| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Jobs and he's saving that community. | |
| And that's the intention of the steel tariffs, which he will sign later this afternoon. | ||
| Thank you very much, everyone. | ||
| We'll see you later. | ||
| C-SPAN wants you, our viewers, to have a voice in the White House briefing room. | ||
| If you have a question for Press Secretary Caroline Levitt, then send us an email to whQuestions at c-span.org. | ||
| Be sure to include your first name and city and state, and you might hear your question asked at the next briefing. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Welcome to today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll start with Axios with this headline: China accuses the U.S. of violating trade truce, vows forceful measures. | ||
| The article says this. | ||
| It's the latest sign of deteriorating relations between the two nations since their Switzerland meeting last month led to a deal to lower tariffs on each other for 90 days while they negotiated on trade. | ||
| President Trump accused Beijing on Friday of violating the agreement, one day after Treasury Secretary Scott Besant described negotiations as a bit stalled. | ||
| And here is that Truth Social post where this is from last Friday that prompted this response by China. | ||
| The president says this: Two weeks ago, China was in grave economic danger. | ||
| The very high tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to trade into the United States marketplace, which is by far number one in the world. | ||
| We went in effect cold turkey with China, and it was devastating for them. | ||
| Many factories closed, and there was, to put it mildly, civil unrest. | ||
| I saw what was happening and didn't like it for them, not for us. | ||
| I made a fast deal with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation. | ||
| I didn't want to see that happen because of this deal. | ||
| Everything quickly stabilized, and China got back to business as usual. | ||
| Everybody was happy. | ||
| That is the good news. | ||
| The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, all caps, has totally violated its agreement with us. | ||
| So much for being Mr. Nice Guy. | ||
| Well, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant was interviewed on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, and this is what he said. | ||
| I'm confident that when President Trump and Party Chairman Xi have a call, that this will be ironed out. | ||
| So, but the fact that they are withholding some of the products that they agreed to release during our agreement, maybe it's a glitch in the Chinese system. | ||
| Maybe it's intentional. | ||
| We'll see after the president speaks with party chairman. | ||
| That's critical minerals, rare earths. | ||
| Is that what you're talking about? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So the president has said a few times that he was going to speak to President Xi, but he hasn't since before the inauguration. | ||
| Beijing keeps denying that there was any contact. | ||
| Do you have anything scheduled? | ||
| I believe we'll see something very soon, Margaret. | ||
| That was the Treasury Secretary from Sunday. | ||
| We're talking about the administration's tariff strategy, the trade strategy. | ||
| What are your thoughts on that? | ||
| Are you confident that this is going to work out? | ||
| Have you seen any impacts to yourself personally? | ||
| Let's start with Joe, who's calling us from Forney, Texas. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, I don't have any confidence in our president. | |
| I think he's playing games with the American people and have people worry a lot. | ||
| He's not going to do anything with Xi. | ||
| Because he's a dictator and that's what he wants to be. | ||
| Now, I got to make one more comment. | ||
| If you think Donald Trump is coming out of the White House and after his four years, you got to know Pink. | ||
| He's in there for one reason. | ||
| And he's probably bringing all the people that's loyal to him into his protest. | ||
| Got it, Joe. | ||
| And this is Jamie Diamond, who is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, who was talking on Fox Business about China. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| What I mean by that, I'm not afraid of them is that, Joe, China, first of all, they're not afraid of us either. | ||
| And, you know, going over there, you get the distinct impression that they are doing their thing. | ||
| They're putting a lot of money into AI, cars, robotics. | ||
| They're going to be 30 or 40% of new pharmaceuticals, sometime shortly. | ||
| They're going their way, you know, and but they have weaknesses. | ||
| They still have a lot of poverty. | ||
| They have a very tough neighborhood. | ||
| You know, a lot of their neighbors are rearming. | ||
| They have to deal with us. | ||
| We're still, you know, the most prosperous economy on the planet. | ||
| But my point, the thing I'm, I'm not afraid of them. | ||
| I'm afraid that we don't get our own act together internally. | ||
| If America just does our things right, deregulation, permitting, education, pro-business, grow the economy, help the lower-income folks by growing the economy, fixing immigration, allowing, eventually allowing good immigration in, we'll be in great shape. | ||
| We'll be the preeminent military and economy 30 or 40 years from now. | ||
| If we're not, the world would be a very different world than what we live in today. | ||
| That was on Fox Business, and this is CNBC about consumer confidence for May was much stronger than expected on optimism for trade deals. | ||
| It says that consumer optimism got a much-needed boost in May on hopes for trade peace between the U.S. and China. | ||
| According to a survey, the conference board's consumer confidence index leaped to 98.0, a 12.3 point increase from April, and much better than the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 86.0. | ||
| That is CNBC. | ||
| And here is Michael in Smithfield, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Michael, how are you doing? | ||
|
unidentified
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Hanging in here as usual. | |
| I mean, I've got a credit card or two, thank God. | ||
| So, what do you think of the administration's tariff strategy? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, that's one reason why I didn't want to go back to what we were doing eight years ago, but it has worked. | |
| And there has been some people that ride away as far as countries. | ||
| What I mean by people is countries. | ||
| There were several countries right away that publicly admitted that they wanted to talk to us and try to work things out to where there was not such a deficit in the trade, you know. | ||
| And so I don't know about China. | ||
| You know, China's never going to be honest to any press because they suffocate any liberty and freedom of the press. | ||
| So if the White House is saying that China is working toward these goals that they're releasing to the media, you know, that the White House is informing the media these things. | ||
| And so one has to just have to take it with a grain of salt and at the same time just say, look, maybe it is true. | ||
| Because China would never admit anything that they're going to work with a capitalist country. | ||
| You know, it's all about respect and honor. | ||
| And I think you have to give some of these people respect if you don't. | ||
| And once again, people meaning countries. | ||
| And when you're talking countries, that could be a president that's actually duly voted in, or it could be someone that is a communist country where they're more likely or a dictator. | ||
| All right, Michael. | ||
| Here's Mary in Las Vegas, a Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, that last caller, you know, you want to talk about media? | |
| Our White House is going after the media big time. | ||
| PBS, NPR, Voice of America, trying to get law firms on their side to muzzle up the truth. | ||
| The tariff plan is a disaster. | ||
| It's going to wreck our economy. | ||
| Prices are already going up. | ||
| Tariff is a tax, and the corporations are going to pass the cost on to the American consumer, and those prices are not going to come back down. | ||
| Listen to economists, not the ones in Trump's White House, because they don't have advanced degrees in economics. | ||
| Just listen, watch the stock channel. | ||
| It's a disaster. | ||
| Mary, you said that prices have already gone up. | ||
| What have you seen personally? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I watched paper towels go up 50 cents from a dollar. | |
| I've watched, I saw grapes the other day for $9.99 a pound. | ||
| Eggs have come down a little, but not that much. | ||
| Meat is outrageous. | ||
| Ground meat on sale is $8 a pound. | ||
| It is not cheap out there. | ||
| That's where all my money's going. | ||
| They say, economists say that it's going to cost the average taxpayer another $3,800 a year for this pain that we're supposed to be feeling. | ||
| While the president's out there gaining him and his family making deals with golf courses in the Middle East and Trump towers and meme coins and selling crazy stuff like shoes. | ||
| He's a good salesman. | ||
| All right, Mary. | ||
| And here is the New York Post with this article. | ||
| It says, Walmart quietly jacks up prices despite Trump's demand for the retailer to, quote, eat the tariffs. | ||
| It says that Walmart has quietly been hiking prices on items ranging from toys to office supplies, with some markups reportedly climbing more than 100% despite President Trump's demand for retailers to eat the tariffs. | ||
| Photos circulating online, particularly on the Walmart subreddit, have documented the dramatic price hikes since the White House imposed a 145% tariff on imports from China in early April before lowering the levy to 30% last month. | ||
| The price of toys, the bulk of which are made in China, were particularly impacted. | ||
| And there's a picture here of a fishing reel on sale at Walmart for $83.26. | ||
| That's what it says underneath here, the picture. | ||
| And it talks about some of the prices. | ||
| This is a Jurassic World T-Rex rose from $39 on April 27th to 55, an increase of nearly 38%. | ||
| And a babyborn doll jumped from $34.97 in March to $49.97 in May, which is roughly 43% rise. | ||
| That's at the New York Post if you'd like to see more on that. | ||
| And here is Perry in South Dakota, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Perry. | ||
| Good morning, and thank you for C-SPAN. |