Trump clashes with journalists over tariff policies, calling him a “madman”

President Donald Trump A clash with a journalist on Thursday involved issues concerning the new signature tariffs and told him he spent his first term “fighting with a lunatic like you.” The intense exchange was a series of administrative litigation under the signing ceremony of the White House, aiming to expand mutual tariffs and strengthen U.S. trade policy.

With reporters White House After signing the contract, a reporter faced Trump why he emphasized tariffs more during his second term.

“You are weighing the decision to do this, and under the 1977 law, you have the right to do so. “Why don’t you invoke this law in the first semester?” You can pay for billions of dollars in semester one, but you wait until semester two? ”

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The president unhesitated back without hesitation: “Yes, because in my first semester, I was fighting madmen like you, who were trying to do things incorrectly with the formally elected president.”

“And we did impose certain tariffs in the first semester.” “If you look ChinaChina, we took hundreds of billions of dollars from China. ”

He also said Coronavirus disease Pandemic His decision to not emphasize tariffs during his first term also contributed to a factor.

“The last thing I have to do when Covid appears is to tell France, Italy, Spain and several other countries that we will collect you with tariffs,” he explained. “We have to fight the situation at that time.”

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U.S. President Donald Trump made comments on tariffs on April 2, 2025 at the White House Rose Garden in Washington, DC, the United States, which holds a “foreign trade barrier” document. (Reuters/Carlos Baria/Archive Photo)

He continued: “But if you look at my first semester, we collected hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, but your people have not had a good coverage.”

Trump’s executive action on Thursday “reflects the president’s continued efforts to protect the U.S. from foreign threats to U.S. national security and economy by ensuring fair, balanced and reciprocal trade relations to benefit U.S. workers, farmers and manufacturers and manufacturers and manufacturers and strengthen U.S. defense industrial bases,” a statement from the White House said.

This is shortly after Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen Announced a trade agreement Sunday between the United States and the European Union.

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Donald Trump shook hands with European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen (L) after meeting in Turnberry in southwestern Scotland on July 27, 2025. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

“We agree that tariffs on cars and everything else will be direct tariffs of 15%” Trump said.

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He added: “So, our tariff is 15%. We have all the European countries open and I think I can say that this is basically closed. I mean, you are not fully accepting our orders. You are not fully accepting our agriculture.”

Von der Leyen said that in addition to making $600 billion in other investments in the U.S., Europe will buy $150 billion worth of U.S. energy

Anders Hagstrom and Stephen Sorace of Fox News Digital contributed to the report.