April 7, 2025
Press conference during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House and President Donald Trump, as broadcast by C-SPAN, April 7, 2025.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for new tariffs of at least 10% on nearly every country, effective April 9, 2025, brought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on April 7 for the second time in the first 80 days of the second Trump administration.
Despite a 40-year-old free-trade agreement between the two countries, Trump on April 2 announced a 17% tariff on Israeli goods because of a long-term Israeli trade surplus. Netanyahu brought a promise to remove the few remaining tariffs on U.S. agricultural products, which produce about $11 million in revenue annually in a commercial relationship worth more than $38 billion a year in goods alone.
Netanyahu promised to eliminate the $7.4 billion Israeli trade surplus “very quickly,” remove unnecessary nontariff barriers and “serve as a model for many countries who ought to do the same” in the quest for trade that is free and fair. But Trump refused to commit to revoking the 17% tariff on Israeli goods, instead emphasizing that the United States gives Israel almost $4 billion a year in military aid, not counting special appropriations in response to the ongoing war against Hamas.
Trump made no promises about efforts to end that war. He reiterated a commitment to bring home the remaining 59 Israeli hostages, 35 of whom are believed to be dead, but he notably made none of his previous threats to unleash hell on Hamas for blocking a Gaza cease-fire and a hostage release.
As for the Gaza depopulation/redevelopment proposal Trump unveiled during Netanyahu’s previous visit Feb. 4, the president was silent until a reporter asked about it. Both leaders said they like the vision and said other countries are ready to take in Palestinians who want to leave Gaza, but Trump said he also likes other ideas about Gaza’s future.
“I think it’s an incredible piece of important real estate, and I think it’s something that we would be involved in,” Trump said. “Having a peace force like the United States there, controlling and owning the Gaza Strip, would be a good thing.”
The biggest news from the 51-minute press conference Trump and Netanyahu held in the Oval Office concerned Iran. The president announced high-level, direct U.S.-Iran talks about the Iranian nuclear program Saturday, April 12, later revealed to be in Oman. He also said only one outcome — the end of Iran’s nuclear efforts — is acceptable, and “if the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it’ll be a very bad day for Iran.”
Though he was thousands of miles away, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have been the biggest winner of Netanyahu’s Washington visit. Not only did Trump emphasize the mutual admiration he shares with the authoritarian leader, but he also historically praised Erdogan for being the first person in 2,000 years to conquer Syria. The following transcript of the Trump-Netanyahu press conference omits a few sections, marked with ellipses, addressing U.S. trade without any reference to Israel or its neighbors in the Middle East.
— Michael Jacobs, April 8, 2025
President Donald Trump: Thank you very much. It is an honor to have a very special person, Benjamin Netanyahu. We had lunch together, meetings together, along with his very capable staff. And I think we’ve come up to some pretty good solutions and conclusions. And we’ll be working a little bit after this, and then I assume you’re going back home. This is a quick stop, in and out. But we appreciate your being here, and we are a friend of Israel, as you know. I will say that I am by far the best president that Israel has ever even thought of seeing. And it’s an honor to be so and to be so brought up. I have many friends in Israel, not in an easy area, doesn’t go easy, but we are helping them, and likewise they’ve been helping us very much. And so we’ll see how it all works out, but we had great discussions today, I think, on the obvious subject of Iran and also on the less obvious subject with respect to Israel, and that’s trade. And I think the prime minister’s going to tell you a little bit about trade and what they’re doing for the United States. So I want to thank you all for being here, thank you very much. And, Benjamin, thank you very much.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President, thank you. Mr. President, I want to first thank you for inviting me again to the White House. You’ve been a remarkable friend of the State of Israel. You stand by us. You’re standing with us. You are a great, great champion of our land, and you actually do the things that you say you will do, and I think that people respect that enormously. I certainly do, and the people of Israel do, and I think the Jewish people do as well. We just saw your representative in the Department of Justice fighting antisemitism, standing up for Israel in international forums. I just want you to know, from the heart, it’s deeply, deeply appreciated.
As you said, we had the opportunity to talk today about many subjects. First I will mention tariffs, the subject of some interest today. I said to the president a very simple thing: We will eliminate the trade deficit with the United States. We intend to do it very quickly. We think it’s the right thing to do. And we’re going to do also eliminate trade barriers, a variety of trade barriers that have been put up unnecessarily. And I think Israel can serve as a model for many countries who ought to do the same. I recognize the position of the United States. It says, “You know, we’re allowing other countries to put tariffs on us, but we don’t put tariffs on them.” And, you know, I’m a free trade champion, and free trade has to be fair trade. And I think that’s basically the position that you have put forward, Mr. President. We are going to eliminate the tariffs, and rapidly.
I had the opportunity to speak to Secretary [Howard] Lutnick yesterday. We talked about how we could affect this quickly, and I hope to bring the solution very quickly. We’re not talking about intentions. We’re not talking about just words. We’re talking about results, and those results are going to come. That’s the first thing.
Trump: Thank you very much. That’s very nice [shaking hands].
Netanyahu: Thank you. Thank you.
Reporter: Mr. President, what about the hostage deal?
Trump: Let him finish.
Netanyahu: Finish? Let me begin. We spoke about not only the hostages, but about Gaza. The hostages obviously is a human story of just unbearable agony. I speak to the families. I spoke to them yesterday. I spoke to another one when I was in Hungary before I came here. I speak to them every day. They’re in agony. The hostages are in agony, and we want to get them all out. Steve Witkoff, who is President Trump’s very able representative, helped us get a deal that got 25 out. We’re working on another deal that we hope will succeed, and we’re committed to getting all the hostages out but also eliminating the evil tyranny of Hamas in Gaza and enabling the people of Gaza to freely make a choice to go wherever they want. I mean, they should have that choice. And the president put forward a vision, a bold vision, which we discussed as well, including the countries that might be amenable and are amenable to accepting Palestinians of their free choice if they choose to go there. And I think that’s the second thing that we discussed. But the hostages came right on top.
We also discussed the situation in Syria. We have, we’ve had neighborly relations with Turkey that deteriorated, and we don’t want to see Syria being used by anyone, including Turkey, as a base for attack on Israel. Turkey is a country that has a great relationship with the United States. The president has a relationship with the leader of Turkey. We discussed how we can avoid this conflict in a variety of ways, and I think we can’t have a better interlocutor than the president of the United States for this purpose.
And, of course, we also discussed Iran. Look, we’re both united in the goal that Iran does not ever get nuclear weapons. If it can be done diplomatically in the full way, the way it was done in Libya, I think that would be a good thing. But whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. That’s the end of my speech.
Trump: Wait, wait, wait. We’re having direct talks with Iran, and they’ve started. It’ll go on Saturday. We’ll have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen. I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious, and the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with or frankly that Israel wants to be involved with if they can avoid it. So we’re going to see if we can avoid it. But it’s getting to be very dangerous territory, and hopefully those talks will be successful. And I think it would be in Iran’s best interest if they are successful. We hope that’s going to happen.
And we had just a lot of good talks on a lot of things. I appreciate very much what you said about the tariffs. We’ve been ripped off and taken advantage of by many countries over the years and can’t do it anymore, just can’t do it anymore. Can’t be the stupid people anymore. And it’s all because of the people that sat in this seat right here, not your seat but this seat, and they allowed things to happen to our country that they shouldn’t have allowed to happen on trade and other things, many other things. I mean, look at what’s happened with our last president where he allowed millions of people to come into our country with an open border. Who would want an open border? How stupid is that? But he allowed millions and millions of people, and of the millions, and I think it was 21 million people, but let’s say 3 [million] of them were serious criminals, serious murderers and drug dealers and gang members and people from jails. All the jails emptied out right into our country, right along the open border on Mexico, generally Mexico. They came in from Canada too, by the way, a lot, but generally speaking on the southern border. And what a shame it is that we are now working very hard to get them out, get the criminals out, get the murderers out, the drug dealers, the mentally insane, get them out. They dropped the mentally insane in our country too, and this was all done by the Biden administration. It’s a disgrace that we have to work so hard, and then we have judges that try to protect these people. But they didn’t protect us when the people were being let in. But to get them out is never easy with these people, so I think we’re doing a great job. The border is the best it’s ever been, even as strong as it was. I had a great, solid border. I think it might even be tougher right now and stronger. So people are coming into our country, but they’re coming in legally. We have a legal process, and we have that moving along properly. Because we need people to come into our country but we want people that can love our country and cherish our country. And so that’s where we are. And with that, any questions?
Reporter: Mr. President, would you be open to a pause in tariffs to allow for negotiations?
Trump: Well, we’re not looking at that. We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and they’re going to be fair deals. And in certain cases they’re going to be paying substantial tariffs. They’ll be fair deals. As you know, I spoke this morning with the prime minister of Japan, and we had a very good conversation. They’re coming. And I said one thing you’re going to have to open up your country because we sold no cars, like zero cars, in Japan. And they sold millions of cars into our country. They don’t really take our agriculture, a little bit of it just to keep us slightly happy, but they don’t what they’re supposed to be taking. So we have a great relationship with Japan. We’re going to keep it that way, but they’re coming in to meet, and other countries are coming in. With China, as you know, against my statement, they put a 34% tariff on above what their ridiculous tariffs were already. And I said if that tariff isn’t removed by tomorrow at 12 o’clock, we’re putting a 50% tariff on above the tariffs that we put on. So they’ve gone for years, they’ve become a rich country because of people again that were in the White House that allowed this to happen. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year they’ve made with us on trade, and it shouldn’t be that way. And I have a great relationship with President Xi. I hope it’s going to stay that way. I have great respect for China, but they can’t do this. We’re going to have one shot at this, and no other president is going to do this, what I’m doing. And I’ll tell you what, it’s an honor to do it because we have been just destroyed, what they’ve done to our system. You know, we have $36 trillion of debt for a reason. And the reason is that people allowed it to get that way. So we’ll be talking to China. We’ll be talking to a lot of different countries, and I think, you know, if we can make a really fair deal and a good deal for the United States, not a good deal for others, this is America first. It’s now America first. And we didn’t put America first. We put America last. The people that were in the Oval Office put America last, and we’re not going to stand for it.
Reporter: Two questions. Do you expect any of these deals to be made before April 9? And, secondly, there’ve been some mixed messages from your administration. You’re talking about negotiations, and yet others in your administration are saying that these tariffs are actually permanent. What is the actual?
Trump: Well, it can both be true. There can be permanent tariffs, and there can be negotiations because there are things that we need beyond tariffs. We need open borders. You know we almost had a deal with China where we were going to open up China. It was almost done. Some of you remember it during my first term. And it was very disappointing. We ended up making a great deal, $50 billion worth of product was sold — $50 billion. You’d like that in Israel. And I made that deal, but it wasn’t the deal that I wanted. The deal that I wanted was that plus they would open up China so that our companies could go into China and compete with other countries and China for the, you know, large number of people. And at the very end that deal was terminated, and we went to a piece of the deal. So there are a lot of things outside of tariffs, but tariffs are very important. But there are a lot of things like opening up countries that were totally closed. China is essentially a closed country. In fact, it is a closed country. And what they do is they charge tariffs so that if you sell cars or if you sell anything, nobody is going to buy it because the price is out of control. But that’s true with a lot of other countries also. So we’re going to get fair deals and good deals with every country, and if we don’t, we’re going to have nothing to do with them. They’re not going to be allowed to participate in the United States.
Reporter: Many Palestinian Americans voted for you and not for Biden because you promised them to end the war in Gaza.
Trump: We’re very honored by that vote too.
Reporter: The war is still going on, and there’s no hostage deal. Do you have any update on that?
Trump: Well, I’d like to see the war stop, and I think the war will stop at some point that won’t be in the too-distant future. Right now we have a problem with hostages. We’re trying to get the hostages out. We got quite a few of them out, but it’s a long process. It shouldn’t be that long. We have a big problem that we’ve done, I think I’ll ask Pete [Hegseth] to maybe talk about it for a second because a lot of people are asking. The Houthis, we’ve been very tough and very successful militarily. We’ve really damaged them badly. These were people shooting down ships and other things by the way, flying objects like airplanes. And we’ve put a major hurt on the Houthis, which nobody has been able to do. We’ve really hit them hard, and they know it. And they don’t know what to do. And it’s every night, night after night. And we’ve gotten many of their leaders and their experts on missiles. I mean, they actually make missiles. Nobody thought that. But they make missiles, highly sophisticated, and they’re very tough. But they’ve been very
badly damaged. Nobody else was able to do that but us. Pete, do you want to discuss that please?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: Yes, sir. Well, it’s been a bad three weeks for the Houthis, and it’s about to get worse. It’s been a devastating campaign, whether it’s underground facilities, weapons manufacturing, bunkers, troops in the open, air defense assets. We are not going to relent, and it’s only going to get more unrelenting until the Houthis declare they will stop shooting at our ships. We have been clear with the Iranians as well. They should not continue to provide support to the Houthis, and that message has been made very clear. So we have a lot more options and a lot more pressure to apply. And we know, because we see the reports, how devastating this campaign has been on them, and we will not relent.
Trump: We have a great military. There’s no military like our military. And despite Biden having given a lot but nevertheless a pretty small piece, but it was a lot of our military away in Afghanistan in one of the dumbest situations I think and maybe the most embarrassing situation we’ve ever been involved in, that short period of time in Afghanistan, what a disgrace that was. Left a lot of our military behind. You see them in their annual parades, where they’re parading trucks that are armor-plated and different things that they kept. But it’s many billions of dollars that we left behind. But despite that we have a tremendous military. That was a very small portion because we rebuilt the military during my first term. And we have great things happening with our military. We also essentially approved a budget which is in the facility, you’ll like to hear this, of a trillion dollars, $1 trillion. And nobody’s seen anything like it. We have to build our military. We’re very cost-conscious, but the military is something that we have to build, and we have to be strong because you got to lot of bad forces out there now. So we’re going to be approving a budget, and I’m proud to say actually the biggest one we’ve ever done for the military. We’re cutting other things that were under DOGE but under a lot of other — when you look at a woman getting $2 billion for environmental, and it had nothing to do with environmental. And they had $100 in the bank, and they give her $2 billion. Many, many of those cases. All that stuff is going to be cut out. But we are getting a very, very powerful military. We have things under order now the likes of which we’ve never had before. We’ve never had the kind of aircraft, the kind of missiles or anything that we have ordered. And it’s in many ways too bad that we have to do it because hopefully we’re not going to have to use it. But the military is very, very powerful, and it’s going to remain that way.
Reporter: Thank you, Mr. President. I want to talk about Iran because this is the first time we hear that the U.S. is having a direct contact with the Iranians. Is it possible to give us some more information? At what level —
Trump: High level. Very high level. We’re dealing with the Iranians. We have a very big meeting on Saturday. And we’re dealing with them directly. You know, a lot of people say, “Well, maybe you’re going through surrogates, or you’re not dealing directly. You’re dealing through other countries.” No, we’re dealing with them directly. And maybe a deal is going to be made. That would be great. It would be really great for Iran; I can tell you that. But hopefully we’re not going to have to get into that. We are meeting very importantly on Saturday at almost the highest level. We’ll see how it works out.
Reporter: How do you ensure, Mr. President, that these tariffs don’t drive U.S. trading partners into the hands of the Chinese?
Trump: I’m not worried about it. I’m not worried about it. They want to be in the hands of the U.S. They don’t want to be in the hands of the Chinese. The Chinese have turned out to be really not very good at that. People that are with us, they’re with us. But we cannot be taken advantage of any longer. I used to watch these deals for years. I’ve been talking about it for years. You know, I’ve been talking about it for 35 years, how our country is being ripped off every which — 30 years ago it was Japan. Then it was something else. Then it was another group, then it was China. China is doing the best job of it, frankly. And it’s just not going to happen, not going to happen.
Reporter: Mr. President, the EU has said that they have offered zero-to-zero tariffs on cars and industrial goods. Is that not enough?
Trump: No, it’s not. The EU has been very tough over the years. It was — I always say it was formed to really do damage to the United States in trade. That’s the reason it was formed. It was formed with all of the countries from Europe, I guess most of them, not all of them, but most of them, and they formed together to create a little bit of a monopoly situation to create a unified force against the United States for trade. So they have NATO, which is largely the same countries, and they took advantage of us dollarwise and militarily until I got there. I was able to get $600 billion from NATO where they paid NATO because most of these nations weren’t even paying. We were paying for NATO. So we’re paying them to guard them militarily, and they’re screwing us on trade. So that’s not a good combination. So now it’s really turned around. It’s the opposite. And the European Union has been very bad to us. They don’t take our cars, like Japan in that sense. They don’t take our agricultural product. They don’t take anything practically. And yet they send millions of cars in a year, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, BMWs. They’re sending millions and millions of cars into the U.S., but we don’t have a car that’s been sold to the European Union. Or other places, but let’s go for the European Union. And it’s not going to be that way. It’s got to be fair and reciprocal. It’s got to be fair. It’s not fair. We have a deficit with the European Union of $350 billion. And it’s going to disappear fast. And one of the reasons and one of the ways that that can disappear easily and quickly is they’re going to have to buy our energy from us because they need it. They’ll have to buy it from us. They can buy it. We can knock off $350 billion in one week. They have to buy and commit to buy a like amount of energy, and we have that. You know, we have more energy than any country in the world. I don’t know if you know that. He knows everything. But the one thing he may not know, we have more energy than any country in the world. We have more of every kind of energy, every form of energy, from oil and gas to coal. And people talk about, I call it beautiful, clean coal. As you know, Germany is opening up a coal plant a week. They tried the windmills, and it didn’t work. They tried all the other solutions, and they were ready to go out of business. Now they’re doing a coal plant a week. China is up to two coal plants. They’re opening two major coal plants every single week in China, all over China. And then we’re not allowed to use coal. Well, we have clean, beautiful coal, more than anybody else. We have oil and gas, more than anyone else. We have the most energy of any country in the world, including Saudi Arabia, including everybody, by a lot. And I took it to No. 1. We were No. 3, and I took it to No. 1 during my administration. And the reason that we were hurt so badly and the reason that we went into such incredible inflation during Biden is energy. It was also their bad spending, but energy because they played around with this incredible thing we had built, this administration had built. And the energy costs went through the roof. And when that went up, everything else followed. Now if you look at what’s happening, you’ve got to see this today. I said we’re going to try to get groceries down, an old-fashioned term but a beautiful term. Eggs. So when I got in, the press went absolutely crazy the first week. They said, “Eggs have quadrupled in price.” I said, “I just got here, tell me about it.” And [Agriculture Secretary] Brooke Rollins and our team did a great job. And eggs are down 79%, and they’re all over the place. And this was a problem that somebody else would have taken a long time to cure. We have energy is down. We have interest rates are down. We have groceries, meaning food, is down. We have everything is down at levels that nobody ever thought possible. Energy looks like it’s going to be in the $2.50-a-gallon range and maybe below that for a car, for gasoline. So we’re really doing amazing. We’re cutting prices. Because prices got so high, people couldn’t live. I mean, the prices for groceries, the prices for standard groceries, standard things, were going through the roof. They couldn’t live. And now those prices are coming down. So call them groceries. That’s down. Interest rates are down. Everything is down. And the interest rates, the beauty there, is when we refinance debt, you know debt has become such a big factor in this country, we’re going to start paying debt off with tariffs and other things. But it’s such a big factor because the interest rates so high. Well now that’s coming way down, so our budget is going to look a lot better because interest costs are way down. And I guess I’ve done that.
Reporter: Many Israelis are watching you now on live show.
Trump: Good.
Reporter: What is your specific way to get the hostages out from the horrific captivity?
Trump: We are trying very hard to get the hostages out. We’re looking at another cease-fire. We’ll see what happens. But we have — we want to get the hostages out. The Israeli people want the hostages out. More than anything, they want the hostages out. This man is working very hard with us to do that. I mean, I don’t know, I hope he’s being appreciated because he’s been a great leader. He’s working very, very hard on the hostages and many other things. And there are plenty of things you have to work on. It’s a tough place in the world, isn’t it?
Netanyahu: I have a good partner.
Trump: You do have a good partner, and so do we. We’re working very hard on the hostages.
Reporter: If you’re going to negotiate a new deal with the Iranians, can you elaborate how it’s going to be more effective than the JCPOA?
Trump: Well, I can’t really say that. I think it would be different and maybe a lot stronger. But they were so happy when we made that first deal because we did get a lot out. You know, I had people right in this office, this beautiful Oval Office, they came in, 10 people, hostages, you know that. I said to them, “So how was it?” And the stories they told me. As an example, I said to them, “Was there any sign of love? You were there, 10 people, only 10, but it’s pretty representative. Did the Hamas show any signs of like help or liking you? Did they weaken you? Did they give you a piece of bread extra? Did they give you a meal on the side like, you know, you think of doing? Like what happened in Germany, what happened elsewhere, people would try and help people that were in unbelievable distress.” They said, “No.” I said, “All of them?” I said, “Did they ever wink at you, like you’ll be OK?” They said, “No, they didn’t do that. They’d slap us.” The hatred is just unbelievable. And the lives. You know, they lived in a pipe — not really a tunnel, it was a pipe — and they always thought they were suffocating. They were going to suffocate. Then they’d open up the pipe, and it was like 3½ feet high. This is, you know, we hear tunnel, that’s bad, but pipes are worse. And the stories I heard were incredible. I just said, “Was there any sign of potential love or affection?” And there were none whatsoever. It was amazing to me. There was nothing like “Here, take this; it’s a little extra meal or something.” They lived like hell. I don’t know. They seemed to be — they were amazing to me because they seemed to be pretty normal. They weren’t scarred. But I guarantee underneath they have to be scarred. And one was there for 356 days. Another was there for about 180 days. You know, a long time. These are people that have been really, really horribly treated. I have never seen anything like it actually. I was very surprised to hear the answer.
Reporter: Mr. President, do you plan to reduce the tariffs that your government put on Israeli goods, 17%?
Trump: On where?
Reporter: On Israeli goods. The 17%.
Trump: Well, we’re talking about a whole new trade — maybe not. Maybe not. Don’t forget, we help Israel a lot. You know, we give Israel $4 billion a year. That’s a lot. My congratulations, by the way. That’s pretty good. But we give Israel billions of dollars a year. Billions. It’s one of the highest of — we give a lot of countries money. You wouldn’t believe if I said we give Afghanistan a lot of money. Did you know that? Because that was a Biden deal, another Biden deal. Not only did he embarrass us with that, but they give them billions of dollars, Afghanistan, right? But, no, we take good care of our friends, but we don’t take care of our enemies. We’re not taking care of our enemies anymore, but we do take care of our friends.
Reporter: Mr. President, to return to Israel. The IDF is fighting again in the Gaza Strip. I myself might be called up in a month. Do you think that’s the way to pressure Hamas to get to a deal? And do you think blocking humanitarian aid is also effective pressure?
Trump: Well, you know how I feel about the Gaza Strip. I think it’s an incredible piece of important real estate. And I think it’s something that we would be involved in. But, you know, having a peace force like the United States there, controlling and owning the Gaza Strip, would be a good thing. Because right now all it is for years and years, all I hear about is killing and Hamas and problems. And if you take the people, the Palestinians, and move them around to different countries, and you have plenty of countries that will do that, and you really have a freedom, a freedom zone, you call it the freedom zone, a free zone, a zone where people aren’t going to be killed every day, that’s a hell of a place. You know what I call it? A great location that nobody wants to live in. Because they really don’t. And when they have good living, real living, where Hamas and all of the problems they have — the level of death on the Gaza Strip is just incredible. And I’ve said it: I don’t understand why Israel ever gave it up. Israel owned it. It wasn’t this man, so I can say it. He wouldn’t have given it up. I know him very well. There’s no way. They took oceanfront property, and they gave it to people for peace. How did that work out? Not good.
Reporter: Is the immigration plan still on the agenda?
Trump: Which immigration plan?
Reporter: From Gaza.
Trump: All it is a concept that I had that I think is good, and now people are copying it. You know, Bibi, you want to help? People are talking about the Trump plan. Gee, why don’t we do that? Would you like to answer that question?
Netanyahu: I think what the president talked about is first of all to give people a choice. Gazans were closed in. In any other place, including in the arenas of battle, I mean, whether it’s Ukraine or Syria or any other place, people could leave. Gaza was the only place where they locked them. We didn’t lock them in. They were locked in. And what is wrong with giving people a choice? Now we’ve been talking, including over lunch, about some countries, I won’t go into them right now, that are saying, you know, if Gazans want to leave, we want to take them in. And I think this is the right thing to do. It’s going to take years to rebuild Gaza. In the meantime, people can have an option. The president has a vision. Countries are responding to that vision. We’re working on it. I hope we’ll have a good news for you.
Trump: People really do love that vision. It’s a long-term vision. But it’s so important as to have that be a safe field because you’re right smack in the middle of the Middle East. You’re right along Israel. It should have never, ever been given away. It shouldn’t have been given away by Israel. I don’t know why they did it. I mean, I do know why. They were promised peace, but that didn’t work out too well. It’s one of the most dangerous piece of land anywhere in the world. Gaza is one of the most dangerous places in the world. So they gave it away for good intention, and it didn’t work out that way. A lot of people like my concept. But, you know, there are other concepts that I like too, and there are some concepts I don’t like. You know what I don’t like? The way it is now because right now it’s a dangerous death trap, Gaza.
Reporter: Thank you, sir. Can you talk a little bit about your potential meeting with Vladimir Putin? Do you still plan to meet with him? Could that happen in Saudi Arabia? And maybe could you elaborate as well on not providing tariffs on Russia?
Trump: The reason we’re not talking about tariffs with Russia is because we’re not doing business essentially with Russia because they’re in a war. And I’m not happy about what’s going on with the bombing because they’re bombing like crazy right now. They’re bombing — I don’t know what’s happening there. That’s not a good situation. So we’re meeting with Russia. We’re meeting with Ukraine. And we’re getting sort of close. But I’m not happy with all the bombing going on in the last week or so. Horrible. It’s a horrible thing. Horrible thing.
Reporter: Can countries negotiate to get below 10%?
Trump: In terms of tariffs?
Reporter: In terms of tariffs, yeah.
Trump: Look, we’ve been ripped off and taken advantage of for 40, 50, 60 years. The reason we got ripped off and the way they did it was tariffs. They would charge tariffs, massive numbers of dollars. And when you look at China, when I took over, it was $507 billion they were making. I call it making. A lot of people say, “Oh, it doesn’t mean anything, having a surplus.” It means a lot. It’s like having a profit or wealth statement. And when I took other, it was $507 billion with China. This was originally, first term. And we were very, very tough on them because they were taking that money and building a military with it. And when Biden came in, he let them get away with murder. He had no idea. I tell you, that man had no idea what was happening. Whether it was the border or China or anything else. He had no idea what was going on. And they went wild. China went wild. And the money they make is ridiculous, OK? It’s just not going to happen. And hopefully we’ll get along with China. If we do, that’s great, and if we don’t, that’s OK too. But we can’t let that continue because that’s an abuse. They abused the poor people that sat in this seat. That poor Biden. He was abused by them. They took advantage of him. And I’m surprised. You know, they have smart people. They were radical-left lunatics, but they’re smart. I’m surprised they’d allow that to happen. But we are going to bring great trade, and we’re going to be fair to other countries.
And I will say this: Virtually every country wants to negotiate. If I didn’t do what I did over the last couple of weeks, you wouldn’t have anybody who wants to negotiate. We would have gone to these countries, “You want to talk?” And they’d be, “Well, we don’t want to talk.” Now they’re coming to us. They’re offering things, like even Bibi, and this is unrelated because this is a different kind of relationship. But he started off our conversation today that he’s cutting all of the tariffs. He’s cutting everything. He’s going to get down to a free base. He’s going to do things that, in all fairness, other countries, if they’d said that, would have never even thought about doing it. Now they’re offering things to us that we would have never even thought of asking them for because they’re experiencing a lot of hurt. And the hurt is that they’ve taken advantage of us, and we finally fought back.
Tariffs will make this country very rich. We’re rich anyway, but we’re rich in a certain way. We have $36 trillion in debt. I want to get rid of it. And we can do it quickly with proper deals. So when countries don’t allow us to sell our product, but we allow them to sell their product, when they charge us massive amounts of money for the privilege of going into their country, those days are over.
Reporter: Thank you, Mr. President. On Iran, two questions please. First, if you can give us more details about where the meeting on Saturday is going to take place.
Trump: I can’t tell you that. I can just tell you there’s a major meeting going on between us and Iran, and that’ll take place on Saturday, and it’s at top level.
Reporter: And second question is a lot of people think that those talks are not going to lead anywhere because the Iranians will never give up their nuclear —
Trump: You may be right. That’s a possibility. That’s a possibility too.
Reporter: If diplomacy fails, is the United States under your leadership ready to take military action to destroy the Iranian nuclear program and remove this threat?
Trump: I think if the talks aren’t successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger, and I hate to say it. Great danger because they can’t have a nuclear weapon. You know, it’s not a complicated formula. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That’s all there is. Can’t have it. Right now we have countries that have nuclear power that shouldn’t have it. But I’m sure we’ll be able to negotiate out of that too as part of this later on down the line. But Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And if the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it’ll be a very bad day for Iran if that’s the case. Yeah.
Reporter: Mr. President, was October 7 the death blow of the two-state solution, and would you consider classifying the Palestinian Authority as a terrorist organization for its continued pay-for-slay terror-financing policy?
Trump: October 7 was a horrible day that some people, they deny it. Now I can’t believe they deny it from the standpoint of belief. They do it because they think it’s good politically. But I’ve seen the tapes. I’ve seen things you don’t want to see. October 7 was a horrible day, and it will go down as one of the really bad days in the history of the world. It was a horrible, horrible thing that happened. And they grabbed some of these people. I’ll give you an example. When I was with the 10 hostages a few weeks ago, I said, “So how many are there?” Fifty-nine. I said, “Oh, so 59. So we can get 59.” They sort of knew the territory pretty good, and I said, “How are they doing?” They said, “Well, only 24 are living. The rest are dead.” And these are young people largely. Young people don’t die. You know, young people have an amazing ability to live. They can live through horrible things, but these are young people. And when they said that 24 are living, and the rest are dead. And you know I’ve had parents come up, Israeli parents largely. We have some Americans, or we had. I guess we have one left, Alex [Edan Alexander]. We have the one left. But I’ve had Israeli parents come up to me at events and say, “My son is there.” I said, “Well, how’s he doing?” “Well, he’s dead, but would you do me the biggest favor ever? Could you bring his body back home?” They talked about a young dead boy and a young dead girl like they were living. And that could have something to do with religion. That could have something to do with — I guess maybe any parent would be, but I was surprised. They said, “Sir, my son is dead. It is just as important to bring that body back home” — I asked that question — “as if he were alive.” So you have a lot of them dead, and we’ll be able to bring them back, but it’s a horrible thing that’s happened. These are largely young people, some old ones too, frankly, and those people have lived in hell. When they came off, the second group that came out, they looked like they just got out of a concentration camp. They looked exactly like the pictures that I’ve seen from the 1940s, the concentration camps. And then they got a little bit better, you know, but that second group, those people came out, and I said, “This is unbelievable. We’re going back into a chapter in history that is one of the worst ever.” It’s really very bad. OK. …
Reporter: Turkey claims it will stabilize the situation in Syria. Israel doesn’t want Turkey to influence Syria. What do you think? Do you think Turkey’s influence in Syria can actually make it a better, more peaceful country, or vice versa?
Trump: Well, I have great relations with a man named Erdogan. Have you heard of him? And I happen to like him, and he likes me. And I know the press will get very angry: “He likes Erdogan.” But I do, and he likes me. And we’ve never had a problem, and we’ve gone through a lot, and we’ve never had a problem. We always gotten, as you remember, we got our minister back from Turkey. You remember that. And this was a big deal at the time, and we got him back. And I told the prime minister, I said, “Just, Bibi, if you have a problem with Turkey, I really think I’m going to be able to work it out. You know, I have a very, very good relationship with Turkey and with their leader, and I think we’ll be able to work it out.” So I hope that’s not going to be a problem. I don’t think it will be a problem. Now, with that being said, I believe it was Turkey, and I said that to him, I said it, I said, “Congratulations, you’ve done what nobody has been able to do in 2,000 years. You’ve taken over Syria.” With different names, but same thing. I said, “You’ve taken it over.” He’s taken it over through surrogates. He goes, “No, no, no, no, no, no, it was not me.” I said, “It was you, but that’s OK. You don’t have to say.” “Well, sort of, maybe it was me. OK.” But what he did, look, he’s a tough guy, and he’s very smart. And he did something that nobody was able to do. You know, you’ve got to hand it to him. Any problem that you have with Turkey, I think I can solve. I mean, as long as you’re reasonable. You have to be reasonable. We have to be reasonable.
Thank you very much, everybody.