Trump Defends His Economic Platform in Bloomberg Interview

(Bloomberg) - Never miss an episode. Follow The Big Take daily podcast today.

Most Read from Bloomberg

With the US presidential election less than a month away, and the economy top of mind for many voters, former President Donald Trump sat down for an interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday.

On today's Big Take podcast, host David Gura highlights the key takeaways from the interview. From Trump's defense of tariffs, to his plans for the Federal Reserve and immigration, the interview offers a view of what a second Trump term could mean for the global economy.

Terminal clients:to subscribe.

Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:

David Gura: The US presidential election is less than a month away, and most major polls, including surveys conducted by Bloomberg and Morning Consult, indicate the race is incredibly close, most importantly in the seven swing states. The persistent number one issue for voters is the economy. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are putting it front and center as they crisscross the country in the final weeks of the campaign. And on Tuesday, Trump sat down for an interview at the Economic Club of Chicago with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait:

John Micklethwait: We're going to focus on business and the economy. And that's partly because this is a business audience. It is also because voters insist that the economy is the main issue that matters when they vote.

Gura: For about an hour, John asked Trump about his platform. They talked about tariffs and immigration, and the so-called "Trump trade." John also noted that Bloomberg and the Economic Club of Chicago have invited Harris to participate in a similar event, and that invitation remains open.

Micklethwait: So on that note, let me invite on— onto the stage, President Trump.

Gura: This is The Big Take, from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura. On today's episode: Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait's interview with former President Donald Trump. It's been condensed for this podcast. You can hear the full conversation at Bloomberg.com, and on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Gura: Former President Trump has proposed a series of changes to the tax code. He's said the US should eliminate taxes on tips, for instance. He's said interest on car loans should be tax deductible, like mortgage interest. And Trump has said he's in favor of removing a $10,000 cap on the "state and local tax deduction" — a limit, by the way, he put in place when he was the president. He's offered limited detail on how he'd pay for these tax cuts, which Congress would have to approve. John started the interview by asking the former president how he plans to cover the cost.

Micklethwait: The Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, which is a bipartisan outfit, put out some predictions the other day. If you add up all the promises you've made, your plans would add $7.5 trillion to the debt. That's more than twice the total for Vice President Harris. You're on course to push up debt up to 150% of GDP. This is a very business-like audience.

Donald Trump: Yeah.

Micklethwait: Why should they trust you with that?

Trump: Because we're about growth. She's got no growth whatsoever, and we're all about growth. We're going to bring companies back to our country. You look at, even today, as I was driving over, I see these empty, old, beautiful, like, steel mills and factories that are empty and falling down. Uh, some have been converted to senior citizens homes, but that's not gonna do the trick. And we're gonna bring the companies back. We're gonna lower taxes still further for companies that are going to make their product in the USA. We're going to protect those companies with strong tariffs, 'cause I'm a believer in tariffs. I'm not sure that you are, I don't think you are.

Micklethwait: Not particularly.

Trump: But I congratulate you on your career. But, to me the most beautiful word in the dictionary is "tariff." And it's my favorite word. It needs a public relations firm just to help it. But to me it's the most beautiful word in the dictionary.

Micklethwait: Just to push on that. The tariffs, tariffs, do you think that will bring in the revenues? To use another bipartisan group, the Peterson Institute, they say they'll only bring in $200 billion. That is only, that's barely the cost of two of your promises.

Trump: Yeah, but that's like for, for what company are you talking about? Okay. Look, I've, I've brought in with tariffs, and I was just getting started then COVID came and we had a, which, you know, because I tell you what, I did a very good job in COVID. Nobody knew what the hell it was. I call it "the China virus" because I like being a little more accurate. But, uh, when that came— but we, we got hundreds of billions of dollars just from China alone. And I hadn't even started yet. But tariffs are two— two things. If you look at it, number one is for protection of the companies that we have here, and the new companies that will move in, because we're going to have thousands of companies coming into this country. We're going to grow it like it's never grown before, and we're going to protect them when they come in because we're not going to have somebody undercut them.

Gura: Here, Trump shared an anecdote to illustrate his point. He described a friend who builds car factories. That story, which we weren't able to verify, went on for several minutes.

Micklethwait: President Trump, I let you give your example. You talked, you talked a lot about tariffs. You look at the American economy, 40 million jobs rely on trade. It counts for 27% of GDP. If you cut that off, that's also going to have an effect on many, many business people here. Tariffs also have another side. Isn't that something that you have to acknowledge? You could be plunging America into the biggest trade war since Smoot Hawley.

Trump: But there are no tariffs.

Micklethwait: You're gonna, you're gonna stop, you're gonna— there are tariffs already at the moment.

Trump: There are no tariffs. All you have to do is build your plant in the United States, and you don't have any tariffs.

Micklethwait: People, a lot of places, a lot of places like this, they rely, there are a lot of jobs that rely on foreigners coming here. You're gonna basically stop trade with China. You're talking about 60% trade on that, 60% tariffs on that. You're talking, as you said, 100, 200% on things you don't really like. You're also talking about 10, 20% tariffs on the rest of the world. That is going to have a serious effect on the overall economy. And yes, you're going to find some people who will gain from individual tariffs. The overall effect could be massive in terms of the economy.

Trump: I agree. It's going to have a massive effect. Positive effect. It's going to be a positive, not a negative.

Micklethwait: Give me an example.

Trump: Let me just no, no, let me know how committed you are to this. It must be hard for you to, you know, spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative, and then have somebody explain to you that you're totally wrong. It'll have a negative, it will have— I'll go a step further. If you don't do this, this country has no chance.

Micklethwait: President Trump, 40 million jobs is a lot of jobs to rely on trade.

Trump: They're all coming back.

Micklethwait: Those are 40 million jobs, those are 40 million jobs in America that rely on trade.

Trump: Are you ready? John Deere, great company. They announced about a year ago they're going to build big plants outside of the United States, right? They're going to build them in Mexico.

Micklethwait: And you threatened them with tariffs, and they stopped.

Trump: That's right. I said, if John Deere builds those plants, they're not selling anything into the United States, they just announced yesterday they're probably not going to build the plants, okay? I kept the jobs here, and I'll keep the John Deere will stay here. And I'll tell John Deere, if you do build outside of the United States, you can if you want.

Gura: The manufacturer responded to Trump's threat of tariffs back in September, saying that less than 5% of its US sales were manufactured in Mexico. They did not make an announcement about plants in Mexico the day before Trump's interview. Trump went on to discuss trade deals with India and China, then he offered his assessment of US trade deals with European countries. He believes there's an imbalance between goods that come from other countries to the US, including cars, and how many similar US-made goods are available in those countries. This interview continues in a moment.

Gura: We've been playing key moments from Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait's interview on Tuesday with former President Donald Trump. Before the break, John was asking Trump about his proposal to increase the use of tariffs.

Micklethwait: What, what about consumers? People out there.

Trump: They're going to be the biggest beneficiaries.

Micklethwait: Critics, yeah, critics say your tariffs will end up being like a national sales tax.

Trump: Nope, nope. Because the countries will pay.

Micklethwait: If you have, if you have, America at the moment has three trillion dollars worth of imports. You're going to add tariffs to every single one of them. That is going to push up the cost for all those people who want to buy foreign goods. That is just simple mathematics, President Trump.

Trump: It's not. It is, but not the way you've figured. I was always very good at mathematics. Let me tell you, you're saying 3 trillion.

Micklethwait: That's 3 trillion dollars worth of imports.

Trump: And they don't have to pay. And if, by the way, the higher the tariff, the more likely it is to have them come into the country.

Micklethwait: The higher the tariff, the more you're going to put on the value of that, those goods, the higher people are going to have to pay in shops.

Trump: Ready? Ready? The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States, and build a factory in the United States, so it doesn't have to pay the tariff. If I have—

Micklethwait: That will take, that will take, that will take many, many, as you know, that will take many years.

Trump: In fact, I'll, I'll tell you, you know, there's another theory is that, uh, uh, the tariff, you make it so high, so horrible, so obnoxious that they'll come right away. When I do the 10%, 10% is really— first of all, 10% when you collect it is hundreds of billions of dollars. The numbers that you're talking, all reducing our deficit. But really, so there's two ways of looking at a tariff. You can do it as a money-making instrument, or you can do it as something to get the companies. Now, if you want the companies to come in, the tariff has to be a lot higher than 10% because 10% is not enough. They're not going to do it for 10. But you make a 50% tariff, they're going to come in. Let me tell you the other thing about tariffs that's great. Our steel companies, as you know, three, four years ago, they were all, when I was in office. I saw a man from a big steel company, and he was devastated. I knew him for a long time, and it's been a tough business. It was a great business many years ago, and I would not let US Steel be sold to Japanese, by the way, it's just psychologically, I think it would be terrible.

Micklethwait: That's the Nippon Steel issue.

Trump: Yeah, I wouldn't let it be so, but I would— I would stop it if it hasn't been completed by the time I'm president, because I think it sets a horrible tone. But I had a lot to do with steel. We were going to lose all our steel companies because China, as you remember, was dumping steel at levels that nobody's ever seen before. And I put a 50% tax on that, a tariff on that— all dumped steel. And it was also bad steel. It was what they call "dirty steel." It wasn't good steel. Which is a bad thing for structural components of buildings and planes and things like that. They were dumping crap into our country. And I put a 50% tariff. I started at 25, I raised it to 50 'cause the 25 didn't quite do it. I raised it to 50 and that did it. They stopped dumping steel, and I saved our steel mills by having that. We saved it. We saved our steel. Now, what was left, because we've lost so much? But there are certain companies you have to have. There are certain things you have to have. Steel, you have to have, if you go to war, you know, there's a possibility you go to war.

Gura: Trump then repeated a version of a claim he's made often, saying he's the only president in 82 years who's kept the US out of war, which is inaccurate. He also claimed that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East wouldn't have happened if he were the president.

Micklethwait: I was asking about tariffs. You've gone off by that— seeing you brought up tariffs and foreign policy, many people would say the biggest problem with your tariffs is actually geopolitics. You, in your first term, you got some credit...

Trump: A lot of credit.

Micklethwait: For effectively saying there was a Cold War against China, that's what America was in. If you look at the last Cold War against the Soviet Union, America won it in part because it rallied allies to it. You're talking about slamming allies with 30%, 20% tariffs. Isn't this time you're going to end up trying to rally the West, and you're dividing it instead? Isn't that the real problem with tariffs, even beyond all the problems due to the economy, where you, you keep on bringing up these individual examples, but the overall effect is gonna be dramatic?

Trump: No. The overall effect will be—Micklethwait: Answer first about foreign policies.

Trump: Yeah, I'll do that.

Micklethwait: How does it help you take on China, turning all your allies against you?

Trump: Tremendously. Because China thinks we're a stupid country, a very stupid country. They can't believe that somebody finally got wise to them.Not one president, Bush, uh, Obama – Barack Hussein Obama, have you heard of him? Not one president. Think of it. Not one president charged China anything. They said, oh, they are a third world nation. They are developing. Well, we're a developing nation too. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at our cities. We're a developing nation. We have to develop more than they do. We're way behind them. You take a look at what's happened to our cities. So what I'm saying is this.

Micklethwait: My question was about your allies, not about China. You are going to annoy the people you need to rally behind you.

Trump: But our allies have taken advantage of us more so than our enemies. Our allies are the European Union.

Gura: Trump's answer went on to cover trade with Japan, and a conversation he said he had with former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. On the topic of world leaders, John also asked if Trump has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office. In his newest book, reporter Bob Woodward cites an unnamed aide who says Trump and Putin have spoken several times.

Micklethwait: Can you say yes or no, whether you have talked to Vladimir Putin since you stopped being president?

Trump: Well, I don't comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it's a smart thing. If I'm friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. In terms of a country. He's got 2000 nuclear weapons. And so do we. China has a lot less, but they'll catch us within five years. If I have a relationship—

Micklethwait: That sounds very much like you did talk to him.

Trump: I don't talk about. I don't talk about that. No, I don't talk about that.

Micklethwait: You talk about talking to Netanyahu—

Trump: I don't ever say—

Micklethwait: You talk about talking to all these people—

Trump: But I can tell you what, Russia has never had a president that they respect so much. But more importantly, or less importantly, I guess, I went into Russia and people said, Oh, he likes Putin and Putin likes him.

Gura: Coming up, former President Trump's comments on Jerome Powell, and why he thinks the chair of the Federal Reserve has, as he put it, "the greatest job in government."Gura: Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait's interview on Tuesday with former President Donald Trump lasted just over an hour. And while the stated focus was on business and the economy, there were some digressions. Trump said this is his rhetorical stock-in-trade. He described his lengthy, meandering speeches as doing "the weave."

Trump: And by the way, by the way, and I think it's very important, you can go, you know, I call it the weave. You can call it, it's got a, you have to weave as long as you end up in the right location at the end.

Gura: There were a few questions that yielded answers that didn't quite get there. A question about whether he'd be in favor of breaking up Google for instance, led to Trump talking about a lawsuit brought by federal prosecutors in Virginia against that state, accusing it of removing voters from the rolls too close to Election Day. But on several occasions, John referenced the audience in the room, made up in part of business leaders, noting many of them care about the strength of the US economy and brought his questions back to that topic.

Micklethwait: At the New York Economic Club, you said that, if you lost the dollar as a reserve currency, it would be like America losing a war.

Trump: Yeah.

Micklethwait: You look at what you're gonna do in terms of protectionism, drive countries to use the other currencies.

Trump: Yeah. Yeah.

Micklethwait: And all that debt is also gonna lessen the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. Do you worry about that?

Trump: If I'm elected, the dollar is so secure, your reserve currency is the strongest it'll ever be, and uh—

Micklethwait: You say that, you say that, President Trump, at the moment, there is a thing called the "Trump trade" in the markets. Do you know what that is? The "Trump trade" is very simple. People are betting that your policies are gonna drive up debt, they're gonna drive up inflation, so they're gonna drive up interest rates. Are the investors wrong?

Trump: Yeah, I had four years, no inflation. I had four years no inflation.

Micklethwait: But that was, that was when you had much—

Trump: I had four years. It's better than that. And Biden, who has no idea where the hell he is, okay? Biden went two years with no inflation because he inherited from me. And then they started spending money like drunken sailors. They spent so much money, it was so ridiculous the money they were spending. They were spending on the Green New Scam. The Green New Scam, the Green New Deal. You know, it was conceived of by AOC plus three. She never even studied the environment in college. She went to a nice college. Uh, she came out, she just said, The Green New Scam. She just named all these things.

Micklethwait: President Trump, the issue at the moment—

Trump: No, no. But wait a minute.

Micklethwait: The markets are looking at the fact you are making all these promises. Latest one was car loans. You're flooding the thing with giveaways.

Trump: But we're going to grow—

Micklethwait: I was actually quite kind to you. I used 7 trillion. The upper estimate is 15 trillion. People like "The Wall Street Journal," who's hardly a communist organization—

Trump: Yeah but you don't know —

Micklethwait: They have criticized you on this as well. You are running up enormous debts.

Trump: What does "The Wall Street Journal" know? I'm meeting with them tomorrow. What does "The Wall Street Journal" know? They've been wrong about everything. So have you, by the way. You've been wrong about everything.

Micklethwait: You're trying to turn this, you're trying to turn this—

Trump: You've been wrong about it.

Micklethwait: No, you are trying to turn, you're trying to turn this into debate. There are businesspeople—

Trump: It's not a debate. But you're wrong. You've been wrong all your life on this stuff. You've been wrong. Let me tell you about currency. You're going, you know, you're going, jumping a lot of, lot of different subjects.

Micklethwait: Well, we're still sticking to the subject very closely.

Trump: Let's stick to reserve currency. That's where you started, right? The reserve currency is under threat. Because you have Iran, you have Russia, you have China wants — China is the one that you have to worry about because they want it.

Micklethwait: Yeah.

Trump: They want to have the yuan be the, the, the, you know—

Micklethwait: Yes.

Trump: Thing of power. So here's what I'm doing.

Again, I hate to go back to it. If somebody says, and I know countries want to get out because they don't respect our leadership. They look at this guy, they say, you've got to be kidding. And she's worse than him. By the way, she's, I never thought I'd say this. She is not as smart as Biden, if you can believe. This is not what, we had four years of this, this, this lunacy, and we can't have it anymore. We're not gonna have a country left. Okay. Currency. Very important.

Micklethwait: Yes.

Trump: And if you want to go to third world, if you want to go to third world status, lose your reserve currency. We have to have that. We cannot lose it. If you go, you'll go to third world status in this country because you take a look at the way things are running. If a country tells me, "Sir, we like you very much, but we're gonna no longer adhere to being in the reserve currency. Uh, we're not gonna, uh, salute the dollar anymore." I'll say, "That's okay. And, uh, you're gonna pay a 100% tariff on everything you sell into the United States. And we love your product. I hope you sell a lot of it into the United States, but you're going to pay 100% tariff." Uh, he will then follow it up by saying, "Sir, it would be an honor to stay with the reserve currency." I will be, that will be like just playing. That's not even chess. That's checkers.

Gura: Another issue that's been front and center in this campaign is inflation, which the Federal Reserve has been fighting for years now. Well, Trump has not been shy about criticizing Jerome Powell, the current chair of the Fed, despite the fact he nominated Powell for the job in 2017.

Micklethwait: You say you don't want interest rates to go higher. You've gone backwards and forwards about—

Trump: It depends on the times.

Micklethwait: Whether you want to keep Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve. His term as chair runs on to May 2026. Would you seek to remove or demote him?

Trump: Look, I think it's the greatest job in government. You show up to the office once a month, and you say, "Let's see, flip a coin." And everybody talks about you like you're a god. "Oh, what will he do?" I mean, before— the guy used to walk into my office, he was like begging. He was fine.

Micklethwait: You did. You did talk about, you talked about removing him once.

Trump: I did because he was keeping the rates too high, and I was right.

Micklethwait: And you would do that again.

Trump: In fact, he actually dropped them too much when I did this. Because I said, I was threatening to terminate him. There was a question as to whether or not you could. And there was an in The New York Times. Two half-pages. One page said I can do it, by lawyers. One half-page said I couldn't. And that was enough for him. And he dropped the hell out of the rates. He dropped them too much. He went so— He dropped them actually too much. Okay. Here's the story. I think that if you're a very good president with good sense, you should be able to at least talk to him. I don't say make the decision at all, but I, I mean, I'm, I've been a very successful businessman. I've done really good, much better. Now people are understanding how good I've done because they're seeing it — much better than the fake news wants to give me credit for—

Micklethwait: Just on the issue of whether you would replace him.

Trump: I think I have the right to say, as a very good businessman and somebody that's used a lot of, uh, sense, I think I have the right to say that, you know, I think I'm, I think I'm better than he would be. I think I'm better than most people would be in that position. I think I have the right to say, "I think you should go up or down a little bit." I don't think I should be allowed to order it. But I think I have the right to put in comments, uh, as to whether or not interest rates should go up or down.

Gura: John's interview with Trump ended with what's become another hot-button issue in this campaign: immigration. Trump has proposed deporting as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants if he is reelected, and John asked him about the economic implications of that.

Micklethwait: Just focusing on the economic thing. Are you prepared to say, look, it's fine to have a slightly smaller economy in exchange for having the immigration controls you want?

Trump: Okay, simple answer. I want a lot of people to come into our country. But I want them to come in legally. I don't want to have—

Micklethwait: But that means, that means you will have — that means you will have to deport. You know, you are talking about deporting 11 million people. That is a lot of people to take out.

Trump: Okay, you ready? It came out last week that 425,000 people are horrible criminals at the highest level. But it came out that 13,099 were let in during their administration. They tried to say longer — wrong. During the — over the last three and a half years, 13,000 plus people came in. Murderers. They're in jail for murder. Some were having the death penalty. They were all released into our country. 13,099 people were released into our country.

Gura: Those stats are false. Trump has been leaning on those claims, and similar ones, on the campaign trail this month. He also ticked through other debunked talking points about immigrants being responsible for spikes in violent crime.

Gura: Another major theme in this election has been age. The race changed dramatically in July, when President Biden decided he would no longer seek reelection, amid growing concerns about his age. He is 81 years old. Donald Trump is 78, almost two decades older than Vice President Harris. At one point, when he addressed how he picked nominees for the Supreme Court, he talked about age as a disqualification. Toward the end of their interview, John asked about that.

Micklethwait: You've just said it, you don't do old. You own and run businesses. Would you appoint a CEO who was 78, and who didn't give you a medical—

Trump: Yeah, I would. Depends on, I'd make people like, like Biden who's in bad shape, I wouldn't appoint him. He's 81 or 82. He's four years older. But I'd appoint, uh, I know, some of the smartest people I know. I know a man that made all of his money from the time he was 80 to 90. And he was a failure all his life. Uh, he was in the, uh, the drinks business.

Micklethwait: Strangely, you didn't bring this up when you were running against Joe Biden.

Trump: No, I never attacked him for his age. In fact, I used to defend him on his age. I attacked him for his lack of competence.

Micklethwait: I asked you, I've asked you all these questions.

Trump: By the way, just for the— because I think it's important, and I know you do, too. I know so many people in their 80s that are among— Bernie Marcus is 95, the founder of Home Depot. You have that conversation with him. He's just as sharp as, mentally, He's just as sharp as he ever was. He's 95. I can tell you that in the 90s, I don't want to get into the 90s stuff, but you know what? I know many people in their 80s. I know guys in their 80s that won't leave the company, like family companies, where they don't want the kids to take over, because they're much more competent than their kids. I know them both, right? So no, I would have no problem.

Micklethwait: Well, you've, you've given us a tour d'horizon of where that country might be going to. Thank you very much, President Trump.

Trump: Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Micklethwait: Thank you very much for the conversation.

Gura: Former President Donald Trump, in conversation with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, at an event co-hosted by Bloomberg and the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday. You can hear the interview in its entirety at Bloomberg dot com, or on the Bloomberg Terminal. And a quick note *again that Bloomberg and the Economic Club of Chicago have invited Vice President Harris to participate in a similar event, and she has so far declined.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek