in-town report #4 — Quotes (Bessent/Leavitt)

Some quotes from Sec. Bessent and Press Secretary Leavitt at the sticks below. Please check against official transcripts and video, as always:

BESSENT: "...The successful negotiating strategy that President Trump implemented a week ago today. It has brought more than 75 countries forward to negotiate. It took great courage, great courage for him to stay the course until this moment, and it ended up here. As I told everyone a week ago in this very spot, 'Do not retaliate, and you will be rewarded.' So every country in the world wants to come and negotiate. We are willing to hear you. We're going to go down to a 10 percent baseline tariff we have for them, and China will be raised to 125 [percent]."

BESSENT was asked if Canada and Mexico would be included in the pause/reduction to 10 percent: "Yes."

QUESTION: Is this now all about China?

BESSENT: "Well, it's about bad actors. And what we see is some of the very early countries are China's neighbors that we're going to see. I've seen Vietnam today. Japan's in front [inaudible], South Korea, India. So we will see. And as I've repeatedly said, and President Trump has been saying in four years, China is the most imbalanced economy in the history of the modern world, and they are the biggest source of the US trade problems. And indeed they are a problem for the rest of the world..."

KAROLINE LEAVITT: "Recall, if I could, just add to what the secretary said, many of you in the media clearly missed the 'art of the deal,' you clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here. You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China, when, in fact, we've seen the opposite effect. The entire world is calling the United States of America not China, because they need our markets. They need our consumers, and they need this president in the Oval Office to talk to them, and that's exactly why more than 75 countries have called because the United States of America is the best place in the world to do business. And as the president has shown great courage, as the secretary has said, in choosing to retaliate against China even higher."

BESSENT ON TIMING & POTUS ROLE: "It is going to take some time, and President Trump wants to be personally involved, so that's why we're hitting the 90 day plan. ... It's all the president's decision."

BESSENT ON TRADE OR MORE THAN TRADE NEGOTIATIONS: "Well, these are trade negotiations, but if countries want to come and offer other things, I talked about yesterday that we are thinking about, a big LNG project in Alaska, that Korea, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, are interested in financing and taking a substantial portion of [inaudible]. ... So everything's on the table."

BESSENT ON CHINA'S ACTIONS: "And we actually had quite a 10-year auction today. And all this again, this was driven by the president's strategy. He and I had a long [inaudible] on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along. And you might even say that he goated China into a bad position. They responded. They have shown themselves to the world to be the bad actor."

**

John T. Bennett

White House Correspondent & Editor-at-Large

Roll Call & CQ | FiscalNote publications

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@bennettjohnt