Trump told Breitbart News he would be willing to meet with Xi, whom he has long had a cordial personal relationship with despite rising tensions between the U.S. and China, if Xi so desires and wants such a meeting. Therein lies the important point here though—Trump is saying that it’s Xi and the Chinese who cannot stand the pressure he’s bringing on trade and that Trump is in no rush to accommodate them. In other words, Trump has all the leverage right now, and the dealmaker-in-chief who just cut several other massive trade deals knows it.
“[Xi] wants me to go there and he’s going to come [to the United States],” Trump said during a nearly hourlong interview with Breitbart News at his majestic seaside golf resort, Turnberry, here on the Scottish coast. “We’re just going to work out dates, but we look forward to it, actually. It’s was one of the most incredible trips in my first term. It was, I think, maybe the most incredible trip—nobody’s ever seen—and Saudi Arabia was incredible also, particularly. Those two trips were—nobody’s ever seen anything like them. Very different, but equally incredible—but the China trip was, with the Great Wall, and I don’t think you were there but it was something that was unparalleled. There’s never been anything like it. They said they’re going to make it bigger and better this time. We’ll see what happens, but we’ll most likely be going to China in the not-too-distant future, maybe before this year is out—and he’ll be coming here.”
This second segment of Trump’s interview with Breitbart News came as part of a broad discussion on trade, following initial pieces of the interview already published earlier showed the president celebrating both his trade deal with the European Union and his success in securing a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand by using economic leverage. Both of those historic deals came together while Trump was in Scotland at his Turnberry property. This interview was taped with Trump right before the arrival of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to Turnberry for a bilateral meeting and press availability with the two world leaders.
After this interview with Breitbart News, on Tuesday morning in Scotland before he departed for the United States, Trump sent out a post on Truth Social about a possible Xi meeting. “The Fake News is reporting that I am SEEKING a ‘Summit’ with President Xi of China,” Trump posted. “This is not correct, I am not SEEKING anything! I may go to China, but it would only be at the invitation of President Xi, which has been extended. Otherwise, no interest! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
The key here is that it seems Trump is making it clear that it’s Xi and the Chinese who are desperate for any summit, especially as the president gains worldwide momentum for the United States on trade.
Trump had dispatched his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, to Stockholm, Sweden, to meet with Chinese officials on trade early this week—his third such meeting with them after previous discussions in Geneva, Switzerland, and London, England. Before the Breitbart News interview began here at Turnberry in Scotland, the president had, upon entering the room in which it was filmed, phoned Bessent to give him instructions on his talks with the Chinese—a sign of just how close the two men are and how Bessent truly does represent the president’s views in these talks. Asked during the interview what he wants from China as an outcome of these talks with Bessent, the president said he wants China to open its markets to U.S. products.
“We want to have them open up,” Trump said when asked what he’s hoping the Treasury Secretary achieves in discussions with Chinese officials. “We want to have—certain things we want to be fair. We’re getting along very well with China. The trade deal so far is good. I actually raised the tariffs—at one point they were 145 percent, which means you can’t do any business. But that was a little bit excessive to put it mildly. Basically that stopped trade between the United States and China for a month. That was not good for China. They had a tough period of time. They were losing factories, closing factories. I don’t want that to happen. We’re having very productive discussions with China, I can tell you. It’s a little bit different. China is different. The Europeans, interestingly, is the biggest trading deal but the China [deal] is very important to us.”
Upon his return to the nation’s capital, Bessent will sit down with Breitbart News for a major interview on Wednesday morning at a live Breitbart News policy discussion series event. The interview will air live on Breitbart News and across social networks shortly after 10:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
Trump has now successfully negotiated trade pacts with several nations, including most recently the European Union. In addition to the United Kingdom, where the first deal he reached was rolled out a couple months ago, Trump has also in recent weeks announced trade deals between the United States and the following other nations: Japan, Indonesia, the Phillipines, and Vietnam. In addition, as part of the immediate and unconditional ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia, Trump signaled they will reach trade deals with the U.S. soon.
“That will happen,” the president told Breitbart News when asked if those two nations will make deals with America.
In total, though, Trump has now wrapped together a new global trade alliance led by the United States that encompasses nearly 60 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) and nearly two billion people population-wise worldwide. In other words, Trump seems to be encircling China and rallying the rest of the world to the United States’ side as he embarks upon the next stages of his bold vision to completely restructure the global economic order to more effectively benefit the United States. Trump made clear as the upcoming Aug. 1 tariff deadline for nations that have not struck deals with the U.S. looms that he intends to continue down this road, and this plus the immigration efforts he has undertaken have unleashed a “Golden Age of America.”
“It’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened,” Trump said. “There’s never been anything like it. Just the deal with Europe, if you look at that deal, that deal is bigger than any deal that’s ever been made. But the biggest deal of all is the deal on tariffs. If you look at the tariff deal—the whole concept of tariffs—which covers sort of everybody, the tariff deal we made is by far the biggest deal ever made. There’s never been a deal so big. You could buy IBM or one of our major companies a hundred times, maybe a thousand times, and it wouldn’t equate to the kind of numbers you’re talking about here. We’re taking in—the United States is becoming very rich, very fast. We’re taking in hundreds of billions of dollars. You saw last month we had a surplus of $26 billion and everyone said: ‘Where did that come from?’ I said, ‘It came from tariffs.’ We had a surplus for the first time in 40 years, of $26 billion. Everyone is wondering where did this come from? When I was in Saudi Arabia, the king and also other people throughout at NATO and other places—the head of Qatar also and the head of UAE—and the king in that particular region, they all said almost the same words. They said, ‘one year ago, your country was dead.’ They actually said ‘dead.’ We had a dead country. Our country was maybe not going to make it. They said ‘now you have the hottest country in the world.’ It’s only been six months. We still have things to do—the border is great, but we have to get a lot of people out that came in illegally and that are criminals at the highest level, including murderers. We have to get them out. What the Democrats did to this country is unthinkable—unthinkable. We are getting them out—Tom Homan and Kristi [Noem], as you know, are doing a great job. But we are really set to have, I call it, the Golden Age. This is the Golden Age of America.”
Trump also said that those who criticized his tariff strategy back in April in the aftermath of “Liberation Day” have been proven wrong and that “many of them have apologized.” He explained the history of how tariffs funded the government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before a switch to the income tax system. He also noted that Breitbart News covers the trade issue “better than anybody” else in media.
“Many of them didn’t understand tariffs. Even economists didn’t understand,” Trump said. “It’s a negotiation basically. You say you are going to pay X percent on any product that you put into our country—they’re taking our jobs, they’re closing our plants when they do this, and they have to pay a price for it. So, our country was the richest from 1870 to around 1913. Proportionally, it was the richest. That was a Golden Age in a sense. We were so rich and we had so much money we didn’t know what to do with it. That was when we had a tariff country. We took money from outside countries. Then, stupidly, in 1913, they went to an income tax system. The rest is history. You know, look, it’s done fine but we owe $36 trillion. You wouldn’t owe $36 trillion with tariffs. We will be paying off debt and we will be doing a lot of things with this money. This money that’s coming in is at levels that nobody has ever seen before. Our country has never seen money—and you cover it better than anybody—our country has never seen money come in at this level. Would you agree?”
Much more from Trump’s latest interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming soon.
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