US President Donald Trump on Thursday struck a sanguine note on the United States' ongoing tariff negotiations with trading partners, while stressing that Washington is "the one that sets the deal."
Trump made the remarks during a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the White House, as South Korea, Japan and dozens of other countries are looking to reach deals in talks over US "reciprocal" tariffs that he paused just hours after they went into effect last week.
"We're doing very well with negotiations, I think, with all countries," Trump said. "We have a lot of countries that want to make a deal. Frankly, they want to make deals more than I do."
Trump also said that if countries do not want to make a deal, "we will make a deal for them."
"Because that's what's going to happen ... But we want to listen to everybody," he said. "I think I can say for Scott and the other people that are working on it that we're listening and we're going to be very fair to people, but you know, we're the one that really sets the deal."
He was referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who was at the White House meeting.
Bessent commented on the negotiations with the "Big 15" economies, including South Korea.
"First, we had a fantastic meeting with Japan yesterday, I believe there has been a call with the EU already, and we have South Korea coming in next week," the secretary said.
On April 2, Trump announced reciprocal tariffs to equalize what other countries impose on US goods. The tariffs, including 25 percent duties on South Korea and 24 percent on Japan, went into effect on April 9. But hours later, Trump placed a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs and applied a 10 percent baseline tariff to those countries. (Yonhap)
