July 17, 2025 - Epoch Times
07:48
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| I want to talk about tariffs and specifically recently President Trump has decided that he wants to see a peace deal, Russia-Ukraine, within 50 days. | |
| And he's basically said if that deal isn't reached in 50 days, 100% secondary tariff on Russia. | |
| What do you think about that? | |
| I love it. | |
| I mean, this is the way President Trump operates, and that's why I admire him so very much. | |
| He's a winner. | |
| He knows how to negotiate. | |
| Sanctions against Russia. | |
| Biden tried that. | |
| Hey, they rose above that and had no problems. | |
| I mean, Russia basically is financing that war against Ukraine with their oil and gas money. | |
| If that's the forceful hand we need to do to put pressure on the Russians to get to the negotiating table with Ukraine, then I support the president in that. | |
| You know, we've been in this war for a long time. | |
| We've been supporting the Ukrainians. | |
| And I think the question is, what does victory look like for the United States? | |
| What is the path to peace? | |
| How do we end this war? | |
| We shouldn't call them tariffs because that sounds like this big, evil word. | |
| A tariff is a sales tax on foreign goods. | |
| And Americans generally believe in sales taxes. | |
| I think every state has them. | |
| And all it is is saying we're going to charge a higher sales tax on a good from another country. | |
| Frankly, for the first hundred and some odd years of our country, it was sales taxes on foreign goods that largely funded the country. | |
| And then we introduced the income tax, which has all kinds of negative effects. | |
| Frankly, I've been thinking about the idea of should we abolish the income tax and replace it with sales tax on foreign goods? | |
| Think about what that would do for our economy. | |
| Think how that would supercharge the United States. | |
| But what about the use of tariffs as a tool of diplomacy specifically? | |
| I'll give you an example. | |
| You know, it's been described credibly, I think, a couple of ways. | |
| One way is that the U.S. or the president is looking to have other countries choose between the U.S. defense and trade umbrella and the equivalent of communist China or as a way of maybe isolating communist China. | |
| Your thoughts? | |
| Well, China is so big economically that it is going to be a challenge to isolate. | |
| But making sure that we enter into enough beneficial trade agreements with other countries, particularly in the Pacific region, we are going to be able to put them at least back on their heels. | |
| I just did a trade trip with the Natural Resource Committee to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. | |
| And I can assure you they want to turn to America. | |
| They want to turn our direction, and they want to move away from and not be dependent upon China. | |
| We've got to get independent from China. | |
| There's no way we ought to have any of our supplies for our airlines, for our vessels, get totally weaned off China. | |
| And it's easier said than done. | |
| TikTok, as an example. | |
| Why is that hard? | |
| And I realize the young people use it here, but could we ever have an American TikTok in China? | |
| No, it wouldn't exist. | |
| This is an administration that recognizes what we have there with China and recognizes that we've got to be firm, that we've got to be strong, and we've got to be careful to not let them get any inroads. | |
| So I don't doubt that when he puts these tariffs in place, he's putting people in a position of having to choose, are you with us or are you not? | |
| We have this incredible asset, which is our economy and our demand for goods. | |
| We're a relatively small percentage of the world's population, but we buy a relatively large percentage of the stuff. | |
| And we're telling these other countries, if they want access to our markets, that they have to do things certain ways. | |
| Our top 20 to 25 trading partners would be people that are our allies today. | |
| And with some continued friendly support or friendly pressure from our president, I think we will end up with trade negotiations and trade policy that are much more reciprocal from people that are our allies today. | |
| China, when they come with gifts, bearing gifts, there's always strings attached. | |
| Our allies and our friends and people that even we're not that close to need to realize going into these deals with China with their eyes wide open, there will be unintended consequences that are not going to be good. | |
| Epoch Times was actually founded by Chinese Americans. | |
| You may be aware of that by Felungong practitioners. | |
| In recent years, we've learned that the CCP has actually extended its long arm into America even further to basically target the things that Felungong practitioners do. | |
| Like for example, the Epoch Times and the Shen Yun dance performance, which maybe you're familiar with. | |
| What is your reaction to that kind of activity, the long arm of the CCP reaching into America? | |
| They need to prosecute these people. | |
| They need to get them out of our country. | |
| There are CCP police departments around the United States. | |
| That is inexcusable that we would have any country attempt assassinations or coercion of some form or fashion because people are speaking out and exercising their First Amendment rights. | |
| Our government needs to absolutely stop that. | |
| I think it's important to expose it and let folks know that it is going on and that they become very aware of it. | |
| That's the most important thing we can do in the United States is to educate and make people aware. | |
| This is one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. | |
| You know, all of the constitutional liberties that we oftentimes take for granted, the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, have no root in China. | |
| I mean, it is a completely different human rights paradigm. | |
| My heart goes out to the Fal Gong, people who are peaceful. | |
| We know for certain now that the CCP is running a forced organ harvesting operation that is beyond human comprehension. | |
| To have people in prison, objectors, prisoners of conscience, political prisoners, and this regime has got their blood types, their tissue types, and somebody orders An argon, and they go in there and force that person to give up an argon, and he loses his life. | |
| It is beyond anything I can even imagine. | |
| And it's a billions and billions of dollar operation. | |
| These are the people we're dealing with. | |
| The Communist Party of China, not the Chinese people, believes it is at war with us. | |
| We somehow don't believe we are at war with them. | |
| Part of the reason we didn't hold China accountable for COVID is it's hard to hold accountable the country that you're buying all your stuff from. | |
| We should not depend on China for prescription drugs. | |
| We should not depend on China for anything we need as a country in order to survive. | |
| We need to have China not having so much influence in our universities, in our media, in our social media and things. | |
| And so many people are just willing to fall victim towards that Chinese manipulation. | |
| People are believing a lot of lies that helps the Chinese Communist Party to advance its cause and undermine American sovereignty, American production, American strength. | |
| Look, I'm banned from ever going to China, which I'm proud of. | |
| Communist China has its tentacles in everything we do here in America. | |
| They are preparing themselves. | |
| They're thinking a thousand years out, and we're thinking two years, how do I get back to Congress? | |
| That's the problem. |
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