Trump Says 10% Tariff on EU, 50% Tariff on Chinese Goods to Be Great for Economy

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in a sit-down interview with Bloomberg shortly before the attempt on his life, argued that tariffs are "phenomenal" economically -- "and man, is it good for negotiation."

Trump denied that he had considered 60% tariffs on Chinese imports -- even though he had told Fox News it could be even higher -- saying he wants 50% tariffs.

When asked about a global baseline 10% tariff, an idea that was reported in the same story that said 60% tariffs on China were under consideration, Trump said, "They treat us very badly."

Bloomberg asked: "Would you give some countries a 'friends and family discount'?"

Trump replied: "Sure, so the European Union sounds so lovely. It’s a wonderful group. And many of us came from there. You know, we love Scotland and Germany. We love all these places. But once you get past that, they treat us violently. They don’t take our cars. We take their cars by the millions. They don’t take our farm product. Very little of it. We take their farm product. They take almost nothing. We have a deficit with them of way over $200 billion." (The trade deficit with the EU was $229 billion in 2023.)

Bloomberg journalists asked Trump why most large company CEOs are against tariffs. "It’s amazing," Trump replied. "Do you know why? Because they don’t want to build plants in the United States." Trump argued that China and India attracted foreign manufacturing plants by imposing high tariffs on products. He added: "Now, they don’t like tariffs because they’ve already built their plants over there."

Bloomberg asked if major American companies could have carve-outs from tariffs, as Trump did with the Section 301 tariffs for Apple. He acknowledged that he spared Apple, and praised CEO Tim Cook for lobbying him directly.

I said, “I’m gonna do something for you guys, but you have to build in this country.” I want them to build here. That’s the other thing tariffs do. If you put tariffs on companies, they’re going to build here, because they’re not going to want to pay the tariff."

Trump said China is building "massive automobile plants" in Mexico, and said they're going to put United Autoworkers members out of work.