President Donald Trump said this week that he will remain flexible on his economic policy, especially as it relates to tariffs, because he wants to have the ability to make adjustments as needed.
Trump made the remarks while speaking to reporters inside the Oval Office on Wednesday during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin.
The remarks were featured in an exchange with a reporter from NBC News, which Trump slammed as “one of the worst networks on television.”
“Let me just tell you, I have the right to adjust,” he said. “And I was called by the automakers, as an example, General Motors, Ford, etc…, the big three, the big four, and they asked me to do them a favor. Could I delay it for a period of four weeks so that they’re not driven into a little bit of a disaster for them? They actually love what I’m doing, but they had a problem. And I’m not like a block that just ‘I won’t delay,’ it’s called flexibility. It’s not called inconsistency. It’s called flexibility. And I think you want me to be flexible to.”
He said that while he remains flexible on the issue for now, there will be little flexibility once the tariffs start.
“April 2nd is going to be a very big day for the United States of America,” he said. “The United States of America is going to take back a lot of what was stolen from it by other countries and by frankly, incompetent US leadership, grossly incompetent.”
POTUS: "The United States of America is going to take back a lot of what was stolen from it by other countries and, frankly, by incompetent U.S. leadership… We're going to take back our wealth and we're take back a lot of the companies that left." pic.twitter.com/Uy9F0AnP39
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 12, 2025
Trump then shifted to talking about U.S. immigration policy and the millions of people that former President Joe Biden let into the country over his four years in office.
“So look, we, this country, needed somebody to defend it,” he said. “It’s this big, beautiful place that was being ripped off by by illegal immigrants coming in from prisons, coming in from mental institutions, gang members, gang leaders, drug dealers, pouring into our country with the open borders.”
“I am so angry at the last four years of what they’ve done to our country, what they’ve done to this country, between inflation, but maybe the most that bothers me is that they would allow millions of people to come into our country that are stone cold, murderers, killers, drug dealers, the worst gang members, the worst people allowed into our country,” he continued. “And we’re now getting them out. We’re going to get them out. We’re getting them out.”
