Tariffs are just the latest way in which the Trump Administration has been thinking outside the box to address America's biggest issues. 88% of the money in the stock market is owned by the top 10%. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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If you want to be a part of the program, it's been a volatile day on Wall Street.
What's the latest, Linda?
I can pull it up here on my phone because I am, you know, capable of doing uh more than one thing at a time.
All right, Dowd Jones, right now, today it's been up and down 464.
Down 464.
Yeah, okay.
A minute ago it was down 128.
Earlier in the day, it was down like 2300.
It's been blowing out of uh, you know, up and down and everywhere, and everyone in the stock market's freaking out.
Let me just say a couple of things about this.
And the first thing I want to start with is an understanding, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent made this point is 88% of the stock market is owned by the wealthiest 10% of Americans.
After four years of Biden and Harris, we have 50% of Americans have debt.
They have credit card bills, they rent their homes, they have auto loans.
And if you look at what where President Trump is on this, he's looking out for American farmers.
He's looking out for American automakers, he's looking out for American ranchers, he's looking out for American manufacturers, and he is betting, he's all is also thinking long-term in terms of national security here.
This runs a lot deeper than what this the surface analysis you're getting from these morons that are on these, you know, on these cable channels that just freak out at the very site or the ver anything that Donald Trump that does that's outside the box.
And this is very outside the box.
You are an institutionalist if you can't understand, and this is uh goes back to the choice that I've been pointing out from day one.
And that is you you only really have two choices here.
For the last 50 years, our country has allowed friend and foe, allies and enemy countries to take full advantage of us and rip us the hell off, and they have abused the United States for decades.
Now keep in mind, especially our allies, we provide them with most of their national security or the technology to buy the weaponry so that they can fight back in the case of NATO and and Europe and European countries and the European Union.
Now, we can use Europe as a quick example.
European Union charges a 10% tariff on American-made automobiles.
Then you go to countries that have value-added taxes, which are national sales taxes like Germany.
That's another 20%.
So that makes an American car being sold in Germany.
That adds 30 30% to the sticker price, uh, which then has resulted in uh almost 10 cars from Germany being sold in America for every one car, uh, American car being sold in Germany.
Now, does that sound like free and fair trade to you?
So we have a choice.
We could do nothing, continue to get ripped off by other countries and get abused by other countries like we have for decades, or we can insist or give them the choice actually and demand free and fair trade.
And countries will have the choice.
And my bet is where I'm Betting is that over time, when they evaluate the situation, and if the if anyone has any common sense in these countries, they are going to want access to our markets.
They are going to want access to you, the American consumer.
They're going to want to sell their products here.
And the choice is going to be simple.
Now, if they continue to choose to hurt our farmers, our ranchers, our manufacturers, our automakers with high tariffs, we will stand up.
Donald Trump has said he will stand up for American industry, American workers, and the American people.
Now, there's an added benefit to all of this, like, for example, the Taiwanese uh uh semiconductor uh chip company that is moving facilities here, and they're gonna say they're gonna spend a hundred billion dollars in the next four years.
We have other semiconductor chip companies, they're gonna now be building those are things that we are reliant on that pharmaceuticals.
We need to need the certain things we need to manufacture here.
Are we gonna go back to the industrial age that once built this country?
Probably not, but do we for national security reasons need to produce certain items that are critical for national security here, like semiconductors?
Yeah, we do.
Now, all the president is doing here is offering a choice to countries, friend and foe alike, demanding fundamental fairness, and while it might be a temporary shock to the old way of doing things,
because every past president has known about the tariffs these countries put on us and has been unwilling to challenge it or stand up for the American people, American consumers, American workers, American manufacturers.
So the president is simply saying here is the choice is yours.
The days of your free ride is over.
You can choose free and fair trade, or you can choose to put tariffs on products that we sell in your country, but we're gonna do the same thing back to you.
In other words, the Americ the United States of America is not going to be taken advantage of any longer.
Now, I'll just tell you one guy that's a really smart guy, his name is Bill Ackman, and he had proposed, and this is when the market really went crazy earlier today, was deep in the red, and then boom, came flying back and he it was believed temporarily that Donald Trump was going to back down and put a 90-day pause in effect, which I strongly disagree with, because then these countries are gonna have no incentive to deal with this now.
If you're gonna deal with something that might be a little painful in the beginning, you might as well deal with it now.
And I believe that long term this is the strategy America's got to take unless we want to be taken advantage of.
Um, however, so I don't agree with the 90-day pause, but Ackman's a really smart guy and he's a Trump supporter.
But I think he has rightly pointed out one thing.
If you go back to last week's announcement by the president, I believe it was in the Rose Garden at the White House.
If you look at the White House calculations, they did include things besides tariffs.
I would I would bifurcate those things out separately.
In other words, if we ex if if we were to exclusively just focus on tariffs only, for example, you know, if we would just say, if you want free and fair trade with the U.S., no tariffs at all between us and every European country.
That would be free and fair trade.
And if Canada wants to do the same thing, that deal would be open to them also.
Now, this way on the issue of tariffs, we can have apples to apples and free and fair trade policy.
Now, there are other issues.
For example, Canada is a good case in point.
That's not the only issue we have with Canada.
We have issues with them not securing their northern border.
Last year alone, we had the equivalent of the past 17 years of illegal immigrants coming from our northern border into our country illegally from over a hundred countries.
They've got to do more to secure their border.
Canada does not pay their fair share to NATO.
All of these things have got to change.
And I think that is just simple basic friendship, common sense.
It really it is what it is.
Now, I don't think this is a complicated issue by any stretch of the imagination.
I really don't.
You know, unless we get we we have to understand where we are as a country.
We're a country that is now headed to 40 trillion dollars in debt.
We are a country where Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, they're all headed towards insolvency.
We are a country that needs to invest in our energy infrastructure so we become energy dominant, which also would benefit our allies and friends, especially in Western Europe, which gets most of their the lifeblood of their economy energy from Russia, not exactly the most reliable partner.
And I think it's very, very important that we understand where we are as a country.
We, for the most part, especially our allied friends, they benefit from the trillion dollars that we spend your money every single year on national defense.
Trust me, Canada couldn't take out a spy balloon because they didn't have a plane that could reach a high enough altitude to do it.
So they relied on the United States.
If Canada ever comes under attack, it's going to be the United States that comes to its rescue.
They will not be able to defend themselves on any level that would resemble a real a real defense against any real security threat.
The stakes are high for this country, and we've got to accurately assess where we are.
That's why it is critical that we eliminate all this waste fraud abuse and corruption that Doge, Elon Musk and others have identified.
That's why it's now important to take the stand now to demand free and fair trade and stop letting the world take advantage of us the way they have and ripping us off the way they have, because that is just money out of the pocket of our children and our grandchildren and working men and women in America.
These are fundamental but necessary steps to protect our country and our economy, and the DC swamp has frankly allowed the country to unilaterally surrender economically, and President Trump insisting on free and fair trade will be the and moving towards energy independence will be the biggest, best wealth-producing steps in both the short term and the long term.
The very, very short term, because it's such such a shock to the system.
I mean, you have establishment Republicans, right?
You have a establishment Democrats.
The establishment in DC are incapable of thinking out of the box.
I mean, they're afraid of their own shadows, most of these people.
They really are.
They're not people, you know, what which one of these countries, I'm sorry, which which one who who in who thinks out of the box?
What other person would say that, well, if we're going to liberate Iraq, they should pay for their liberation?
What other country would go into a mineral deal with Ukraine and say, wait a minute, we gave you hundreds of billions of dollars, we want to be repaid.
And by the way, it'll be a good deal for you because we'll we'll have a presence in your country and provide you security, and then we'll also provide you part of the profits, and you can rebuild your country after hopefully we get a negotiated settlement with Russia and your war with Russia comes to an end.
You know, because if you look at many of the people and the arguments that I've been hearing that tariffs are amazing and will revive manufacturing and bring good jobs and rebuild the middle class, you know, this may in the end turn out being true.
Ranchers, farmers, manufacturers, the UAW, union workers, steel workers, every industry.
In other words, the people that make this country great, they're loving this idea.
You know, you you have less than half the country are even invested a little bit in the stock market.
88% of the money's there by the top 10% of Americans, which liberals have been teaching us for years that we're supposed to hate these people.
You know, we spoke, we talk the talk of elitists.
You know, the people that are all wigged out over the stock market the most are The people that have money in the market, large sums of money, but they're not following some basic stock market rules either.
And I don't know why people don't understand if you're investing in the stock market.
Frankly, if it's money that you're going to need it in the next 10 years, you probably should be reducing your exposure dramatically.
And thinking more along the lines of wealth preservation.
I mean, when treasury returns for one two-year treasuries were 5%.
I'm like, yeah, I like that option better than the risk of the stock market, especially a stock market that's probably long overdue for a correction.
I don't like the volatility of the stock market.
Now, with that said, when Donald Trump was president the first time and he talked about tariffs, the initial reaction was similar to what we've seen in the last three days.
But in the end, by the time he left office, the stock market was up.
That was up 60%.
NASDAQ doubled.
It was up a hundred percent.
Again, it's not my wheelhouse, and nor is it I don't have the desire for the risk reward that the stock market offers in many ways.
It kind of is a form of gambling.
You know, tariffs, their uncertain outcomes cause fear among people, but I have other news to share with you today that over 50 countries have reached out to this White House already looking to negotiate free and fair trade deals with the United States.
Prior to the announcement last week, over six trillion dollars in investment was committed for for industry here in the U.S. Nissan and Honda pulled out of building plans in in Mexico.
Apple committed 500 billion dollars.
Other countries are now investing 1.5 trillion from the UAE, one trillion from Saudi Arabia, because they're betting on America.
And these manufacturing facilities, these automobile plants, this new industry, this chip industry, semiconductors will be built here, etc.
are gonna create high-paying career jobs for Americans, and we will ultimately benefit.
It's hard to ask people, you know, look, give up eating, you know, cupcakes, you know, three times a day and ice cream every night and work out every day for an hour and a half, and and you're gonna, you know, be fit and live longer and it's gonna be better for your health.
That's that's kind of you know, no pain, no gain.
Nobody wants to hear about eating your spinach either.
But it's kind of what we have to do if we really want to get this country on track and stop robbing our kids and and future generations.
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Uh let's go to the president with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House as they uh are the president gives opening remarks, then starts taking questions from the state-run legacy media mob.
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Lunch together, we had 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.
Yes, sir.
This is a quick stop in and out.
But we appreciate you being here, and we are a friend of Israel, as you know.
I would say that I'm by far the best president that Israel has ever even thought of seeing.
And uh it's an honor to be so, and I and to be so thought of many friends in Israel.
Uh they uh not in an easy area, it doesn't go easy, but uh we are helping them, and likewise they've been helping us uh 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 the less obvious subject with respect to Israel, and that's trade.
Um, and I think uh the Prime Minister's gonna 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 thank you.
Benjamin, thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Dom.
Thank you.
Mr. President, I want to uh first thank you for uh inviting me again to uh the White House.
You've been a remarkable friend of the state of Israel.
Uh you stand by us, you're standing with us.
You are a great, great champion of our lives.
And uh you actually do the things that you say you do, and I 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 uh representative in the Department of Justice fighting anti-Semitism, standing up for Israel in international forms.
I just want you to know from the heart, it's deeply, deeply appreciated.
Uh, as you said, we had the opportunity to talk today about uh many subjects.
Uh first, if I can mention tariffs, it's a subject of some interest today.
Um I can tell you that uh 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 also eliminate uh 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 uh ought to do the same.
I recognize the uh 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 uh the position that you've uh put forward, Mr. President.
We are going to eliminate the tariffs and rapidly.
I added the opportunity to speak to uh uh Secretary Lutnik uh yesterday.
We talked about how we we could uh affect this uh quickly, and I hope to bring the solution very quickly.
We're not talking about intentions, we're not talking about uh you know just words, we're talking about results.
Those results are gonna come back.
That's the first thing.
Thank you.
Well, let me help the end.
Let him finish.
Uh we spoke about not only the hostages, uh, but about Gaza.
The hostages obviously is uh human story of unjust unbearable uh agony.
Uh I speak to the families, I spoke to them yesterday, spoke to uh 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.
Uh Steve Whitkopf is uh President Trump's very able representative helped us get a deal that got 25 hours.
We're working now on another deal that we hope will succeed.
Uh and we're committed to getting all the hostages out, but also eliminate the evil uh turn of Hamas in uh in Gaza and uh enabling the people of Gaza to freely make a choice uh to go wherever they want.
I mean, they should have no choice, and the president put forward a vision, a bold vision, which we discussed as well, including the uh countries that might uh be amenable and are menable to accepting Palestinians of their free choice if they choose to go there, and I think that's the second thing that we discussed.
Uh but the hostages came right on top.
Uh we also discussed the situation uh in Syria.
Um we have uh we've had uh neighborly relations with Turkey that have deteriorated and we don't want to see Syria being used by anyone, including Turkey, as a base for attack in Israel.
Turkey is uh uh country that uh has a uh great relationship with the United States.
The president has a relationship with the leader of Turkey.
We discussed how we can avoid this conflict uh in a variety of ways, and uh 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 uh goal that Iran does not ever be like nuclear weapons, if it can be done diplomatically in a full way the way it was done in Libya.
I think that would be a good thing.
Uh but whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.
That's the end of my speech.
Mr. President, why is your we're having direct talks with wait, wait, wait.
We're having direct talks with Iran, and uh they've started it'll go on Saturday, we have a very big meeting, and we'll see what can happen.
And I think everybody agrees that uh doing a deal would be preferable uh 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 gonna see if we can avoid it.
But it's uh getting to be very dangerous territory, and uh hopefully those talks will be successful, and I think it would be in Iran's best interest if they are successful.
We hope we hope that's going to happen.
Uh 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 of by many countries over the years and uh can't do it anymore, just can't do it anymore.
Can't be the stupid people anymore.
Uh and it's all because of the people that sat in the seat right here, not your seat, but this city.
Uh, 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.
Uh who would want an open border?
How stupid was that?
But uh he allowed millions and millions of people, and of the millions, and I think it was 21 million people, but let's say three 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 the Mexico.
They came in from Canada too, by the way, a lot.
But generally speaking on the southern border.
And uh, 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, uh 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 and 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 uh 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 uh 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.
So that's where we are.
And with that, any questions?
Mr. President, are you asking to the markets today?
And would you be open to a pause in tariffs to allow for negotiations?
Well, we're not looking at that.
We have many, many uh countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and they're gonna be fair deals, and uh in certain cases they're gonna be paying substantial tariffs.
Uh there'll be fair deals.
Uh 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 gonna 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.
Uh they don't really take our agriculture, a little bit of it just to keep us slightly happy, but they don't take what they're supposed to be taking.
So we have a great relationship with Japan.
We're gonna keep it that way, but they're coming in to meet, and other comp countries are coming in.
Uh 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 twelve o'clock, we're putting a 50%.
All right, for stations along the Sean Hannity Show Radio Network, we're going to continue.
President Trump along with uh Israeli Prime Minister BB Netanyahu.
They're talking about Gaza, they're talking about the stock market, they're talking about tariffs.
Uh a gaggle in the Oval Office will continue with that.
A joint presser expected at five Eastern.
That'll be an hour and thirteen minutes from right now.
We expect to cover that.
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Back to the Oval Office, President Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
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.
Uh hundreds of billions of dollars a year that make an US on trade, and it shouldn't be that way.
And uh I have a great relationship with presidency.
I hope it's gonna stay that way.
I have great respect for China, but they can't do this.
Uh we're just uh we're gonna have one shot at this, and no other president's gonna 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 dollars of debt for a reason.
And uh the reason is that people allowed it to get that way.
So uh we'll be uh talking to China, we'll be talking to a lot of different countries, and I think you know, if if 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 gonna stand for the office.
We must represent the US in the talks with Iran.
Um, two questions.
Do you expect any of these deals to be made before April 9th?
And secondly, there have 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 action?
Well, it could be they can both be true.
Uh there can be permanent tariffs, and there can also 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're gonna 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 uh 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.
It was uh the deal that I wanted was that, plus they're gonna open up China so that our companies could go into China and compete with other countries and China for the you know for a large number of people.
And at the very end, that deal was terminated, and we went to a piece of the deal.
And uh there's 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 close.
China's essentially a closed country.
In fact, it is a closed country.
And what they do is they charge tariffs so that if you if you sell cars or if you sell anything, uh nobody's gonna buy it because the price is out of control.
But that's true with a lot of other countries also.
So we're gonna get fair deals and good deals with every country, and if we don't, we're gonna have nothing to do with them.
they're not going to be allowed to participate in the United States.
This gentleman is all day long.
Thank you for the chance.
Many of Palestinian Americans who voted for you voted for you and not for Biden because you've promised them to end the war in Gaza.
Um still going on, and there's no hostage deal.
Do you have any update on that?
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 tried 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.
Uh we have a big problem that we've done.
I think I'll ask Pete to maybe talk about it for a second, uh, because a lot of people are asking the Houthis.
We've we've been very tough and uh very successful militarily.
Uh we've uh really damaged them uh badly.
These were people shooting down ships and other things, by the way, uh flying objects like airplanes, and we uh we've put a major hurt on the Hooties, which nobody's been able to do.
We've uh 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, they're experts on missiles.
I mean, they actually make missiles, nobody thought that, but they make missiles.
They're highly sophisticated and they're very tough, but they've been uh very badly damaged.
Nobody else was able to do that, but us, Pete, you want to discuss that, please?
Yes, sir.
Uh it's been a bad three weeks for the Houthis.
Uh and it's about to get worse.
It's been a devastating campaign, whether it's underground facilities, uh weapons manufacturing, bunkers, troops in the open, air defense assets, we are not gonna relent.
And it's only to get more unrelenting until the Houthis declare they will stop shooting at our ships.
And we've been very clear at the Iranians as well.
Uh they are uh 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 in them, and we will not fight.
We have a great military, there's no military like our military, and despite Biden having given a lot, but never nevertheless a pretty small piece, but it was a lot of our military away in Afghanistan, and one of the dumbest situations,
I think, and maybe the most embarrassing situation we've ever been involved in that that short period of time in Afghanistan, what a disgrace that was, but uh left a lot of our military behind, left left you see them in their annual parades where they're parading trucks that are armor plated and different things that they can't, but it's many billions of dollars.
But despite that, uh we have a tremendous military.
That was a very small portion, because we rebuilt the military during my first term, and uh we uh we have great uh great things happening with our military.
We also uh essentially approved a budget which is in the facility, you'll like to hear this of a trillion dollars, one trillion dollars, and uh nobody's seen anything like it.
We have to build our military, and we're very cost conscious, but the military is something that we have to build, and we have to be strong because you've got a lot of bad forces out there now.
So we're gonna be approving a budget.
The uh and and I'm proud to say actually the biggest one we've ever done for the military, uh, we're cutting other things that were uh under doge, but under a lot of other when you look at uh a woman getting two billion dollars for environmental, and it had nothing to do with environmental, and they had a hundred dollars in the bank and they give her two billion many, many of those cases, all that stuff is gonna 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 uh aircraft, the kind of missiles, uh anything uh that we have ordered, and it's in many ways too bad that we have to do it because hopefully we're not gonna have to use it.
But uh the military is very, very powerful, and uh it's gonna remain that way.
How do you know that's a man?
Yes, we thank you, Mr. President.
I want to ask you about Iran because this is the press song we hear that the US is having a direct contact with the Iranians.
Is it possible to give us some more information?
At what level it's the US is presented.
Very high level.
And 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, oh, 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 uh maybe a deal's gonna be made.
That'd be great.
It'll be it'll be really great for Iran, I can tell you that.
But hopefully, we're not gonna have to get into that.
We we are meeting uh very importantly on Saturday at almost the highest level, and we'll see how it works out.
Please.
How do you ensure, Mr. President, that these tariffs don't drive U.S. trading partners into the hands of the Chinese?
I'm not worried about it.
I'm not worried about it.
If they want to be in the hands of the U.S., they don't want to be in the hands of the Chinese.
And uh the Chinese have turned out to be really not very good at that.
Uh people that are with us, they're with us, but we cannot be uh 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.
I mean, which it 30 years ago it was Japan, then it was something else, then it was another group, then it was China.
China's doing the best job.
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