Brief summary
The White House criticized Amazon’s plan to display the cost of Trump’s tariffs next to product prices, calling it a “hostile and political act.”
Treasury Secretary Besson said the administration is close to announcing trade deals with India, South Korea, and Japan, but avoided discussing negotiations with China.
Besson emphasized the administration’s focus on tax cuts, deregulation, and onshoring manufacturing to boost the economy and support American workers.
The White House defended Trump’s trade policies, arguing they will restore American manufacturing and generate revenue for tax relief, despite concerns about uncertainty and consumer costs.
Overall, the briefing highlighted the administration’s continued push for its economic agenda, including trade negotiations, while responding defensively to criticism of the tariff impacts.
Main body
We’re going to go to the White House and Treasury Secretary Scott Besson. Thank you, Senator. Over the next few weeks, many of them have already come to Washington. What President Trump is referring to is the ability for tariff revenue to give income tax relief. And I think there’s a very good chance that we will see this in the upcoming tax bill. The president campaigned on no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. The restoring interest deductibility for American-made autos, so tariff income could be used for tax relief on all those immediately. So you think that there is a role for significant tariff revenue in U. S. fiscal policy? I think that it’s something that got put away a long time ago, and I think that tariffs will bring back American manufacturing and generate substantial revenues.
On manufacturing, we’ve seen some pretty grisly surveys this month from the Philly Fed, which saw the biggest drop since May of 2020, and the Dallas Fed, similar plunging outlook, poor shipping orders. What are American manufacturers not understanding about your push for onshoring in the U.S.? Well, I think I was in the investment business 35 years, and I learned to ignore the survey data and look at the surveys; look at the actual data. And the actual data has been quite good. The job data is good. Americans keep spending. And as Caroline said, we have these incredible commitments to bring manufacturing back onshore with record investment by. by domestic corporations and foreigners who want to come into the U. S. The Chinese continue to say that the U. S.
and China are not engaged in any consultation or negotiation on tariffs. You recently said you’ve talked to your counterpart, but more about traditional things like financial stability. So, can you clarify, is the administration talking to Beijing specifically about tariffs or not? Well, we’re not going to talk about who’s talking to whom, but I think that over time we will see that the Chinese tariffs are unsustainable for China. I’ve seen some very large numbers over the past few days to show if these numbers stay on, China could lose 10 million jobs very quickly, and even if there is a drop in the tariffs, they could lose 5 million jobs so remember that we are the deficit country; they sell almost five times more goods to us than we sell to them, so the onus will be on them to the take off these tariffs.
They’re unsustainable for them. The Press And they are saying you guys are not talking about it. So, is that true? They have a different form of government. They’re playing to a different audience. So, I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty, again, of who’s talking to whom. But, as I said, I believe for the Chinese, these tariffs are unsustainable. The Press And very quickly, two days ago, you said you didn’t know if President Trump had spoken to Xi Jinping. Do you know now? Again, I would say Carol and I have a lot of jobs around the White House. We’re bringing the switchboard in one of them. Go ahead. The Press Thank you so much for being here this morning. You’ve talked about the importance of giving investors certainty when it comes to the market.
Yet, the Trump administration is continuing to negotiate several complex trade deals in a very short timeframe. When do you expect you’ll be able to give the markets some certainty around those deals? Do you have a deadline? Is it the 90-day pause? What are we looking at here? Good question. I think one thing that has been a little disconcerting for the markets is President Trump creates what I would call strategic uncertainty in the negotiations. So, he’s more concerned about getting the best possible trade deals for the American people. We had four years of bad deals for decades of unfair trading, and we are going to unwind those and make them fair. What we are doing is, I think, the aperture of uncertainty will be narrowing, and as we start moving forward, announcing deals, then there will be certainty.
But you know it certainly isn’t necessarily a good thing in negotiating. Mr Secretary last night, there were reports on the administration sort of walking back a little bit on the auto tariffs. Can you sort of just elaborate on that decision, there and what we can expect going forward, and why, sort of, the shift in this auto trade? Well, President Trump has had meetings with both domestic and foreign auto producers, and he’s committed to bringing back auto production to the U. S. So we want to give the automakers a path to do that quickly, efficiently, and create as many jobs as possible. Jasmine. Thank you so much for your line. Thank you, Secretary. Back on China, does the administration anticipate supply chain shocks or supply shocks coming now that cargo shipments from China are significantly down?
And if so, are there being plans or are there plans in the process of how to address that? I wouldn’t think that we would have supply chain shocks. And I think retailers, they have managed their inventory ahead of this. I speak to dozens of companies; sometimes daily, but definitely weekly. And they know that President Trump is committed to fair trade and have planned accordingly. The Press. And then second question: Can you outline the timeline for when you think some of these deals, particularly with your Asian countries like India, Japan, South Korea, you may have an announcement? I’m glad you brought up our Asian trading partners and allies. They have been the most forthcoming in terms of doing the deals. As I mentioned, Vice President Vance was in India last week.
I think that he and Modi made some very good progress. So, I could see some announcements on India. I could see the contours of a deal with the Republic of Korea coming together. And then we’ve had substantial talks with the Japanese. Andrea, Secretary Besson, just continuing on the path of the sort of late progress. You said last or yesterday, I think, that it could happen as early as this week or possibly next week. Can you give us a bit of it? Timetable and then I wanted to ask about South Korea specifically, they’ve said that they probably won’t be able to make a comprehensive deal until early July because of their elections, Japan also has elections, and to what extent are domestic factors complicating your efforts? Canada just had an election, you know.
Are you seeing that you might have to think about delaying the 90 days? Well, I, I would actually take the opposite tack that I think from our talks that these governments actually want to have the framework of a trade deal done before they go into elections to show that they have successfully negotiated with the United States. So we are finding that they are actually much more keen to come to the table, get this done, and then go home and campaign on it. Sean. I’m sorry, did you have a comment on whether something could happen this week or next week? So, you know, you said yesterday-Again, I think that we are very close on India. And India, just a little inside baseball, India, in a funny way, is easier to negotiate with than many other countries because they have very high tariffs and lots of tariffs.
So it’s much easier to confront the direct tariffs when-as we go through these unfair trade deals that have been put in over decades, that the non-tariff trade barriers can be much more insidious and also harder to detect. So, a country like India, which has the posted and ready tariffs, it’s much easier to negotiate with them. So I think the Indian negotiations are moving well. Hi, Mr. Secretary. So it was reported this morning that Amazon will soon display a little number next to the price of each product that shows how much the Trump tariffs are adding to the cost of each product. So isn’t that a perfect crystal-clear demonstration that it’s the American consumer and not China who is going to have to pay for these policies?
Take this since I just got off the phone with the President about Amazon’s announcement. This is a hostile and political act by Amazon. Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years? And I would also add that it’s not a surprise because, as Reuters recently wrote, Amazon has partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm. So this is another reason why Americans should buy American. It’s another reason why why we are on-shoring critical supply chains here at home to shore up our own critical supply chain and boost our own manufacturing here. The Press Is Jeff Bezos still a Trump supporter? Look, I will not speak to the President’s relationships with Jeff Bezos, but I will tell you that this is certainly a hostile and political action by Amazon.
Secretary, if you have anything to add. Yeah, I would also add that bringing down the terrible Biden inflation has been a priority for the first hundred days of the Trump administration, and President Trump has done a great job of leading that since January 20th. Interest rates, mortgage rates are down. Gasoline and energy prices are down; we’re expecting the further decreases, and as Caroline said, the big tax on consumers that goes unnoticed is deregulation or regulation, and we are deregulating and bringing that down. So from a household income point of view, we would expect real purchasing increases. We’ve seen them over the first hundred days, and we would expect that to accelerate when we’re doing peace deals, trade deals, tax deals, and deregulating.
And the deregulation is a longer lead time, but I think by the third and fourth quarters, that’s really going to kick in. Thank you, Caroline. A question for you and Secretary Bessette. We talk a lot about volatility and serving the marketplace, and the President has stated all along that he’s more concerned about mainstream America, the American worker. You just talked about deregulation. And this entire fair trade and reciprocals, what is your message to the American people in terms of letting them get through this disturbance and the outcome being greater and a greater good for the American worker, the American people, the American families? Trust in President Trump. There’s a reason he was reelected to this office. It’s because of the historic success of his economic formula in the first term.
And as I laid out at the beginning of the briefing and the Secretary has talked about and the President talks about every day, there’s a proven formula that works. Massive deregulation, energy independence, and tax cuts, which are coming. And the secretary is working very hard on that with our counterparts on Capitol Hill. If you want to talk about that, that’s a huge deal to put more money back into the pockets of hardworking Americans. As for the fair trade deals the president is trying to negotiate, he’s not just righting the wrong of the mess that he inherited from the past four years of the Biden administration. This is a mess that has been created for the past four decades that has sold out the middle class; it has moved jobs overseas.
You think about our heartland, middle America, what towns used to look like, what they look like today. President Trump wants to restore the golden age, and it’s a process to do that. And that process is underway, but he’s put together a fantastic trade team. Secretary Besson, Secretary Lutnick, Jameson Greer, all working incredibly hard on this effort 24-7. But tax cuts are coming, and that’s key. And, Mr. Secretary, why don’t you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So it’s really a three-legged stool in the economic policy: its trade, its tax, and its deregulation. So, we are in the midst of addressing, as Caroline said, these long-term trade imbalances. The tax bill is going much better than I would have thought when I took office on January 28th.
And that’s through President Trump’s leadership that Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune are united. Speaker Johnson, we had a very good meeting yesterday with someone called the Big Six. NEC Director Kevin Hassett, myself, Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune, Committee Chairman Jason Smith, and Senator Crapo, and the tax bill is moving forward. It is going to give permanence to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Job Act, which will, back to the question on certainty, it will give American businesses certainty, it will give American people certainty, and then President Trump is also adding the things for working Americans that I’ve talked about earlier, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, making auto payments deductible. So that will substantially address the affordability crisis.
And the other thing that I would note, and back to data, is that The Vanguard, one of the largest money management firms in America, said that over the past 100 days, 97 percent of Americans haven’t done a trade. And in fact, individual investors have held tight while institutional investors have panicked. So individual investors trust in individual. The investors trust President Trump. Megan, in the back. Can you detail for us exactly what we should expect as far as relief on the auto tariffs front? And then further, Mr. Secretary, should we expect other industries to also get relief the way we’ve now seen for auto and tech as well? I’m not going to go into the details of the auto tariff relief, but I can tell you that it will go substantially toward reshoring American auto manufacturing.
And again, the goal here is to bring back the high-quality industrial jobs to the U. S. President Trump is interested in the jobs of the future, not the jobs of the past. We don’t need to necessarily have a booming textile industry like where I grew up again, but we do want to have precision manufacturing and bring that back. And another important, very important function of this that does not get talked about enough is national security. President Trump’s overriding concern and belief is that economic security is national security, national security is economic security. And we saw during COVID that our supply chains got cut off, and we need to bring back a lot of those supply chains-whether it’s in semiconductors, medicines, the steel-and we have to onshore those.
It’s a combination of making trade free and fair and remedying this gaping national security hole that he was left with. The Press: I would just add, Megan, the President will sign the executive order on auto tariffs later today, and we will release it as we always do. Go ahead. The Press: Thank you. Secretary, based on the negotiation with the European Union, is it hard to negotiate with the European Union? Do you have any updates on the negotiation with the European Union? I’m involved in the Asian negotiations. My observation would be – goes all the way back to Henry Kissinger’s statement, when I call Europe, who do I call? So we’re negotiating with a lot of different interests. Some of the European countries have put on an unfair digital service tax on our big internet provider.
France and Italy, other countries, Germany and Poland don’t have that. So we want to see that unfair tax removed from one of America’s great industries. So it’s going to be a give and take. So they have some internal matters to decide before they can engage in an external negotiation. Ms. Edward. The Press Thanks, Caroline. Mr. Secretary, so contacts I have in the business community say that they’re basically frozen for long-term investment because of the uncertainty around tariffs. How long do you think President Trump has to make a deal before there’s damage to the economy? Look, I think that what we’re seeing is that business leaders-they’ve gone into a pause, and I think we’re going to give them great certainty on this tax bill.
And I think over the next A couple of weeks, as I said, we have 18 important trading relationships. We’ll put China to the side, 17. They are in motion. And then, as I said yesterday, I think there’s a very good chance we’re going to get this tax bill done. And the tax bill is going to be very powerful for domestic U. S. investment. So what we are going to do, one of the most powerful parts of President Trump’s 2017 tax bill was full expensing of equipment. We are going to make America great again, as President Trump said in his speech to Congress, that will be retroactive to January 20th. The other thing that we are looking to add is full expensing for factories. So bring your factory back.
You can fully expense the equipment and the building. We will couple that with deregulation, cheap energy, and regulatory certainty, and that will continue to make the U. S. the greatest destination for domestic and foreign investment. And the President, if I can apologize, the President said that world leaders would like to meet with him in Rome, in Vatican City, I’m sorry, about trade. Other than President Zelensky, who did the President meet with about trade? And when could we get some of those deals? The President met with President Zelensky, as you know, which we-we talked about, and the President continues to be engaged with his fellow leaders around the world in the European Union. You’ve seen many of them visit the White House. I want to harp on, in closing, the point the Secretary just made.
On the campaign trail, the President promised the American public that he was going to make America the best country in the world to do business again. The lowest taxes, lowest regulation, lowest energy costs of anywhere in the world. And if you do business in the United States, you won’t pay a tariff; you won’t pay a price. Not just good for companies around the world, but it’s good for the American worker. That’s what this team is focused so hard on every day. We have work to do. The golden age of America is underway. But as I pointed out in the beginning, there’s a lot of reason for the American consumer, the American CEO, the American small business owner to be confident and optimistic about this president and where we’re headed.
So you will hear more from the president himself later this evening; He is traveling to Michigan, as you all know. He’ll make a stop at the Air Force Base with Governor Whitmer, and then we will head to a rally tonight where you’ll hear more from him directly. So we’ll see you in Michigan. Thank you guys, all right. You’ve been listening to White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt and Treasury Secretary Scott Basset. Welcome back after the top of the hour. Right now, we’ve been watching this news conference which was scheduled I think to tout what they consider to be the President’s accomplishments, economic accomplishments all week for the first 100 days yesterday was immigration, today the economy, no deals were announced today, no trade deals, I think it’s possible.
Investors have been waiting or anticipating something might be announced from the podium today, but that did not happen. The one fairly big piece of news that did happen, though, was that the Treasury Secretary was asked about a report in Punchbowl News that Amazon is going to start posting on its site the additional cost to each product that comes from the President’s tariffs, right by the price of that product. If you’re paying two bucks for something, it would say X amount is coming from the tariffs. Punchbowl said that Amazon is going to do that. Now, when a question was asked about that at the briefing, the Treasury Secretary deferred to Caroline Leavitt, who went to kind of 11 on a scale of 1 to 10 and said she had spoken to the President who called it a hostile and political act.
From Amazon. Let’s bring in CNN Global Affairs analyst Rana Foroohar. That was fairly remarkable, that answer, and it tells you, I think, a little bit about the concern that the White House has over how these tariffs are playing. 100%, John. You know, I was waiting and wondering when some of the big tech CEOs were going to raise their heads above the parapet and really question and call out the President. Excuse me. I think what Amazon has done, first of all, hold on just one second. We’re going to dip back into this briefing room right now because I think I think Caitlin Collins is Caitlin Collins is standing by in the briefing room. Let’s go there right now. Caitlin, there you are. Thank you so much.
What’s your big take after being in there and hearing what Scott Besson and Caroline Levitt just laid out? Well, on just what you were just talking about there, this new policy from Amazon that Punchwell News reported on this morning, that they are going to start listing the price difference because of President Trump’s tariffs when someone is checking out so they can see, here’s what the price would be without these tariffs, here’s what it is now with these tariffs. It was remarkable that Caroline Leavitt said she had just gotten off the phone with President Trump. She often speaks to him before these briefings happen to make sure, obviously, that she’s in line with whatever he is thinking.
And it was an incredibly aggressive response, the White House saying they believe that that is a hot move by Amazon to do that and to list those prices and reflect basically what the impact of the president’s tariffs are going to be, and it’s made all the more notable because of the relationship that the president has with Jeff Bezos. If I had told you this was the response from the White House eight years ago, you might not have been as surprised, that was when the president was openly feuding with Jeff Bezos, was highly critical of the Washington Post and its coverage of him, but Jeff Bezos came to the president’s inauguration, he was seated there among him, he has had dinner He’s been here at the White House since then.
And so it is remarkable to hear what the White House’s response to that was. I didn’t have a chance to ask a question, but obviously the next natural response to that is, is the President planning on calling Jeff Bezos about this new policy that Amazon is implementing and what that looks like? Because they do have that direct personal relationship. And so overall, that certainly is a big takeaway. But also just hearing from the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, on where this stands, especially in light of that polling that we saw from CNN last night, where the President is doing not well with the economy and voters’ minds. At a majority of them that believe a recession in the next year is somewhat likely, typically this is an area that he does very well with voters in.
He believes he came into the White House on that vow to bring down prices for voters, and so now that some of his policies are threatening to potentially bring them up in the meantime, that’s a real question. We may get a chance to see President Trump later because he is expected to sign that executive order the White House confirmed, exempting some of those automakers from tariffs; essentially, they’re not stacking on top of one another. If they’re paying one of the tariffs, they don’t have to also pay the steel and aluminum tariffs. That’s certainly a huge relief to these automakers who have been so worried about this. But, of course, it raises questions about the uncertainty of this matter, small businesses not getting the exemptions that these big automakers and big tech are getting right now, and just really the state of this trade.
Trade wars. We’re waiting to hear about any of the trade deals that the Treasury Secretary said they were actively negotiating behind the scenes. All right, Caitlin Collins in the White House briefing room. Caitlin, thank you very much. Rana Foroohar, thank you for sticking around with us right now. Caitlin was just giving us some of the context there. You were talking to us again about this complicated relationship that Amazon has with the White House and also just again, why the White House might be concerned if consumers see The cost of a tariff right next to a product that they’re buying. Well, let’s just think about a nutritional label on a product. I mean, many of us look at those labels when we go in. We’re looking at the calories, looking at how much protein something has.
Imagine if you could have that kind of transparency when you’re buying your phone or buying your car or buying avocados. That’s powerful. First of all, it’s an amazing use of the incredible amounts of big data that these companies have. I mean, this is a great use of it. It’s also it is very political, I would say. Say. I mean, the president or Caroline Levitt channeling the president called it a hostile and political act, which did sound very threatening in terms of what the president was channeling to Jeff Bezos there. I think it’s also very interesting in terms of where big tech and where some of the largest and most powerful CEOs in the country stand in relation to Trump.
And I was wondering when this penny was going to drop because, yes, you saw, as Caitlin said, them all sitting in the front row at the inauguration. It was this sort of parade of American oligarchs. On the other hand. Boy, have their businesses been hit by Liberation Day. Confidence is down. We’ve seen consumers very worried about the economy, about spending. That has huge potential economic impact, and it has political impact, too. I think we’re going to see this. I won’t call it a war, but this conflict perhaps between Amazon and the president really resonate both economically and politically. I imagine that Republicans and Democrats alike are thinking about what to make of this right now. I do want to quickly ask you about; we heard Besson say there were 18 deals that were in motion, but then he said, well, 17, we’re going to put China to the side.
And also said, when asked whether President Trump had spoken to Xi Jinping, he didn’t answer the question. So I think that was pretty clear. He was also asked whether he had talked to China, not about other things, but specifically about tariffs. Again, didn’t answer the question, saying he was sort of going to move on. What do you make of all of that? And what does that mean for the American consumer? So I thought when Liberation Day came that the Chinese were not going to take this lying down. That has been the case. In fact, not only have they struck back and taken a real hard line with the U. S., they’ve said to other countries, to Europe, to countries in the emerging world, hey, if you make deals with the U.
You may not be making deals with us. There may be retribution. Besant said, look, we’re the deficit nation. China sends five times as many products to the U. S. as we do to them. They’re weaker. But that is discounting something very powerful about the Chinese. And I’ve been to China many times. They are prepared to take a lot of pain. And they are a very nationalistic country. They have a lot of pride. And it will be politically terrible for Xi Jinping if he is perceived to be rolling over and doing what Trump says. So that is all in play right now. And I think that this is going to drag on for a long time. All right, Rana Forohar, thank you so much for your analysis as we’re coming out of hearing a lot of interesting news, especially the news about Amazon being a hostile and political act by putting that stuff out.
Q&A Summary
Q1: Why did the White House call Amazon’s plan to display tariff costs on products a “hostile and political act”?
A: The White House accused Amazon of political bias, claiming the company failed to highlight inflationary costs during the Biden administration. They framed the move as an attack aligned with Chinese interests, urging Americans to “buy American” and support onshoring policies.
Q2: How does the Trump administration respond to concerns about declining U.S. manufacturing outlooks?
A: Treasury Secretary Scott Besson dismissed negative survey data, citing strong job growth, consumer spending, and “record investment” in reshoring manufacturing. He emphasized deregulation, energy independence, and upcoming tax cuts as drivers of industrial revival.
Q3: Is the U.S. negotiating with China on tariffs, and what’s the administration’s stance?
A: Besson avoided confirming direct talks but asserted Chinese tariffs are “unsustainable,” claiming they could cost China 5–10 million jobs. He shifted blame to China, stating the U.S. holds leverage as the larger importer: “The onus is on them to remove tariffs.”
