Washington, June 29: President Donald Trump says he is not planning to extend a 90-day pause on tariffs on most nations beyond July 9, when the negotiating period he set would expire, and his administration will notify countries that the trade penalties will take effect unless there are deals with the United States.
Letters will start going out “pretty soon” before the approaching deadline, he said.
“We’ll look at how a country treats us — are they good, are they not so good — some countries we don’t care, we’ll just send a high number out,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” during a wide-ranging interview taped Friday and broadcast Sunday.
Those letters, he said, would say, “Congratulations, we’re allowing you to shop in the United States of America, you’re going to pay a 25% tariff, or a 35% or a 50% or 10%.”
Trump had played down the deadline at a White House news conference Friday by noting how difficult it would be to work out separate deals with each nation. The administration had set a goal of reaching 90 trade deals in 90 days.
Negotiations continue, but “there’s 200 countries, you can’t talk to all of them,” he said in the interview.
Trump also discussed a potential TikTok deal, relations with China, the strikes on Iran and his immigration crackdown.
Here are the key takeaways:
Few details on possible TikTok dealA group of wealthy investors will make an offer to buy TikTok, Trump said, hinting at a deal that could safeguard the future of the popular social media platform, which is owned by China’s ByteDance.
“We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way. I think I’ll need, probably, China approval, and I think President Xi (Jinping) will probably do it,” Trump said.
Trump did not offer any details about the investors, calling them “a group of very wealthy people.”
“I’ll tell you in about two weeks,” he said when asked for specifics.
It’s a time frame Trump often cites, most recently about a decision on whether the US military would get directly involved in the war between Israel and Iran. The US struck Iranian nuclear sites just days later.
Earlier this month, Trump signed an executive order to keep TikTok running in the US for 90 more days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership.
It is the third time Trump extended the deadline. The first one was through an executive order on Jan. 20, his first day in office, after the platform went dark briefly when a national ban — approved by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court — took effect.
Trump insists US obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear facilities
US strikes on Iran “obliterated” its nuclear facilities, Trump insisted, and he said whoever leaked a preliminary intelligence assessment suggesting Tehran’s nuclear program had been set back only a few months should be prosecuted.
Trump said Iran was “weeks away” from achieving a nuclear weapon before he ordered the strikes.
“It was obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said. “And that meant the end to their nuclear ambitions, at least for a period of time.”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Sunday on X that Trump “exaggerated to cover up and conceal the truth.” Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that his country’s nuclear program is peaceful and that uranium “enrichment is our right, and an inalienable right and we want to implement this right” under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. “I think that enrichment will not — never stop.”
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on CBS that “it is clear that there has been severe damage, but it’s not total damage.”
Grossi also said the UN nuclear watchdog has faced pressure to report that Iran had a nuclear weapon or was close to one, but “we simply didn’t because this was not what we were seeing.”
Of the leak of the intelligence assessment, Trump said anyone found to be responsible should be prosecuted. Journalists who received it should be asked who their source was, he said: “You have to do that and I suspect we’ll be doing things like that.”
His press secretary said Thursday that the administration is investigating the matter.
A temporary pass’ for immigration raids on farms and hotels?
As he played up his immigration crackdown, Trump offered a more nuanced view when it comes to farm and hotel workers.
“I’m the strongest immigration guy that there’s ever been, but I’m also the strongest farmer guy that there’s ever been,” the Republican president said.
He noted that he wants to deport criminals, but it’s a problem when farmers lose their laborers and it destroys their businesses.
Trump said his administration is working on “some kind of a temporary pass” that could give farmers and hotel owners control over immigration raids at their facilities.
Earlier this month, Trump had called for a pause on immigration raids disrupting the farming, hotel and restaurant industries, but a top Homeland Security official followed up with a seemingly contradictory statement. Tricia McLaughlin said there would be “no safe spaces for industries who harbour violent criminals or purposely try to undermine” immigration enforcement efforts.
Status of China trade talks
Trump praised a recent trade deal with Beijing over rare earth exports from China and said establishing a fairer relationship will require significant tariffs.
“I think getting along well with China is a very good thing,” Trump said. “China’s going to be paying a lot of tariffs, but we have a big (trade) deficit, they understand that.”
Trump said he would be open to removing sanctions on Iranian oil shipments to China if Iran can show “they can be peaceful and if they can show us they’re not going to do any more harm.”
But the president also indicated the US isn’t afraid to retaliate against Beijing. When Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo noted that China has tried to hack US systems and steal intellectual property, Trump replied, “You don’t think we do that to them?”
