The President Donald J. Trump Interview 8/5/25

26:12They want to drill more because I think they want me happy. Because if energy goes down low enough, Putin's going to stop killing people. That'll be nice. even though they're his own people that are dying, him and Ukraine. But Putin will stop killing people if you get energy down another$10 a barrel. He's going to have no choice because his economy stinks. Mr. President, it's Andrew here. It's great to speak with you. I wanted to ask, I just wanted to ask you about, you mentioned tariffs. And on Sunday, you talked again about this idea of dividends for middle and lower income folks that might come off of the tariffs, meaning the revenue that's coming in from the tariffs.

26:47And I wanted you to maybe explain how that might work in practice and how you're thinking about that and the tradeoffs between paying down the debt, which I thought was something you had been talking a lot about, versus sending checks out, because obviously that creates its own debt for us. So we're taking in trillions of dollars, Andrew. If you look at Japan, we're taking in$550 billion. And that's like a signing bonus that a baseball player would get. He would get slightly less, no matter how good he is, right? But they give a signing bonus of$1 million or$2 million or$20 million or whatever the hell they give today is so out of control.

27:26But a signing bonus. So I get a signing bonus from Japan of$550 billion. That's our money. It's our money to invest as we like. European Union,$650 billion. Think of it. And they're going to buy$750 billion worth of our energy. And they're going to do this, and they're going to do that. And, by the way, they're going to open up their countries, which they've never done. Japan has never. If you did business in Japan, they would arrest you. You're not allowed to do any business. And now Japan has totally opened up their country. They're even taking our rice, which is something that nobody said was possible.

28:03taking our cars. They're taking the very beautiful Ford 150, which does very well, and I'm sure we'll do very well there. And other things that do very well here will also do well there. You'd be surprised at some of the great things we make. But Japan has opened up. All of these Indonesians opened up their country. South Korea has opened up their country. But not only opened up, and that's going to be huge business. When you open up South Korea, it's a closed country. And now, all of a sudden we're allowed to sell cars into South Korea and trucks and SUVs. I mean, we're really opening it up. Vietnam is opening up their country.

28:38You know, these are all closed countries. But the EU was closed. They wouldn't take our agriculture. I said to, let's say, let me just say a prime minister, a furnace prime minister, a couple of years ago, I said, how many cars are you taking a year? Let me guess. Is it one or two? She said, no, no, no. no, we don't take any of your cars. I said, that's right. That's not nice. I said, that's not right. That's not a nice thing, Angela. But they took none of them, and now they take all our cars, all our trucks. Everything is open 100%. In addition, the EU is going to pay us$650 billion. We're going to round it off, actually, because of certain things, to$600 billion.

29:21And think of it. They're going to put up$750 billion. We're a rich country again. Now, these are just deals that I'm announcing. These are the biggest ones because EU is, you know, essentially Europe. We made great deals with all of the countries, and they're being fair about it. One other thing, I mean, for your listeners that perhaps are a little bit less wealthy than some of your listeners, I'm doing something that nobody's ever done before. As you know, for 30 years, Europe has had drug prices that are, in many cases, one-tenth the cost of drugs in here. Same manufacturing plants, same everything.

29:58I've invoked favored nations. Now, there is no favored nations for us. I've just said there is, because we're not going to pay 10 times more for a bill than they pay in Europe. And that's going to have a tremendous impact on the price of medicine. Mr. President, what kind of teeth, though, are in those investments? What kind of teeth are in those investments that would force the EU to make those investments? If they don't make those investments, what happens on the other side? Well, then they pay tariffs of 35 percent. No, no. They brought down their tariffs. So they paid$600 billion. And because of that, I reduced their tariffs from 30 percent down to 15 percent.

30:36And a couple of countries came. How come EU is paying less than us? And I said, well, because they gave me$600 billion. And that's a gift. That's not like, you know, a loan, by the way. That's not a loan that, oh, gee, three years comes up, we have to pay it back. There's nothing to pay back. they gave us$600 billion that we can invest in anything we want. The deal that you are now... And nobody knows it, Becky. Nobody knows it because, you know, they don't know. No, we have been trying to figure out the details on that, Mr. President, so we appreciate the clarity on that. The details are$600 billion to invest in anything I want.

31:09Anything. I can do anything I want with it. And the purpose was they've been, you know, ripping us for so many years that it's time that they pay up, and they have to pay up. We couldn't afford to have the deficits. Look, I did something with Switzerland the other day. I spoke to their prime minister. The woman was nice, but she didn't want to listen. And they paid essentially no tariffs. And I said, we have a$41 billion deficit with you, madam. I didn't know her. I said, we have a$41 billion deficit, and you want to pay 1 % tariffs. You wanted 1%. I said, you're not going to pay 1%. We lose because I view deficit as loss.

31:47You know, you have some people, by the way, I think, Jeremy. Pharmaceuticals are a big issue with Switzerland, I think. Well, I'll go into pharmaceuticals. They make a fortune with pharmaceuticals, and they make our pharmaceuticals in China and Ireland and everything else. And within the next week or so, we're going to be announcing tariffs on, specifically, this is a, you know, this is a separate class than the 15 % tariffs on sort of everything. These are excluded classes, I call them. I like to call them excluded, like steel, aluminum, et cetera. Right, the 232. Well, we're going to be announcing on semiconductors and chips, which is a separate category, because we want them made in the United States.

32:25And by the way, they're being made in the United States. You know, we have the biggest in the world, as you know, from Taiwan is coming over and spending$300 billion in Arizona, building the biggest plant in the world for chips and semiconductors. But on pharmaceuticals, we'll be putting an initially small tariff on pharmaceuticals. But in one year, one and a half years maximum, it's going to go to 150 percent. And then it's going to go to 250 percent because we want pharmaceuticals made in our country. And that's not the chipsack like Biden did because he didn't know what he was doing, where they gave billions of dollars to companies that had more money than they knew what to do with.

33:04President Trump, can I ask you about something that you're doing that's opposite of the Biden administration, too? And that's the latest deal that you've announced. Everything. I think everything. The latest deal, though, that you're announcing with India, you're upset with the trade deal there, especially because they're buying Russian oil. The Biden administration sanctioned Russian oil, but then they kind of winked and nodded and appreciated that India and China were buying some of that oil because they were worried it would raise oil prices and thereby prices at the pump. To you, is it more important to shut down the Russians on this than to worry about oil prices?

33:35I'm not worried about prices because we're drilling at levels that nobody's ever seen before. and what Biden did is he stopped my drilling. And then prices, if you remember that first couple of months, prices went through the roof and he immediately said, let's go back to what Trump was doing. Let's go back to it. But by that time they had blown it and the energy prices were so high and that's what caused that and his crazy spending is what caused. By the way, the largest inflation in the history of our country was during the Biden administration. Not 48 years. You know, they like to say 48 years.

34:07It was the largest in the history of our country, the inflation that we had during Biden, because the man obviously didn't know what he was doing. But with India, what people don't like to say about India, they're the highest tariff nation. They have the highest tariff of anybody. We do very, very little business with India because their tariffs are so high. So India has not been a good trading partner because they do a lot of business with us, but we don't do business with them. So we settled on 25 percent, but I think I'm going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours because they're buying Russian oil.

34:45They're fueling the war machine. And if they're going to do that, then I'm not going to be happy. A lot of deals signed. And I don't know, you know, I thought India was imminent. I'm not sure what you know what what the sticking point is there, Mr. President. But let's just since we don't have all day, we've got to talk China. The sticking point with India is that tariffs are too high. Now, I will say this. India went from the highest tariffs ever. They will give us zero tariffs and they're going to let us go in. But that's not good enough because because of what they're doing with oil. Not good.

35:17It looked like you were going to have a meeting and people were talking about it with President Xi. And then you went out of your way to kind of say other people are saying I think even called it fake news or something. It almost it looked like you were indicating that you were unhappy or the talks had broken down. And we've had a couple of frameworks or some positive moves. And, you know, China, you've had a lot of success with other countries. China is a big deal and a big, not quite the elephant in the room, but certainly an important trading partner. Where does that stand? Will there be a meeting between you and President Xi?

35:48Anything planned at this point? What's the sticking point now? And how optimistic are you that we get a comprehensive deal? Well, I can have a meeting. We have a very good relationship. But I didn't call for the meeting. He called for the meeting. So the fake news announced Donald Trump wants a meeting with China. No, I didn't want it. No, he asked for a meeting, and I'll end up having a meeting before the end of the year, most likely, if we make a deal. If we don't make a deal, I'm not going to have a meeting. I mean, you know what? What's the purpose of meeting if we're not going to make a deal?

36:17But we're getting very close to a deal. We're getting along with China very well. I will tell you, you know, you had a point when I had 145 percent tariffs on. I put in for fentanyl. I put in, I actually said to people, where are we now with China, by the way? because I kept adding more and more. They said, sir, you're up to 145%. I said, you've got to be kidding. So I sort of had to bring it down a little bit. But when it was up to 145%, meaning we were doing zero business with China, China was collapsing. I don't know if you know that. You haven't reported it, if you do. But China was collapsing.

36:51China is very reliant on the United States. My relationship with him is very good. I think we'll make a good deal. it's not imperative but I think we're going to make a good deal but no they had a thing that Donald Trump really wanted to go there it's a 19 hour flight it's a long flight but at some point in the not too distant future and just to end this conversation I have a very good relationship with President Xi always had other than the COVID moment where I was very angry with him and essentially didn't want to talk to him frankly because, you know, it did come out of Wuhan, in all fairness, which I was saying from day one, I was saying I knew exactly where it came from.

37:34But that did interfere with the relationship. But, no, I've had a great relationship with President Xi. We respect him a lot. They respect us a lot. They didn't respect Biden. They thought he was a numbskull. They couldn't believe he was the president of the United States, and neither can anyone else that that happened. Mr. President, on a different topic, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that you're prepping an order that they say would punish banks that discriminate against conservatives, including potentially Bank of America. I'm going to be actually talking to Brian Moynihan here later today.

38:08Can you tell us about that executive order? What's in that? And what do you think the banks have done? Well, they did discriminate. I had J.P. Morgan Chase. I had hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. I could see if they want to, you know, if they want to do something bad because you don't have any money and you're defaulted and you're there. They took people out. But I'll give you me as an example. I had hundreds of millions. I had many, many accounts loaded up with cash. I was loaded up with cash. And they told me, I'm sorry, sir. We can't have you. You have 20 days to get out. I said, you've got to be kidding.

38:45I've been with you for 35, 40 years. They said, and I mean, I had all this, I didn't know what to do with it. And I went to, and you could ask him, maybe he's not going to admit it. So I said, you know, I was informed by my people that we have to get out of Chase Manan, that's Jamie, and JPMorgan Chase. So I said, I can't believe it. Well, I was never in this situation before. I've never had anything like it. And it's not like, gee, you defaulted on a loan. You know, geez, if I could understand that, that's different. But there's no default. I mean, there's nothing but cash. It's a really good, I have a really great company.

39:24And then what happens is I call a Bank of America routinely because when I was president, this was after I got out, by the way, I call a Bank of America routinely. And I speak to him and I speak to a couple of people and they have zero interest. Brian was kissing my ass when I was president and when I called him after I was president to deposit a billion dollars plus and a lot of other things more importantly to open accounts which banks always like they like accounts because they get interest free you know the overnight some things a lot of reasons for it but they like accounts I had hundreds of accounts and he said we can't do it no we can't do it so I went to another one another one another one I ended up going to small banks all over the place.

40:09I mean, I was putting$10 million here,$10 million there, did$5 million,$10 million,$12 million. I have them all over the place, the craziest thing. And it's lucky I even had them. They were doing me a favor. And that's because the banks discriminated against me very badly. And I was very good to the banks. I had the greatest economy in the history of our country when I was president. And by the way, our economy now will blow that away, and you see it happening. But our economy now, because we're a rich country again, because of our trade deals, we've become a rich country again. But no, they totally discriminate against.

40:44I think me, maybe even more, but they discriminate against many conservatives. You know, I told that story and sitting around tables with other people that were conservative or Trump supporters. I think the word might be Trump supporters more than conservative. And I believe what they did is they went to the regulators. You know, banks are not afraid of anything but a regulator. their regulators and their wives. They're more afraid of their wives than the regulators. But the the first the group they're really afraid of is bank regulators. And I believe that Biden or Kamala and I don't think they're smart enough to do it.

41:18But the people that are surrounding the beautiful Resolute desk, you know, the high IQ people that are radical left, I believe they told the banking commission, the bankers, the banking regulators, do everything you can to destroy Trump. And that's what they did. And guess what? I'm president. How did that happen? Mr. President, you've talked about you want success, not retribution. The Justice Department now tapping a grand jury to look into the intelligence community's assessment of what was happening um with russia is that you have nothing to do with uh with directing the justice department no i have nothing to do pam is doing a great job i have nothing to do with it i will tell you this uh they deserve it i was happy to hear it i actually read it just like you did i have nothing to do with it but what they did in the election what they did in even the last election but it was too big to rig but what they did in the 2020 election is is grotesque i mean that was a rigged election.

42:21We can't relitigate that. We can't relitigate that. We're back to rigging again. You can use it because everyone knows. You know what, a year ago you would have been upset if I said it. Today it's different. I say it all the time. It was a rigged election. 100 % rigged. We can't relitigate. Independent sources, even your Justice Department, but then I'm bringing up Bill Barr, but even they decided that there were things that happened but nothing that would have swayed it. Well, they were wrong, and Bill Barr was wrong, and Bill Barr didn't investigate, and he should have. And why didn't Bill Barr give the—why didn't he give the derma report?

42:58Why didn't he give that report, the stuff that's in there, that's all the stuff that's coming out of it, why didn't he give it earlier? I mean, you know, why did it take so long to do it, and why didn't he give it—why didn't they announce it earlier? Because it morphed—what happened is it morphed into the Biden administration, and the Biden administration buried it. So, you know, it's too bad. How about Texas? Now we're going to do now we're going to do mid mid year or midterm gerrymandering based on that's going to be a quid pro quo or something with in blue states. Now, Mr. President, did you?

43:32Well, they did it to us. You know, those blue states. They started about, you know, somebody gave a good example in Massachusetts. I got, I think, 41 percent of the vote. It's a very blue state. And yet it's got 100 percent of Congress, 100 percent. So I got 40, 41 percent or something. And yet 100 percent of Congress in Massachusetts, no, it shouldn't be that way. I should have we should have a couple of Congress people. We have none. And think of this, 100 percent in Illinois. We have probably the dumbest of all governors, Illinois. That guy's really sending. I mean, the business is flowing out of his state.

44:08It's terrible. It's a terrible thing that Pritzker is doing. You know, he was the black sheep of the family. They threw him out of the business. But in Illinois, what's happened is terrible, what they're doing. And you notice they go to Illinois for safety, but that's all gerrymandered. California's gerrymandered. We should have many more seats in Congress in California. It's all gerrymandered. And we have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats. We have a really good governor, and we have good people in Texas. And I won Texas. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know.

44:43And we are entitled to five more seats. I don't know. I have to check on that. And, you know, they expect... Check it. Why don't you check it, Brian? No. The fact-checkers expect us to check everything you say on the phone. I want you to check it. But for four years, those fact-checkers didn't fact-check anything that was said about... We don't need to reiterate that either. But they expect fact-checking immediately. Joe, why don't you check it, okay? Because I'd like you to. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, okay? Mr. President, can I ask you back to the economy and just on some of the things we've seen with the jobs report, the weakness in those numbers that came out last week.

45:22People are trying to figure out where the weakness is coming from. Part of it may be because of immigration. Now, people voted you into office because they were concerned about immigration policy in this country. But if you look at the jobs report last week, it did show a 1.7 million drop off of foreign born workers from March to July. That's a great number, by the way. That's a great number. because it means we're putting Americans to work. Well, the problem is immigrants have accounted for more than half of the U.S. workforce growth over the last three years. And so you wonder if that gets into an issue.

45:51And I know you've spoken with farmers who have had concerns about being able to find temporary workers there. And I think their pleas have kind of hit you in a way where you looked at that a little differently. Well, I think this. We're getting the criminals out of our country because they had an open border policy because they were fools, and they allowed people from prisons and gang members and drug dealers into our country. We're getting the criminals out of our country by the thousands, by the thousands, and they're taken. We have murderers. We have people that are mentally insane. They come out of insane asylums and psych wards, and they come out of places that you don't want to know about.

46:31You would not like to see it. But they dumped everybody in our country from the Congo and Africa to all over South America. They dumped millions of people into our country that are dangerous people, and I'm getting them out. I'm working with the farmers, however, and the farmers have been great. I also got the highest vote for farmers, I think, that anybody's ever gotten. And I take care of the farmers. I love the farmers. They're a very important part of this country. And we're not going to do anything to hurt the farmers. and we're working on that and we're going to be coming out with rules and regulations.

47:03I mean, you'll see a farmer with the same person working for him for 20 years. The person's even paying taxes and other things. And we're looking, look, we're looking for the criminals, the people that murdered. You know, we have 11 ,888 people that came into our country under Biden, under with our great czar, a border czar. She never called one. You know, she never called. She was a border czar. She never went to the border and she never made one call to the Border Patrol. You know, other than that, she did a great job. But they had hundreds of people that were murdered, 11 ,888 murders, 50 % of which murdered more than one person in our country.

47:43We've already gotten a lot of them out, and some of them are so dangerous we don't want to bring them back. We want to put them in our own prison because we don't want them coming back. But they allowed 11 ,888 murderers, many of which murdered more than one, into our population. and we're getting them out rapidly. But, Mr. President, I just want to hear you clearly. You're saying the people who have been here for years and who have been even paying taxes, you're going to look at them very differently, and maybe they belong here in the workforce? I want to work with them, and in some cases, we're sending them back to their country with a pass back in legally, and we're doing things that are very difficult to do and very complex, but it works really well.

48:22We're sending them back, and then they're schooling, they're learning, they're coming in, they're coming in legally. we have a lot of that going on, but we're taking care of our farmers. We can't let our farmers not have anybody, you know, these people, you can't replace them very easily. You know, people that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They're just not doing that work. And they've tried. We've tried. Everybody tried. They don't do it. These people do it naturally, naturally. I said, what happens if they get it to a farmer the other day? What happens if they get a bad back.

48:59He said, they don't get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die. I said, that's interesting, isn't it? You know, these are very, you know, in many ways, they're very, very special people. OK, go ahead. No. OK. So here we go. So you did get the highest number of votes in Texas. So that's true. But when you're talking, you don't have to say anything more joe i i gotta say this no don't say anything more don't qualify it by saying no i'm not gonna not the highest number of votes you did you did i'm moving on i'm moving on to your claim that that revision helped biden for uh hurt you for the 800 000.

49:37it was it was in august they we there's still plenty of time for voters to see that those weren't real jobs in november i believe it was in No, this was in August. There was a massive revision downward. The first one, the$800 ,000 or$900 ,000, I think, was in August. And then later it came out in March of 2025. It went to$598 ,000, not$818 ,000. But the original one... Listen,$598 ,000, but there were other revisions downward from prior to the election because the numbers were rigged, okay? And as you said, the number, look, you take a look after the election, how many revisions downward there were.

50:22But let's get back to Texas, because you said you were going to say something else. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, a record that they say won't be beaten unless I run again. Are you going to run again? No, probably not. Okay. Probably not. And you're not going to fire Jay Powell. We'll talk about all the stuff that... Becky, I'd like to run. I have the best poll numbers I've ever had. You know why? Because people love the tariffs. That's with Republicans. And they love that foreign countries aren't ripping us off anymore. For years they ripped us off. Friend and foe. And the friend was worse.

51:03Overall poll numbers, you don't have the best you ever had. And overall poll numbers, you do. I decided to have one of those. I have the best poll numbers I've ever had. I have poll numbers where I'm 71%. I have the best poll numbers. Those are among Republicans. No, no, no. Among Republicans, I'm at 94 and 95%. No, I'm talking about generally. Let me put it this way. There was a gentleman on Harry Emden yesterday on CNN, and he went crazy over how well Trump was doing. Now, you know, you don't put that on because I think CBS is a shade. actually CNN's a shade better than NBC. I think NBC is probably the worst of them all.

51:45But if you check CNN tomorrow, watch Harry Emden, and you'll see about the numbers. But that's okay. We have to defend ourselves, Joe. Thank you for checking. But there are other, they can cite, your haters cite polls that have you down in the 30s, Mr. President. Yeah, but they're fake polls, Joe. I had a lot of fake polls. You also had me in the 70s. I have fake polls. Fox News would be terrible polls all the time. You know, they do nothing, but I never had a good poll with Fox. And then I win an election and I go through the roof. Because, look, I won every swing state. Did I not? I won every swing state.

52:18Andrew, I won the popular vote by millions of votes, even though they tried like hell to cheat. I won by millions of votes. I won the counties and all of the counties. I won 7 ,000. No, I won 2 ,750 to 502. And I won the election in a landslide. And obviously that's only, you know, we're only six months in. But my poll numbers are better now, much better than during the election. And now part of that, part of that is because the Democrat Party is self-destructing. I mean, when you have low IQ people like Crockett, I wonder if she's in a relationship to the late great Davy Crockett, who is a great, great, a great gentleman.

53:04and I wonder if she's got any relationship to David Crockett, the great old David Crockett. But you have this woman, Crockett. She's a very low IQ person. Somebody said the other day she's one of the leaders of the party. I said, you've got to be kidding. The Democrats are lost. They have Trump derangement syndrome so bad that they can't walk. They can't talk. They don't know where they're going. Schumer is finished. Schumer, look, I watched him the other day. He's lost all of his confidence. 40 % of the country has. So you're never going to get above 60 in any poll. And it's because 40 % have TDS.

53:39And we know that. This president, we used to do this every Tuesday. It was called Trump Tuesday. Maybe we can start. This is going to be the start of something again. But we appreciate all your time today and hope to be able to continue this discussion on all these different issues in the not too distant future, if we could. Joe, let me just, could I finish one thing? Yes. One year ago, our country was dead. Now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world by far. And that was told to me by every leader of NATO, which they do whatever I want. That was told to me by the king of Saudi Arabia, by the leaders of UAE, by the leader of Qatar, by many, many.

54:26We were a dead country one year ago. Today we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. And I'm very happy to help. Mr. President, once again, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, you're welcome. We'll see you soon. Thank you.

54:47And that is Squawk Pod for today. Thanks for tuning in to this conversation with President Donald Trump. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. That's on CNBC weekday mornings beginning at 6 Eastern. Podcast followers, stay tuned to your feeds. Not only do you get the best of our morning show and easy to listen to installments of Squawk Pod, but we will be rolling out some of Andrew's discussions from the Aspen Economic Strategy Group as standalone pods. Keep an ear out for those. That's it. Have a great day and we'll meet you right back here tomorrow. We are clear.

55:24Thanks, guys.

55:31Thank you.