TRANSCRIPT

                         April 06, 2025

                          NEWS PROGRAM

                                

 WHITE HOUSE SENIOR COUNSELOR FOR TRADE AND MANUFACTURING PETER
                               NAVARRO

                                

                                

                                

  WHITE HOUSE SENIOR COUNSELOR FOR TRADE AND MANUFACTURING PETER
          NAVARRO IS INTERVIEWED ON SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES

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     WHITE HOUSE SENIOR COUNSELOR FOR TRADE AND MANUFACTURING PETER
     NAVARRO IS INTERVIEWED ON SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES

     APRIL 6, 2025

     SPEAKERS:
     WHITE HOUSE SENIOR COUNSELOR FOR TRADE AND MANUFACTURING PETER
     NAVARRO

     MARIA BARTIROMO, HOST SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES

JACKIE DEANGELIS, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: And we begin this Sunday morning with the long-term economic uncertainty over President Trump's decision to issue the largest tariff increase in nearly a century.

The Dow lost nearly 4,000 points, while the Nasdaq shed more than 2,000 points after President Trump announced on Wednesday sweeping new tariffs across the board of at least 10 percent, with additional tariffs on some 60 countries, and trading blocks, as the U.S. trade deficit reached a record $1.2 trillion last year.

In an exclusive interview last month, Maria questioned President Trump about the lack of clarity surrounding tariffs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Can you give us a sense of whether or not we are going to get clarity for the business community?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I think so.

But the tariffs could go up as time goes by. And they may go up. And I don't know if it's predictability. I think that...

BARTIROMO: So that's not clarity.

TRUMP: No, I think they say that. You know, it sounds good to say.

But, for years, the globalists, the big globalists have been ripping off the United States. They have been taking money away from the United States. And all we're doing is getting some of it back. And we're going to treat our country fairly. This country has been ripped off from every nation in the world, every company outside in the world.

We have been ripped off at levels never seen before. And all we're going to do is get it back.

BARTIROMO: Are you expecting a recession this year?

TRUMP: I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we're doing is very big. We're bringing wealth.

BARTIROMO: Before you came into the Oval Office the first time, you were a very successful businessman, very successful real estate executive. And a lot of people said, oh, this is the business president. This is it. He's watching the stock market. He knows all about -- he doesn't want the market to go down.

And now we have got tariffs, and the market has been going down.

TRUMP: Well, not much, I mean, in all fairness, not much.

BARTIROMO: You said, look, we're going to have a disruption, but we're OK with that. Is that what you meant? The stock market going down was the disruption?

What other disruption were you alluding to?

TRUMP: It could be a little disruption.

Look, what I have to do is build a strong country. You can't really watch the stock market. If you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective. We have a quarter. We go by quarters.

BARTIROMO: That's true.

TRUMP: And you can't go by that. You have to do what's right. What we're doing is, we're building a tremendous foundation for the future, tremendous foundation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEANGELIS: And one of the largest tariffs that President Trump imposed was on China, 34 percent, adding to the additional 20 percent in tariffs that he already issued earlier in the year, for a total of at least 54 percent on imported goods from China.

Now, China immediately responding on Friday, issuing its own 34 percent tariff on American goods imported into the communist nation. Last year, the U.S. trade deficit with China was $295 billion, the largest with any nation, and a nearly 6 percent increase from the year before.

Other major U.S. trading partners issued additional tariffs by the president included the European Union 20 percent, Vietnam at 46 percent, Taiwan 32 percent, Japan 24 percent, India 26 percent, South Korea at 25 percent, and Thailand at 36 percent.

White House adviser Elon Musk speaking to Italy's League Party says he hopes to see zero tariffs between the United States and the European Union soon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELON MUSK, DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY: And I'm hopeful, for example, with the tariffs, that, at the end of the day, I hope it is agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally, in my view, to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America.

And that would be my -- that's what I hope occurs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEANGELIS: Joining me now in this "Sunday Morning Futures" exclusive on the long-term economic impact tariffs will have on America is White House senior counselor on trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro.

It's great to have you this morning.

PETER NAVARRO, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICE TRADE AND

MANUFACTURING ADVISER: Pleased to be with you, Jackie.

DEANGELIS: We're so looking forward to hear your perspective and to get some clarity, because obviously Wall Street took a hit last week. The S&P 500 was down 9 percent, although it's still flat from where it was last year, Peter.

Let's talk about the markets, the uncertainty out there, and the volatility. Do you expect it to continue? Because everybody keeps asking me if I think the market -- where I think the market's going to open on Monday.

NAVARRO: Sure.

The first rule, particularly for the smaller investors out there, you can't lose money unless you sell. And right now the smart strategy is not to panic. Just stay in, because we are going to have the biggest boom in the stock market we have ever seen under the Trump policies.

We will find a bottom in this market quickly. We will hit 50,000 on the Dow easily by the end of this term. And I have credibility on this. Now, remember, Jackie, the day after the election in 2016, I went on another network before the market opened. Futures were headed dead red down.

And I talked about how tax cuts and deregulation and fair trade and strategic energy dominance would actually give us a boom. I said we'd hit 25,000 on the Dow. And all of that came true, when we hit 25,000 easily and then some -- 50,000 on the Dow. More importantly, we're going to have a broad based recovery in the S&P 500.

I don't know if you know this, Jackie, but most of the gains in the S&P 500 in the Biden years were just the Magnificent Seven A.I.-type stocks. And about 80 percent of the S&P 500 basically went nowhere. They had little gains, stagnated.

What we're going to have this time is a very broad-based S&P 500 recovery. It's going to be led by the companies that manufacture here in America. And people should just sit tight, let that market find its bottom, don't get shook out by the panic in the media. And life is going to be beautiful under Donald John Trump.

And that's where we're headed.

DEANGELIS: OK, and let's talk a little bit about the broader plan, because I think that's really important here.

Tariffs are just a piece of it. They're a piece of it to generate revenue. But what the president wants to do is, he wants to cut spending. He wants to slash spending. That's what DOGE is for. He's looking at deregulation. He's looking at cutting taxes. He's looking at bringing our overall revenue up and our deficit down.

He wants to lower energy prices. Peter, at the end of the day, all of these things combined are very pro-business, they're very pro-consumer, and they're pro-growth.

NAVARRO: Yes. Yes.

And let's not forget, every economic report that's been coming out in the last month has been pushing us towards expansion and strength. And we just had a blowout jobs number on Friday, 228,000 jobs. That was 50 percent higher than was predicted. So, again, there's cognitive dissonance between what the media is saying, wanted to push us into recession, and what's actually happening.

I think you're right, Jackie, that the tariff and trade policy is just one chapter in a book that contains all these other beautiful things that we're going to do. If you just take, for example, the oil prices, oil prices were a dollar higher during the Biden years. For a commuting, working family, that's about $1,000 worth of gas prices they had to pay. We're going to get that back for them.

These tariff revenues, by the way, Jackie, $600 billion, $700 billion they are going to raise a year, $6 trillion to $7 trillion over the 10-year period. They're going to help pay for the tax cuts. I will tell you this, Jackie. Every single dollar that comes in, in tariff revenues that we take from the foreigners who have been cheating us are going to go right to the American public in terms of tax cuts and debt reduction.

And that's going to be a good thing. And let's talk, Jackie. I think we need American people to understand, and I think many of them do, why we have to do what we're doing, a $1.2 trillion trade deficit. We have exported $18 billion worth of our wealth since China joined the WTO in 2001 by running these trade deficits.

And we have given away our houses, our office buildings, our food supply, our farmland. That's got to stop. It's threatening our economic prosperity, national security. And the reality here, the reality here is that institutionally the international trade system is designed to cheat us.

They have systematically higher tariffs on us, but, more importantly and far more importantly, it's the non-tariff cheating. It's the VAT taxes. It's the currency manipulation, the dumping, the export subsidies, the fake standards that keep our agricultural products out and keep our cars out of Japan. It's all these things that these foreign countries do that are designed explicitly to cheat us and are sanctioned by the World Trade Organization.

So, President Trump says no more, no mas, ain't happening on his watch.

DEANGELIS: Yes.

NAVARRO: And that's where we're headed. We're heading towards a strong America that makes things again.

DEANGELIS: So what you're talking about here at home is a reindustrialization.

NAVARRO: Yes.

DEANGELIS: You're talking about reprivatization, which is crucial and essential not only to our future, but also to national security.

When you bring up the non-tariff barriers, there was a lot of conversation about how the reciprocal tariff formula was calculated, and you mentioned those non-tariff barriers were taken into account.

NAVARRO: Sure.

DEANGELIS: So you have got a country like China now that's coming back and saying we're going to impose a reciprocal tariff.

But you have got other countries, for example, Vietnam...

NAVARRO: Yes.

DEANGELIS: ... coming and saying, we're going to take our tariff down to zero.

Everybody wants to know what the president is going to do. Is he going to take Vietnam's tariff down to zero? Or, because of those non-tariff barriers, does something stay on?

NAVARRO: Jackie, I'm so glad you asked that question, because Vietnam is the poster child for the non-tariff cheating.

Let me walk you through that. We run about $123 billion trade deficit with Vietnam. If you simply lowered our tariffs and they lowered our tariffs to zero, we'd still run about $120 billion trade deficit with Vietnam.

And the problem is all of the non-tariff cheating that they do. And let me walk you through some of the things they do. The first, biggest problem is that Vietnam is essentially a colony of communist China. China uses Vietnam to transship to evade the tariffs. How does that work?

Vietnam sells us $15 for every $1 we sell them. And about $5 is just Chinese product that comes into Vietnam. They slap a made-in-Vietnam label on it and they send it here to evade the tariffs. But Vietnam is also the biggest dumper and biggest use of export subsidies. I don't know if you saw the clip of that beautiful Louisiana shrimp guy saying, hey, God bless Donald Trump for protecting us.

You know who he was protecting him from? Vietnam. And we know that Vietnam dumps stuff, they do export subsidies because, at the Department of Commerce, that's the one that slaps on the anti-dumping countervailing duties. So they do that.

And then they have the VAT tax. They have a 10 percent VAT tax. They use some of those phony standards. And the sum and substance of all this, Jackie, it's like every country around the world cheats us. But it's like fingerprints. They all do it in different ways.

But it all comes down to the non-tariff cheating. And it was interesting to hear Elon Musk at the beginning talk about a zero tariff zone with Europe.

DEANGELIS: Yes.

NAVARRO: He doesn't understand that. And the thing that's, I think, important about Elon to understand, he sells cars. That's what he does.

And if you look, for example, at the Tesla factories in Texas, they're assembly plants, and they get a lot of their content from China, Mexico, Japan, and Taiwan and elsewhere. What President Trump wants to do is turn Detroit back into Detroit, instead of having Detroit and Mexico now like they have it.

DEANGELIS: So...

NAVARRO: And the guy who -- Brian at that liberation day ceremony almost stole the show from the boss, the UAW worker.

DEANGELIS: Yes.

NAVARRO: He pointed to all those empty factories in Detroit that can be rapidly filled up. We got to make -- we can't just be an assembly nation assembling cars in Spartanburg, BMWs with German engines from Bavaria. We can't do that anymore.

DEANGELIS: We need to manufacture and we need to assemble.

So, if I can just circle back to Vietnam...

NAVARRO: Sure.

DEANGELIS: ... then does that mean the tariff stays?

NAVARRO: Yes, I mean, look -- look, here's the thing.

This is not a negotiation. This is a national emergency based on a trade deficit that's gotten out of control because of cheating. We're always listen -- we're always willing to listen.

DEANGELIS: Yes.

NAVARRO: That's what Donald Trump does best.

But I want to just say to the world here, if you want to come and talk to us, don't say you want to lower their tariffs and be done with it. It's the non-tariff cheating. Stop manipulating your currency. Stop dumping stuff in.

Europe, take your 19 percent VAT tax down to zero. Don't put these fake agricultural standards to keep out our pork and our dairy and our chickens. And, Vietnam, don't dump shrimp into our markets and put the good people of Louisiana on our coast out of work.

This is what people have to understand. It's the non-tariff cheating that matters the most. And we want to -- and when they want to talk to us, come talk to us about that.

DEANGELIS: OK.

Can we go back to Elon Musk for a second? Because I'm glad that you brought that up.

NAVARRO: Sure. Sure.

DEANGELIS: He also took a shot at you personally on X. And he's going against the administration with respect to the tariff policy.

The president has said in the coming months he may leave the administration. Peter, is there a rift internally?

NAVARRO: No, I mean, look, Elon -- look, Elon, when he's in his DOGE line, is great.

But we understand what's going on here. We just have to understand. Elon sells cars. And he's in Texas assembling cars that have big parts of that car from Mexico, China. The batteries come from Japan or China. The electronics come from Taiwan. And he's simply protecting his own interests, as any businessperson would do.

We're more concerned about Detroit building Cadillacs with American engines. And that's what this is all about. So it's fine. There's no rift here. I -- look, Elon, he's got X. He's got a big microphone. We don't mind him saying whatever he wants.

But just the American people need to understand that we understand what that's all about.

DEANGELIS: Right.

NAVARRO: And it's fine. It's fine.

DEANGELIS: OK, let's go to autos, because that's another issue. And you were bringing it up a couple of times.

The CEO of Ford said on FOX News that the auto CEOs are talking to the administration. Obviously, American companies do assembly here, but they still import.

NAVARRO: Yes.

DEANGELIS: And they do assembly elsewhere, but also import the parts.

And he said the concern on their side is to keep the price of the car down. And that's the concern for the American consumer as well. He said he's having conversations with the administration about that. How are the two sides going to work together to ensure that the American people aren't paying more for American-made cars? Those parts are really crucial here.

NAVARRO: Well, we're working beautifully with industry on all this.

If you read carefully about what we have done, there's a contingent in the whole agreement where we're waiting in terms of tariffing the parts until we get some of that supply chain from the USMCA zone. So we're doing things like that.

But I will tell you this. Stellantis has no business laying off 900 UAW members for two months. That's the kind of thing that's irresponsible, and they shouldn't be doing that. What they should be focusing on is getting those auto parts factories that have dust and cobwebs in them ramped back up and boosting up their capacity utilization.

And one of the problems with Stellantis -- and let's be honest, it used to be Chrysler, used to be one of the Big Three. But it's owned by Fiat and it gets 70 percent of its engines for some of its models from where? Italy.

DEANGELIS: Yes.

NAVARRO: That's not acceptable. I tell you why, Jackie.

Look, if we don't have a solid auto industry when we have problems in the world, we're going to be speaking some other language. I mean, if we didn't have the auto factories in Detroit during World War II, we'd be speaking German east of the Continental Divine and Japanese west. It was -- we won that war with our military might. And we have to defend ourselves. We have to defend our jobs.

And we can manufacture again. This whole idea that we can't be a manufacturing nation...

DEANGELIS: Yes.

NAVARRO: ... the only reason why we're not, Jackie, is because the world cheats us.

DEANGELIS: Yes. And, listen, we innovate here.

NAVARRO: The only reason is because the world cheats us.

DEANGELIS: We come up with great technological advances, but we need to bring that manufacturing back. We need to make ships here. We need to make automobiles here. We need to make our medicine here, so that our adversaries essentially don't put us in a corner.

I mean, I totally understand that.

NAVARRO: Yes.

DEANGELIS: The flip side of the auto issue, for example, this news that Jaguar Land Rover is going to suspend shipments or they're going to pause them in April, they're saying they want to develop their mid- to long-term plans.

And I'm thinking to myself, because of an attractive corporate tax rate that President Trump is putting out there for companies...

NAVARRO: Yes.

DEANGELIS: ... could you see companies like this say, you know what, it makes more sense for us to pay lower tax and manufacture in America?

NAVARRO: Oh, they're going to flock in here, Jackie.

And, by the way, when I said earlier that every tariff dollar that we raise is going to come back to the American people, one of the ways it's going to come back is with a deduction for Americans who buy American cars. That's going to be a big deduction for that.

And then expensing, we're going to have 100 percent expensing for companies that come in to manufacture here in America. So, let Jaguar and whatever think about what they want to do, but the ones who get here the soonest are the ones who are going to make the highest profits and the ones who are going to help propel the S&P 500 to record highs.

DEANGELIS: All right, we will be watching, and we hope to have more conversations with you, sir.

NAVARRO: Good to be with you today, Jackie.

DEANGELIS: White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro, thank you so much.

NAVARRO: Bye-bye.

END