Reporter to Trump: Why Are Your Tariff Plans for China ‘Softer’ than Those for Canada and Mexico?

Reporter: “Sir, your tariff plans for China and Mexico are much tougher — the ones for Canada and Mexico are much tougher than the one for China. Why is it softer for China?”

Trump: “Well, China is already paying a lot of tariffs because of me. And when you add them up, I would say, you know, they’re paying a lot. They paid hundreds of billions of dollars. They never paid 10 cents until I came along. When I came along, they pay hundreds — they’ve paid hundreds of billions of dollars, never paid anything. And so they’ve already started at a higher base.”

Reporter 2: “Is February 1st the date for Chinese tariffs as well, sir? February 1, or was that just Mexico and Canada?”

Trump: “It’s Mexico and Canada, but we’re talking about China too. Look, China is sending us tremendous amounts of bad drugs, fentanyl, really bad stuff. Most of it comes through Mexico. And we’re losing, I think, 300,000 lives a year because of that. People say 150,000, 100,000, 120,000. I think 300,000 lives a year. Those are old numbers. The other — the lower numbers, a low number. And we can’t have that. They’ve got to stop sending it. I had a deal with President Xi, but it was a deal that wasn’t followed up by Biden, of course, where they were going to issue the death penalty to people that make fentanyl and that would have stopped it. But we’ll have to stop it with tariffs. Thank you very much, everybody.”