President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he “couldn’t care less” if car prices spike because of his 25 percent tariffs on auto imports, saying the levies will prompt more people to buy American cars.
“I couldn’t care less. I hope [foreign automakers] raise their prices, because if they do, people are going to buy American-made cars. We have plenty,” he said in the interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that aired Saturday.
During the interview, he said he did not warn U.S. automakers against hiking prices on their cars as reported by some news organizations. He said his message to industry leaders was: “Congratulations, if you make your car in the United States, you’re going to make a lot of money. If you don’t, you’re going to have to probably come to the United States, because if you make your car in the United States, there is no tariff.”
It was a remarkable, if politically perilous, statement from Trump amid ballooning costs on a wide range of goods. Voters’ economic anxieties propelled Trump to the White House as critics complained his predecessor wasn’t sensitive enough to the impact of persistent inflation on everyday Americans. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed that prices would begin to come down on the first day of his presidency, but they remain stubbornly high, with potentially more economic pain in coming days as more tariffs take effect.
While economists have warned that tariffs amount to a tax on U.S. consumers and could tip the country into a recession, the president has held up the levies as a solution to decades of declines in auto manufacturing. More broadly, he has justified an escalating trade war on vehicles and other products by claiming other countries have taken advantage of the U.S. even as they benefit from their own protectionist policies.
“The world has been ripping off the United States for the last 40 years and more,” Trump said. “And all we’re doing is being fair, and frankly, I’m being very generous.”
According to a fact sheet released by the White House on Wednesday, the tariffs “will be applied to imported passenger vehicles (sedans, SUVs, crossovers, minivans, cargo vans) and light trucks, as well as key automobile parts (engines, transmissions, powertrain parts, and electrical components), with processes to expand tariffs on additional parts if necessary.” Vehicles that are subject to the free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada will be taxed only on the non-U. S. portion of their components.
Trump also has recently pushed senior advisers to go even bigger on tariff policy, The Washington Post reported. He has billed this coming Wednesday, which will mark a major escalation in his global trade war, as “Liberation Day.” Trump’s advisers are still debating the exact scope of the potential tariffs, which officials said could affect trillions of dollars’ worth of trade.
Trump presents an executive order related to vehicle tariffs Wednesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
During the interview, Trump also said he would not fire anyone in connection with the Signal chat scandal.
Trump has consistently said he stands by his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who said he accidentally invited the editor in chief of the Atlantic magazine to a highly sensitive chat among senior administration officials on the messaging app Signal about a forthcoming U.S. military operation in Yemen. Trump and his White House have repeatedly said the controversy was a “witch hunt” exaggerated by a media establishment seeking to blunt some of the early successes of his administration.
“I don’t fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts,” he said.
Trump also declined to rule out using military force to annex Greenland, something he has said is key to U.S. national security. The idea has drawn criticism from members of Congress and America’s allies. About two-thirds of Americans oppose adding Greenland to the United States, as well as 85 percent of Greenland’s population, according to polling there.
Trump’s remarks Saturday stand in contrast to comments Friday by Vice President JD Vance, who visited the semiautonomous Danish territory and downplayed the idea that the U.S. would use military force to seize the island.
“No, I never take military force off the table. But I think there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force,” Trump said. “We have an obligation to protect the world. This is world peace, this is international security. And I have that obligation while I’m president. No, I don’t take anything off the table.”