donald Trump held a press conference where he introduced three executive orders.
Trump was Monday’s KVML “Newsmaker of the Day”. Here are his words:
“I think it’s very important to state that incredible things are happening in our country. I think we’ve made more progress in three weeks than they’ve made in four years, especially with respect to the reputation of our country, and people are respecting us again as a country and as a powerful country and maybe a smart country.
But maybe not so smart, because when you look at some of the waste, fraud, and abuse that’s being inco- — uncovered by DOGE and the people at DOGE — these are young — often young but super brilliant people, incredible computer scientists and other things. And they’re finding levels of fraud and waste and abuse like, I think, nobody ever thought possible.
But before we do that, I just want to ask Will to come over. We’ve — I’ve just finished signing some executive orders. And if we could start with that, Will, you might want to come up here and just explain what we did.
Thank you.
MR. SCHARF: Good afternoon, y’all. A short while ago, President Trump signed three — three items.
The first is an executive order relating to the affordability and availability of in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments. These are treatments that have become unaffordable for many Americans or have been unaffordable for many Americans. And the executive order is a directive to the Domestic Policy Council to examine ways to make IVF and other fertility treatments more affordable for more Americans.
The second item that we signed was a presidential memorandum imposing radical transparency requirements on government departments and agencies in keeping with President Trump and the administration’s broader commitment to governmental transparency. What this presidential memorandum would do is require — as waste, fraud, and abuse is uncovered, as programs are canceled, and, ultimately, as taxpayer dollars are saved, this presidential memorandum would require departments and agencies to make all of the details of that freely available to the public.
Lastly, we have another executive order that President Trump signed relating to independent agencies. This executive order would establish important oversight functions in the Office of Management and Budget and its subsidiary office, OIRA, supervising independent agencies and many of their actions and also reestablishes the long-standing norm that only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is.
THE PRESIDENT: All right. Thank you very much, Will.
That was the primary purpose of this conference to explain that they are all very important in their own way.
Fertilization — I’ve been saying that we’re going to do what we have to do, and I think the women — and families, husbands — are very appreciative of it.
But that was it.
I do want to say while I’m up here, I’ve been contacted by some of the biggest companies in the world, and because of what we’re doing economically and through tariffs and taxes and incentives, they want to come back into the United States. And we’ll be announcing various very large companies — the biggest, actually. And they’ll be coming back, having to do with chips and having to do also with cars and lots of other things.
We’re going to be announcing some very, very big — very big — momentous, I think — momentous decisions are being made by companies all around the world — the biggest — and they want to come back into the U.S.
Car plants are being canceled in other locations now because they want to build them here. And you read about a couple — not that I want to mention names or anything — but you read about a couple of big ones in Mexico just got canceled because they’re going to be building them in the United States. And that’s very simply because of what we’re doing with respect to taxes, tariffs, and incentives.
And I think it’s a very important thing. And you’ll be seeing this over the next — probably over the next two years, to be honest, but you’re going to see a lot of it over the next couple of weeks. A lot of big ones are be — going to be announcing.
And so, while we’re here, I guess we can take a couple of quick questions.
Go ahead, please. Please.
Q Mr. President, have you decided specifically what the auto tariff rate should be?
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, I probably will tell you that in — on April 2nd, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent.
Q And what about semiconductors and pharmaceuticals?
THE PRESIDENT: It’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll go very substantially higher over a course of a year. But we want to give them time to come in, because, as you know, when they come into the United States and they have their plant or factory here, there is no tariff. So, we want to give them a little bit of a chance.
Yes, thank you.
Q Just following up on that. The EU — I’m sorry. Andrea Shalal. The EU representative is going to be here in Washington next week — I’m sorry, tomorrow. He’s going to be meeting with Hassett and Greer and Lutnick.
What can the EU do to sort of avoid the reciprocal tariffs that you’ve talked about? And, you know, you’ve talked a lot about the VAT. Do you expect them to reduce that?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, they did already, as I understand it, reduce their car tariff all the way down to what we have. And a lot of that will take place, and I think some won’t do it and some will do it.
But the EU had a 10 percent tax on cars, and now they have a 2.5 percent tax, which is the exact same as us. So, already we’ve saved a tremendous amount. That would be great — if everybody would do that, then we’d all be on the same playing field. Because essentially, what we’re doing with the tariffs is, you know, they charge us, we charge them. Same amount. And it’s called reciprocal, actually, and whatever they charge us, we’re charging them.
And so, the EU is — you know, I appreciate that they did this, but, you know, the EU has been very unfair to us. We have a deficit of $350 billion. They don’t take our cars. They don’t take our farm products. They don’t take almost anything. They take very little. And we’re going to have to straighten that out, and we will. I have no doubt about it.”
The “Newsmaker of the Day” is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
