Trump Says 'We Don't Have Any Tariffs'
On Twitter, President Donald Trump bragged that "Billions of dollars... coming into United States coffers because of Tariffs." A few hours later, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he argued with the premise that tariffs are the greatest risk to the economy, declaring, "We don't have any tariffs." He then asked: "Other than some tariffs on steel -- which is actually small, what do we have?"
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While the tweet did mention tariffs as great for trade negotiation leverage, in the newspaper interview, Trump claimed that the threat of tariffs is everything, and talked as if the counterparties' positions will determine whether they ever come into effect. He said that if they don't do the right thing, he'll put tariffs on their cars, and if they do, he won't.
"They wouldn’t meet with Obama, the European Union. Japan wouldn’t meet with Obama. And they wouldn’t meet with us either," Trump said. "After a few months I said, all right, that’s all right. So I called them up. I said, listen, we don’t have to meet with you anymore; we’re just going to put tariffs on your cars coming in. They were in my office the next day." European negotiators did meet with American negotiators during the Obama administration, though a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal was not reached (see 1610070025).