Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed former US President Donald Trump at his golf club, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on June 25, two days before the first 2024 presidential debate and about two weeks before a failed assassination attempt. In a discussion focused on business and the global economy, Trump talked about the Federal Reserve, inflation, tax cuts, tariffs, Taiwan and his relationships with chief executives. The interview was conducted by Bloomberg Senior Reporters Nancy Cook and Joshua Green, Managing Editor Mario Parker and Businessweek Editor Brad Stone. Below is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity, and annotated with several fact-checks by Gregory Korte.

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK: Well, thank you for spending time with us. I want to start by asking a broad question: What kind of economy do you want for the American people in terms of innovation, opportunity and global competitiveness?

TRUMP: Well, I think manufacturing is a big deal, and everybody that runs for office says you’ll never manufacture again.

We have currency problems, as you know. Currency. When I was president, I fought very strongly and hard with President Xi and with Shinzo Abe, who’s a fantastic man—actually, you know the story there.

So we have a big currency problem because the depth of the currency now in terms of strong dollar/weak yen, weak yuan, is massive. And I used to fight them, you know, they wanted it weak all the time. They would fight it and I said, if you weaken it any more, I’m going to have to put tariffs on you. And that difference is, you know, we have the spread is the biggest and I think they said 38 years. That’s a tremendous burden on our companies that try and sell tractors and other things to other places outside of this country.

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BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK: President Biden left in place many of the tariffs that you imposed on China. He’s pushed Made-in-America steel and directed billions of dollars to rebuilding American manufacturing and energy. Do you plan to undo all of the Inflation Reduction Act, or just certain parts of it?

>TRUMP: Well, first of all, he had something called the Inflation Reduction Act, which wasn’t the right name. It increased inflation and not decreased.

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BLOOMBERG’S BUSINESS WEEK: Back on China, economists have said about 60% tariffs on China would essentially end the US-China trade relationship. What would that mean for companies like Nvidia, Qualcomm, Apple who have supply chains there?

TRUMP: You  know, I had it at 50% and I’ve never heard the 60¹ . And everyone always says, look at Smoot-Hawley and oh, look what happened. Well, Smoot-Hawley was after the Depression started. So if you go back, I told you to read about William McKinley. William McKinley made this country rich. He was the most underrated president. And those that followed him took the money. Roosevelt took the money and built, you know, the whole thing with the parks and the dams. But McKinley made the money and he was truly the tariff king. And I don’t do this based on my knowledge of him, although I’ve learned about him after the fact.

Tariffs do two things. Economically, they’re phenomenal. And a lot of people will say, Oh, that’s terrible. It’s very dangerous when you say that because you probably have your views and a lot. I can’t believe how many people are negative on tariffs that are actually smart people. It does two things: Economically, it’s great. And man, is it good for negotiation. I’ve had guys, I’ve had countries, that were potentially extremely hostile coming to me and say, ‘Sir, please stop with the tariffs. Stop.’ They would do anything. Nothing to do with economic, they would do—you know, we have more than economic, we have other things like let’s not go to war. Or I don’t want you to go into war in another place.

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1Trump has denied a Washington Post report that he’s considering a 60% tariff on Chinese goods, telling Fox News, “No, I would say maybe it’s going to be more than that.”

Via https://archive.vn/e5bGH#selection-1525.398-1531.129