Page:Remarks by President Trump on the National Security and Humanitarian Crisis on our Southern Border.djvu/1

2/17/2019

Rose Garden 10:39 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, everybody. Before we begin, I’d like to just say that we have a large team of very talented people in China. We’ve had a negotiation going on for about two days. It’s going extremely well. Who knows what that means, because it only matters if we get it done. But we’re very much working very closely with China and President Xi, who I respect a lot. Very good relationship that we have. And we’re a lot closer than we ever were in this country with having a real trade deal.

We’re covering everything — all of the points that people have been talking about for years that said couldn’t be done, whether it was theft or anything. Anything. The unfairness. We’ve been losing, on average, $375 billion a year with China. A lot of people think it’s $506 billion. Some people think it’s much more than that. We’re going to be leveling the playing field.

The tariffs are hurting China very badly. They don’t want them. And frankly, if we can make the deal, it’d be my honor to remove them. But otherwise, we’re having many billions of dollars pouring into our Treasury. We’ve never had that before with China. It’s been very much of a one-way street. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-national-security-humanitarian-crisis-southern-border/