LIVE: Trump Meets European Commission President in Scotland

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President Donald Trump meets with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen to discuss transatlantic trade relations at 11:30 a.m. ET on July 27.
Well, thank you very much.
It's a beautiful Sunday in Scotland, and we thought we could cut things short by – and
certainly travel distance, right, by having our meeting here.
So we discuss options, and I just – it's an honor to have the President of the European
Union with us.
Ursula has been – really done a terrific job for them, not for us, but she's done
a great job.
And she's highly respected by us also.
And we look forward to talking to see if we can do something.
We've had a very good relationship over the years, but it's been a very one-sided
transaction, very unfair to the United States.
And I think both sides want to see fairness, but it's been a very, very one-sided deal
that it shouldn't be.
And so we're here with her very brilliant staff, and hopefully we'll resolve a few
issues.
But it's a great honor.
You know, we just built this ballroom, and we're building a great ballroom at the White
House.
The White House has wanted a ballroom for 150 years, but they never had a real estate
person.
You know, nobody – no president knew how to build a ballroom.
But this just opened a relatively short time ago, and it's been quite the success.
And I think – I was just saying I could take this one, drop it right down there, and
it would be beautiful.
This is exactly what they've wanted.
But it's an honor to have you at the new ballroom at Turnberry.
And thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. President.
Thank you very much for inviting me here.
Indeed, it is today about trade between the European Union and the United States.
We're together the two largest economies worldwide.
If you look at the trade volume, it's the biggest trade volume globally, with $1.7 trillion
among us.
And if you look at our markets, it's a huge market, 800 million people, if you take the
United States and the European Union.
So I'm very much looking forward to the discussions we will have now.
Our staff have done some of the heavy lifting, but now it's on us.
And you're known as a tough negotiator and dealmaker.
But fair.
And fair.
And what is in front of us?
It's less important.
If we are successful, I think it would be the biggest deal each of us has ever struck.
So I'm very much looking forward to it.
Ever struck by anybody.
That's true.
Yeah, that's true.
Right now, we have that honor goes to Japan.
We just struck a deal with Japan, as you know.
And we're very close to a deal with China.
We really sort of made a deal with China, but we'll see how that goes.
And we have numerous other deals.
And mostly, I'm just going to charge tariffs.
And, you know, it's not a deal, per se, but people are going to pay tariffs.
And we're doing them at the low end, not the high end, because we don't want to hurt anybody.
And pretty well, but you and I both figured this is this is really the biggest trading
partnership in the world.
So we should give it a shot, right?
I'm looking forward to that.
Thank you very much.
I do, too.
Any questions, please?
Mr. President, on Friday, you put the chances of a deal at 50 percent, maybe.
It seems like you're in quite a good mood.
How would you rate those chances now?
I'm actually not in a good mood.
But I will tell you, I think the chances are, yeah, I think Ursula would say probably 50-50
of making a deal.
I hope.
You know, I'd like to make a deal.
I think it's good for both.
But yeah, I'd say 50-50.
And what would you say the main sticking points are?
We have three or four sticking points.
I'd rather not get in.
We'll be discussing them.
But I think the main sticking point is fairness.
Mr. President, please.
Why you're in a bad mood?
Is it a bad morning of golf?
Or why you're not in a good mood?
No, the golf was the golf was beautiful.
It's a golf can never be bad.
Even if you play badly, it's it's still good.
If you had a bad day on the golf course, it's OK.
It's better than other days.
But no, I think I look forward to this meeting.
You know, we've had a hard time with trade with Europe, very hard time.
And I'd like to see it resolved.
But if it isn't, we'll, you know, have tariffs and they'll do what they have to do.
But we have a good chance of getting it resolved.
We'll probably know in about an hour.
Shouldn't take that long.
It's you know, it's complicated, but not really complicated when you get right down to it.
Right.
No, no, the August 1st is is there for everyone.
The deals all start on August 1st.
Most of the deals other than steel and aluminum, which we've been getting 50 percent tariffs
from, I guess, just about everybody.
And those have come in and we've taken in, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars
just on steel and aluminum.
You've seen the numbers.
We had a tremendous amount of money coming over the last month and it's coming in, you
know, very rapidly, which is fair.
We have a lot of steel mills and plants, aluminum mills and plants being built.
We have a lot of AI being built and we have a lot of auto plants being built or going
to be built because they don't want to pay tariffs.
So, you know, if they don't want to pay tariffs, the best way to do it is just build your plant
in the United States.
Yes, please.
Mr. President, what do you expect from the Europeans in terms of opening the markets
to American products?
Well, they have to open up to American products.
You know, we're open to European products and we have been for forever.
I don't think we have we just about don't have any.
I don't think we have any product that we say you can't sell.
I guess you could get a little bit cute with chips, but that's, you know, a little bit
different category, too.
No, you know, Europe is very closed.
We don't sell cars into Europe.
We don't sell essentially agriculture of any great degree.
They want to have their farmers do it and they want to have their car companies do it.
I'm just I'm not saying anything that nobody knows.
We have a rough situation if we want to sell cars in Europe, we're not allowed to.
And as you know, they sell millions and millions of cars, Mercedes, BMW, so many different
cars, Volkswagen, so many different cars and so many millions of cars.
I would imagine.
Number one, I didn't look at that, but I would imagine number one by far more so than even
Japan.
Japan sells a lot of cars, too.
But the Japan deal worked out very favorably, very good.
I think I hope for them, too.
And that's what we want to do.
Make everybody happy.
Yes, please.
Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza?
Say it.
Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza?
What did you say?
Israel.
Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza?
Well, you know, we gave 60 million dollars two weeks ago and nobody even acknowledged
it for food.
And it's terrible.
You know, you really at least want to have somebody say thank you.
No other country gave anything.
We gave 60 million dollars two weeks ago for food for Gaza.
And nobody acknowledged it.
Nobody talks about it.
And it makes you feel a little bad when you do that.
And, you know, you have other countries not giving anything.
None of the European countries, by the way, gave.
I mean, nobody gave but us.
And nobody said, gee, thank you very much.
And it would be nice to have at least a thank you.
And I took a lot of heat.
You know, when I when I do that, a lot of people aren't happy about that because they
say, well, why are we doing it and nobody else?
But I think we had a humanitarian reason for doing it.
What's going to happen?
I don't know.
I can tell you that Hamas, as I said, would happen at the end.
You know, we've gotten back a lot of hostages, a tremendous number of hostages, most of them.
Now we have dead hostages and the mothers want them back.
And we have 20 people approximately, but that are living.
But we have a lot of bodies and the parents want those bodies as much as they would want
their child if that child were alive.
I was I met with parents that were it was so sad.
Sir, please get my son back.
How is your son doing?
Well, he's dead, but they have his body.
And it's so important.
It's more important.
It's almost like more, but it's as important as if the child were living.
These people were I mean, they're devastated.
And I said, when you get it down to a certain number, you're going to be able to make a
deal with Hamas, because once they give them up, then they feel that that's going to be
the end of them.
And what I said is exactly true.
You know, they had a routine discussion the other day, and all of a sudden they hardened
up.
They don't want to give them back.
And so Israel is going to have to make a decision.
I know what I do, but I don't think it's appropriate that I say, but Israel is going to have to
make a decision.
Mr. President, when you were in the Middle East, you talked about the images coming out
of Gaza.
Those images are still going.
Many of them are much worse.
Thinner children are starving.
What do you see or feel when you look at those images today?
Well, it's terrible.
You know, when I see the children and when I see especially over the last couple of weeks
and people are stealing the food, they're stealing the money, they're stealing the money
for the food, they're stealing weapons, they're stealing everything.
It's a mess.
That whole place is a mess.
The Gaza Strip, you know, was given many years ago so that they could have peace.
That didn't work out too well.
When Israel gave that up, whoever was the prime minister at the time, who I know who
it was, but it was not exactly a very clever thing to do because that was given so that
they finally have peace.
And it's actually made the situation worse.
But we'll see what happens.
I think Iran is acting up.
I think that we have a lot of people like we have Venezuela acting up in a different
way.
They're sending they continue to send people that we rebuff to our border.
They continue to send drugs into our country, Venezuela.
They've been very nasty.
And we can't let that happen.
But we and we have other countries, too.
We do have and this is just getting a little off subject, but we have now the safest border
we've ever had.
And I think in many respects, we probably have the most successful and I say it all
the time.
Every leader when I went to NATO the other day, every leader said, you have the hottest
country in the world.
We have the hottest country in the world now.
We're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars.
We have the highest stock market we've ever had.
We have the best numbers we've ever had.
But we have hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our country.
And I think it's the hottest.
And by the way, one year ago, our country was dead.
We had a dead country because of an incompetent president and incompetent Democrats.
All they know how to do is talk and think about conspiracy theories and nonsense.
If they'd waste their time talking about America being great again, it would be so
much nicer, so much easier, be very successful.
But we were a dead country and now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
Yeah.
Any other questions?
President Trump on this particular deal, if you manage to do a deal today, will that be
the end of the matter?
Or could there be more tariffs coming, particularly on fires?
No, if we do a deal today with the European Union, that will be the end of it.
Yeah.
We're not, won't, we'll go, I guess, a number of years at least before we have to even discuss
it again.
No, that would be the end of it.
And this is the biggest deal.
People don't realize this is bigger than any other deal.
We have great countries, great countries.
I'm familiar with many of them.
So are you.
And this is really the biggest deal.
So this is the, I guess we're the biggest out there and they're the second.
And when we come together, this will be the biggest deal.
If we, if that happens, and it could happen, should happen.
Okay.
Thank you.
Will pharmaceuticals be part of today's deal?
No, it won't.
Pharmaceuticals will be, I mean, could be we'll do something, but basically pharmaceuticals
won't be part of it because we have to have them built, made in the United States and
we want them made in the United States.
And I think it's easy to say, and I think it's important to say pharmaceuticals are
very special.
We can't be in a position where we don't have, where we're relying on other countries.
Now, Europe is going to make pharmaceuticals, drugs, and everything else for us too, a lot.
But we're going to have also our own.
A question for the President, by the way, please.
Yes.
Can you give your assessment of what you feel the chances are of a deal that the President
just talked about, 50-50 chance, the biggest obstacle being fairness?
What would you say are those things for you?
I think the President is right.
We have a 50-50% chance to strike a deal.
And indeed, it is about rebalancing.
So you can call it fairness, you can call it rebalancing.
We have a surplus, the United States has a deficit, and we have to rebalance it.
We have an excellent trade relation, it's a huge volume of trade that we have together.
So we will make it more sustainable.
Mr. Trump, can you do better than a 15% tariff raise with the EU?
Better meaning lower?
Yeah.
No.
Mr. President, to return to Gaza, you're going to meet the British Prime Minister tomorrow.
He's going to ask you to consider again peace talks between Israel and Hamas.
Are you now saying there is no point in trying to re-sign?
Well, we're meeting about a lot of things.
We have our trade deal, and it's been a great deal.
It's good for them and good for us, I think.
The UK is very happy.
They've been trying for 12 years to get it, and they got it.
And it's a great trade deal for both, it works out very well.
But we are discussing, we'll be discussing that.
I think we're going to be discussing a lot about Israel.
They're very much involved in terms of wanting something to happen.
He's doing a very good job, by the way.
Also on Gaza, sir, did you speak with Prime Minister Netanyahu this weekend about getting
more aid into Gaza?
I talked to him, yeah, I did.
I talked to him about a lot of things.
I talked to him about Iran.
I think Iran's been very nasty with their words, with their mouth.
I think they've been very nasty.
They got the hell knocked out of them, and they, I don't think they know it.
You know, I actually don't think they know it.
They really do.
The whole thing's a con job.
We have a lot of con jobs going on.
Iran was beaten up very badly, for good reason.
We cannot have them have a nuclear weapon.
But they still talk about enrichment.
I mean, who would do that?
You just come out of something that's so bad, and they talk about, we want to continue enrichment.
Who would say that?
How stupid can you be to say that?
So we're not going to allow that to happen.
We're not allowing that to happen.
Did you talk about more aid into Gaza?
Will I do more aid?
Yeah.
The U.S.?
The U.S. is going to do more aid for Gaza, but we'd like to have other countries participate.
We're going to mention that to the European Union today.
You know, that's an international problem.
It's not a U.S. problem.
It's an international problem, and we're giving a lot of money and a lot of food and a lot
of everything.
If we weren't there, I think people would have starved, frankly.
They would have starved.
And it's not like they're eating well.
But a lot of that food is getting stolen by Hamas.
You know, they're stealing the food.
They're stealing a lot of things.
You ship it in, and they steal it.
Then they sell it.
Mr. President, you said that Europe is being crushed by mass migration, and I wonder whether
your friends in the Southern region agree with you on that.
Well, I'd let you respond to that, if you'd like.
So we have been working intensively on the topic of regular migration.
And we have, from the very beginning, said that migration is a European challenge that
needs a European answer.
As Europeans, we will fulfill our international obligations, as we've done in the past, also
in the future.
But we, as Europeans, are the ones who decide who comes to the European Union and under
what circumstances, and not the smugglers and traffickers.
That's the principle in which we're working.
I will say this, you know, they did ask me when I got off the plane.
Immigration in Europe has a tremendous problem, and we do too.
But we've sealed our borders.
We have nobody coming in, and we have hundreds of thousands of people being taken out, and
the bad ones first.
And I think we're doing a very good job of that.
But we are, I mean, it literally registered zero people last month.
You probably saw that.
Nobody.
And Europe has a very similar problem.
I think they're going to end up in the same place.
You might as well go there quicker.
And the other thing I say to Europe, we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United
States.
They're killing us.
They're killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful plains.
And I'm not talking about airplanes.
I'm talking about beautiful plains, the beautiful areas in the United States.
And you look up and you see windmills all over the place.
It's a horrible thing.
It's the most expensive form of energy.
It's no good.
They're made in China, almost all of them.
When they start to rust and rot in eight years, you can't really turn them off.
You can't bury them.
They won't let you bury the propellers, you know, the props, because there's a certain
type of fiber that doesn't go well with the land.
That's what they say.
The environmentalists say you can't bury them because the fiber doesn't go well with the
land.
In other words, if you bury it, it will harm our soil.
The whole thing is a con job.
It's very expensive.
And in all fairness, Germany tried it and wind doesn't work.
You need subsidy for wind and energy should not need subsidy.
With energy, you make money.
You don't lose money.
But more important than that is it ruins the landscape.
It kills the birds.
They're noisy.
You know, you have a certain place in the Massachusetts area that over the last 20 years
had one or two whales wash ashore.
And over the last short period of time, they had 18.
OK, because it's driving them loco, it's driving them crazy.
Now, windmills will not come.
It's not going to happen in the United States.
And it's a very expensive.
And I would love to say, I mean, today I'm playing the best course, I think, in the world,
Turnberry.
Even though I own it, it's probably the best course in the world.
And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills like right at the end of the 18th.
I said, isn't that a shame?
What a shame.
You have the same thing all over, all over Europe in particular.
You have windmills all over the place.
Some of the countries prohibited.
People ought to know that these windmills are very destructive.
They're environmentally unsound.
Just the exact opposite.
Because the environmentalists, they're not really environmentalists.
They're political hacks.
These are people that, they almost want to harm the country.
But you look at these beautiful landscapes all over, all over the world.
Many countries have gotten smart.
They will not allow it.
They will not.
It's the worst form of energy, the most expensive form of energy.
But windmills should not be allowed.
Okay.
Cambodia and Thailand.
You spoke to leaders of both countries.
I did.
Are they doing enough to stop the fight?
I hope so.
You're talking about Cambodia and Thailand?
So I had an interesting time dealing with Thailand.
And we do a lot of trade with Thailand and with Cambodia.
And yet, I'm reading that they're killing each other, you know, they're fighting, they're
in a war.
And I say, this should be an easy one for me because I've settled with India and Pakistan
and Serbia and Kosovo is going at it, you know, but they have for a long time in all
fairness and you know about that.
And others, the Congo.
And you know, what's going on there.
That's been a horrible thing with Rwanda.
That's been a horrible thing.
machetes, machetes all over the place.
It's a terrible thing.
We got that one.
So we did five of them.
And I was saying, you know, we have a trade deal.
We were working on another.
We finalized another trade deal yesterday.
And I asked my people, I said, how are we doing with Cambodia?
And how are we doing with Thailand?
And they say they're going to be coming in at some point to talk.
I said, well, let's call them right now.
So I called the prime ministers of each.
And I said, we're not going to make a trade deal unless you settle the war.
A lot of people are killed.
You know that in a short period of time, the border, they're fighting pretty like wild.
And I spoke to both of the prime ministers.
And I think by the time I got it off, I think they want to settle now.
I know they're meeting today or tomorrow.
And we're going to work with them.
Marco Rubio is working with him also, his people and him.
I think we're going to get that.
That would be a great thing.
But that's going to that would have turned out to be a bad one.
And I will tell you, India and Pakistan, they were really getting ready to go at it.
So getting those things settled, if I could do it, and if I can use trade to do that,
it's you know, it's my honor.
But I had great talks with two very good people that I they both really would like to make
a deal.
So we'll see what happens.
Okay.
How about one more?
Two more.
You're spending a lot more on defense.
Thanks to you.
They are.
Should they get a fair deal?
Well, they're spending a lot of on defense, but we're spending a lot more on, you know,
and we've been very generous to NATO for many, many years.
And no, but we had a terrific meeting with NATO.
I'd love to do as well.
We had a meeting where they put up 5% instead of 2% and they're going to pay it instead
of not paying because, as you know, many people didn't pay the 2% or anywhere near it.
And the 2% was too low.
And we're going to be sending now military equipment and other equipment to NATO.
And they'll be doing what they want.
But I guess it's for the most part, working with Ukraine.
But we we had a fantastic meeting.
I guess it's now almost four weeks ago.
One of the best meetings I've ever had at NATO.
And the spirit and the coming together was incredible.
And I stood and I listened to almost 30 speeches.
That was a lot.
And I was really late and I had to leave.
But I didn't want to leave before those last 10 spoke because they'd go home and then tell
their wife Trump left.
And it was so nice to the United States that we're all mentioning the United States and
me, but they were mentioning the United States to be here at such an honor, you know, etc.
And I thought it would have been a problem.
But I did stay.
It was very hard because I was extremely late for something else that was pretty important.
And we had a tremendous NATO meeting.
I'm sure you heard that it was great.
There's some great people that you deal with on two fronts, right.
But you deal with on primarily the trade front.
But I will tell you, they came together and the relationship is really good.
That was a great, interesting question, because you probably have reported it that way.
It really we came together and they went from 2 percent to 5 percent, which nobody would
have thought that was even who would even think that because they didn't want to be
a 2 percent.
All of a sudden there are 5 percent.
And that's that's the right number.
And so it was it was a great honor.
I got to know the heads of those countries really very well at that meeting almost a
month ago.
OK.
Thank you very much, everybody.
We'll let you know what's.
I will.
I love doing back.
I'll go.
That's not in the strip, but I'll go soon.
OK.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
