In wide-ranging remarks during a business session with U.S. governors, President Trump yesterday repeatedly broached the topic of international trade. The president reiterated his commitment to working on fair and reciprocal trade deals and highlighted specific trade issues:

  • Mexico – “You know, with Mexico … we probably lose $130 billion a year…. And, at some point, we have to get stronger and smarter, because we cannot continue to lose that kind of money with one country.”
  • Canada – “We lose a lot with Canada. People don’t know it. Canada is very smooth. They have you believe that it’s wonderful. And it is — for them…. So we have to start showing that we know what we’re doing.”
  • WTO – “World Trade Organization – a catastrophe…. makes it almost impossible for us to do good business. We lose the cases, we don’t have the judges. We have a minority of judges.”
  • China – “[W]e probably lost $504 billion, last year, on trade…. Other Presidents should have solved this problem long before I got here. And they’ve been talking for 25 years. And you know what happened? Nothing.”
  • Steel – “I want to bring the steel industry back into our country. If that takes tariffs, let them take tariffs, okay? Maybe it will cost a little bit more, but we’ll have jobs. Let it take tariffs.”
  • Aluminum – “I want to bring aluminum back into our country. These plants are all closing or closed.”
  • Section 232 Trade Actions – “Recently, we put a tariff on washing machines because we were getting killed ….. That was two months ago. You have to see the activity on new plants being built for washing machines and for solar panels. We had 32 solar-panel plants. Of the 32, 30 were closed, and 2 were on life-to-life resuscitation. They were dead. Now they’re talking about opening up many of them — reopening plants that have been closed for a long time.”

In closing comments on trade, President Trump stated that “we’re going to straighten it out. We’ve already started. I mean, the first year is just — we laid the seeds.”