Trump: We Won 'Every Single Point' in China Trade Talks
President Donald Trump said he "got sort of everything that we wanted" out of the meeting last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping, adding later that, "Because of tariffs, President Xi allowed us to win every single point."
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The points he listed were the promises to buy billions of dollars of farm products and the end of what he called the "rare earth threat. That's gone, completely gone."
Trump was interviewed by "60 Minutes," which aired the interview Nov. 2.
"And I've always felt if we can make deals that are good, it's better to get along with China than not," Trump said.
He said that when he held back Boeing airplane parts and China cut off rare earth magnets earlier in the year, "we were both acting -- maybe a little bit irrationally, but the big thing we had was tariffs ultimately."
Host Norah O'Donnell asked him about intellectual property theft, infiltration of public utilities and more, and Trump dismissed the question, saying the U.S. does most of those things back to China.
"We're always watching them, and they're always watching us," he said. "In the meantime, I think we get along very well, and I think we can be bigger, better and stronger by working with them as opposed to just knocking them out of the economy. They can produce things that we don't want to produce because it's not really worth our while -- making undergarments ... you know, certain things. We don't want to do that, and we can buy them inexpensively from other places in the world while we can lead the world in AI, and chips, and lots of other things."
O'Donnell asked: "What happens to your economic plan if the Supreme Court invalidates your tariffs?"
The Supreme Court is listening to arguments about the constitutionality of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act on Nov. 5.
"I think our country will be immeasurably hurt. I think our economy will go to hell," he replied. "Look, because of tariffs, we have the highest stock market we've ever had."
He added, "I think it's the most important subject discussed by the Supreme Court in 100 years."
He said if the president can't be "quick and nimble" with tariffs, "if we're forced to use Congress to approve, they can't approve anything. They would be sitting around for years debating whether or not we should use tariffs."
He said without the IEEPA tariffs, the U.S. would be subject to other countries' tariff abuses.
"Everybody uses tariffs on us," he said. "If I wasn't allowed to use tariffs on them, we would be a third rate -- we would be a third world nation."