fifa barred international matches in iraq in 1990 in the lead up to the first gulf war. iraq won 4-1. thanks for joining us. i'm dana perino. here's trace in for shep. >> well, we're watching the white house where we expect action on import taxes. the president trump says he's sticking with his plan for tariffs on steel and aluminum. some countries could get a break. we'll have the announcement live. lots of movement in the russian investigation. paul manafort and corey lewandowski each once ran the trump campaign. manafort is in court and lewandowski in front of a congressional committee. that as we hear the president talk to at least one witness about an appearance before the special counsel. we'll see what that could mean. and secret meeting in the state show. robert mueller's team has been looking into it until last year. was it an attempt by the incoming administration to seat

up a secret back channel with the kremlin or a standard sit-down aimed at building relationships. we'll look at that in the first hour of "shepard smith reporting." we begin with breaking news. a live look at the white house. president trump set to sign off on his proposed tariffs for steel and aluminum. the president's plan facing opposition from members of his own party and put him at odds with gary cohn, who is leaving after losing the battle to prevent the tariffs. the president says he's making good on his promise to protect american businesses and workers by charging 10% on aluminum imports and 25% for steel. >> i'm sticking with 10 and 25. we want fairness.

we have not been treated fairly by other countries. >> there was a bunch of fact and forth whether this would even happen today. let's get to john roberts. he's live on the north lawn. john? >> trace, good afternoon to you. one of the big questions in this, we saw the president talking about it in broad brush strokes. we'll want to get to the finer details. how all of these carveouts will work and how to apply them so they don't punish allies and maintain supply chains for national security and how to apply them and still make tariffs to protect our steel and aluminum industries effective. if you go back to 2002, the last time we had tariffs on steel, there was so many exemptions, 700 of them, that the program was like swiss cheat. that -- at the same time, there was an action launched by the wto which the united states was

cited for and threats of retaliation by our allies that the bush administration said they would take the tariffs off. in the end it was pretty much decided that they had hurt the u.s. economy. the president indicated there would be some exemptions coming beginning with a window in which canada and mexico could avoid it by signing a new nafta deal. other exemptions could be like the u.k. to use make parts for the columbia class nuclear submarines. listen to what the president said about it earlier today. >> we need steel, we need aluminum. we're negotiating with mexico and canada. and the nafta. depending whether or not we reach a deal, also very much involved with this, national defense. if we reach a deal, most likely that we won't change those two countries the tariffs. we have other countries very

much involve with us on trade but also on military and working together with military. we'll be making a decision as to who they are. >> one of those countries that the president was referencing there could be australia. the european union has threatened retaliatory tariffs t way the e.u. is doing it will put maximum political pressure on the president, trace, because they plan on targeting a series of goods manufactured in swing states here in the u.s. >> a fair bit of drama leading up to this announcement. >> there was. we were told yesterday in an off-the-record briefing it would happen at 3:30. then we would look at this morning. look like it wasn't going to happen. then we were told maybe it will happen. the president's attorneys have been working all day on working out how this would function. i think what happened was, the president woke up and started

hearing some backtracking from some of his aides saying we're not sure we can get it done today. i think he said get it done. i'm making the announcement at 3:30 and tweeted to that effect to put everybody on notice that yes, it was going to happen today. >> and john, there's word president trump asked witnesses about their conversations with robert mueller's team in the meddling investigation. the "new york times" is mueller is aware of it. the president asks reince priebus whether investigators had treated priebus fairly. the times reports president trump told an aide that don mcgann should deny a report that the president told him to fire mueller. let's get back to the chief white house con -- correspondent, john roberts. john? >> i've talked with some people that have had these conversations. we should point out that since reince priebus departed as chief of staff, reince and the

president talk often. we're not quite to mcgann yet. i was told the conversation with priebus was nothing of substance in terms of what he told mueller. it was more along the lines of how did the whole thing go, were you treated fairly by this special counsel's office. the president basically feeling badly that priebus had to take time out of his busy schedule. now to mcgann. there's the report that you mentioned that the president told rob porter, the fired staff secretary, to go and tell mcgann to put out a statement in january after a "new york times" story came out to say that the president never told mcgann to fire mueller and mcgann said i can't put out that statement because you did tell me to fire mueller. fox news was told that the president never ordered mcgann to fire mueller. that he did say i'm not sure

about all of this. doesn't he have a lot of conflict of interest? could you talk to rod rosenstein and find out from him what the options might be. mcgann never did that. we reported this in january when the president was at davos. mcgann said that would be a terrible idea and he didn't want to go there. we also heard today from john dowd, the president's lead counsel on the outside on this russia investigation. do you do telling me that the president is fully cooperating with the mueller investigation saying he's been remarkably respectful and cooperative throughout this investigation. no president in history has been as transparent when it comes to working with special counsel. john dowd saying that his team keeps the president briefed on the progress of the mueller investigation. the president follows the advice of his attorneys and dowd says

the president is respectful of robert mueller. >> thanks, john. fox news has confirmed the special counsel's team has been digging for months into a secret meeting just before the inauguration. the meeting between the founder of a private security company and a russian official close to president vladimir putin. the big question here is whether team trump was trying to set up a so-called back channel with russian. let's get to the chief intelligence correspondent, catherine herridge live in washington. catherine? >> on capitol hill today we heard from the house intelligence committee's ranking democrat, adam schiff, who says he wants to recall eric prince that testified last year about this january 2017 meeting at a group of islands and the crown prince from the united arab emirates who happened to be at the meeting and has a strong relationship with the russian president. democrats alleged today there's a larger conspiracy.

>> that this meeting was part of an effort to establish a back channel to russia, that the meeting that eric prince had with the russian banker was not happenstance. it's at odds with what we heard in the testimony before the house intelligence committee. >> committee democrats want george nader to testify. he's reportedly cooperating with the special counsel investigation. nader played a role setting up the january meeting in the seychelles. eric prince said the meeting with the russian businessman happened by chance and at the suggestion of the united air -- arab emirates and did not have a xi jinping to create a back channel with the russians. this goes to the heart of the unmasking controversy. this is the unmasking of american citizens. susan rice unmasked participants in the seychelles meeting and rice also testified that she unmasked a december 2016 trump

tower meeting. that included the president's son-in-law, the crown prince of the united arab emirates and others. the crown prince is close to vladimir putin and rice feared the meetings were evidence of this back channel between the incoming administration and moscow. this meeting was described to fox news as an effort by the administration to build relationships which they characterize as standard during any transition, trace. >> also, catherine, president trump's former campaign chairman paul manafort pleading not guilty in federal court. he faces tax evasion charges and bank fraud. prosecutors say he hid income and accounts from the irs. manafort is confident he will be acquitted. robert mueller who is investigating russian meddling brought the case. let's get back to catherine herridge in washington. >> we saw the former trump campaign chairman leaving the

court after he pled to failing to follow lobbying disclosure laws before he joined the trump campaign. the indictment was brought by the special counsel in addition to an existing indictment on similar charges in washington d.c. to bring maximum pressure on manafort and his business partner, rick gates, who recently pled guilty and promised to cooperate with the special counsel. spokesman for manafort emphasized the charges had nothing to do with russian. a former campaign manager, corey lewandowski testifying before that same house intelligence committee behind closed doors with the senior democrat telling reporters after that he refused to answer some questions and the subpoena may be necessary. the thing is, only the republicans on that committee have subpoena power. adam schiff would have to get their agreement to move forward and republicans have already indicated they want to get the investigative part of this project, if you will, done, in

the next couple weeks before the recess, trace. >> catherine herridge live in washington. thank you. we're getting new information about the trump tariff proposal. the president said he could give some countries exemptions. we're learning about that and we'll have the details on what he's planning for you next. smile dad. i take medication for high blood pressure and cholesterol. but they might not be enough to protect my heart. adding bayer aspirin can further reduce the risk of another heart attack. because my second chance matters. be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen.

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>> trace: a live look now at the white house. we're waiting for president trump to make an announcement about his tariff plan. fox news can report a brand new detail. if the president gives exempt n exemptions to some countries, that will raise tariffs on other countries. we expect that to happen live in 14 minutes. more on developments in the russian investigation. questions about a secret meeting with a russian official and a uae respect tied to vladimir putin in the seychelles island. let's bring in tom bevin from real clear politician. let's start with the meeting. the quick and dirty is, eric prince, the founder of blackwater, a big trump supporter, his sister is betsy devos, meets there. he meets with the crown prince of abu-dhabi, the leader of the

united arab emirates. they're talking business. they suggested that he meet with this russian banker. now there's allegations that this was about setting up a back channel for russia. at the timing of this, the president had already won the election. this was two weeks before the inauguration. am i missing the bomb shell here, tom? >> i don't think so. if there's any repercussions for this story, it might be the fact that, you know, the house intelligence committee, you heard adam schiff say this story is at odds with what he told us in closed-door temporary. those discrepancies may put him in jeopardy. as far as the meeting goes, you're right. this was -- to the extent this has anything to do with collusion, this meeting took place after trump had already won. so in that sense, it's just

another example of special counsel is looking in an awful lot of directions. as to how that might bear on any sort of collusion, it's unclear. >> trace: when you say that when schiff is saying that eric prince, when he testifies before congress, didn't mention that he met with a man named george nader who has been in the white house a number of times, an adviser of the crown prince and that's the conflict here. they're saying this george nader was at the bar during this meeting with the russian banker and eric prince never mentioned it. that's kind of their sticking point. am i -- is that a fair assessment? >> i think also the way that eric prince represented it and he represented it in public, the uae crown prince should say that it was a happenstance meeting. the "washington post" suggested it wasn't a happenstance meeting, it was a scheduled meeting, that eric prince knew he would be meeting with that person ahead of time.

that's another discrepancy in the story. >> trace: and if it happened after the election, is it okay for eric prince to meet with the russian banker? >> sure. it may not have been wise necessarily but it's not illegally. trump won. the government is setting up transitions. eric prince other than being the brother of betsy devos, there's hardly any ties with trump. so there's hardly anything untoward. clearly this article doesn't give us an indication. >> trace: let's move on with the president talking to reince priebus and this testimony before robert mueller's probe what do you make of that?

>> same story essentially. you know, you have to read to the 20th paragraph in a 22-paragraph article to learn to talking to people about their testimony is not illegal. may not be wise, but it's not illegal. again, priebus had testified, don mcgann testified this was after the fact. i think john roberts mentioned that it was a conversation that took place and trump was asking priebus from what we know, hey, how did they treat you. were they nice to you? okay. fine. they moved on. so it's -- had big headline in "the new york times," blowing up on twitter and all that, but in terms of what actually happened, what the story is, i'm not sure there's much there. >> trace: the white house contention is priebus was out. he was out of the white house by then and working in private practice. this was a disruption in his life. there was bad feelings on the white house's part about that, correct? >> correct. the other piece of this, the don

mcgann piece, that trump forgot, you know, he read the story in "the new york times" about leaked testimony of don mcgann saying -- he told mcgann to fire bob mueller. he said hey, you have to challenge that story. i never did that. said mr. president, yes, you did. they moved on. so again, the main thing being, this took place after the idea that trump was trying to tamper with witnesses, which is something that mentioned in the piece, took place after they testified. so there's no logic to that argument either. >> trace: yeah, you want to tamper before they say stuff. thanks, tom. real clear politics. >> thanks. >> trace: as we wait for president trump to talk about his import tax plan better known as the tariffs, some in his own party are not holding back. more than 100 house republicans have fired off a letter to the president asking him to reconsider broad tariffs that

could hurt the american economy. and it's workers. we have a lot of democrats that are in favor of this. we'll get to the bottom of this when the trump and president speaks coming up. but there's no way to avoid that mi...s pmi, hey! this'll help. rocket mortgage by quicken loans makes the complex simple. there's also origination fees and... this takes care of it, thank you. yeah. understand the details and get approved in as few as 8 minutes. you were pushed out of your homeland, but you could never be broken. you walked together. you built your home again. my dna showed that i'm native american,

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>> trace: and there's breaking news. a live look at the white house. president trump planning to sign off on his proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum minutes from now. 3:30 on the east. we'll bring you that live when it starts. more than 100 house republicans asking the president not to go through with his proposal. those lawmakers say the tariffs will hurt the economy and american workers. let's get to mike emanuel. he's live on capitol hill. can congress stop the president's tariffs? >> if they had an incredible

veto proof majority they could. but it doesn't appear as if congress is unified. 107 house republicans signed a letter to the president saying "we're writing to express deep concern about the prospect of broad global tariffs on aluminum and steel imports because tariffs are taxes that make u.s. businesses less competitive and u.s. consumers poor." this has caused heartburn for leadership on capitol hill. paul ryan worries about these tariffs basically having a negative impact on american consumers, american businesses. speaker paul ryan at an event at home depot in atlanta made these comments just moments ago. >> the best policy is to be surgical and specific and do after those specific unfair trade practices. because they are unfair. the president is right to point that out. i'm just not a fan of broad-based across-the-board

tariffs. you'll have a lot lay-off collateral damage. >> ben sasse, a frequent critic of the president was blunt saying "new tariffs are a really stupid policy. they will kill american jobs, they will lead to net job loss since many republicans consider tariff another word for taxes, they're very much worried about these being passed on to american consumers." trace? >> yeah, we heard from some democrats in pennsylvania and ohio and west virginia where there's a lot of steel practices. what are some of the top democrats saying about this tariff plan? >> they're giving president trump credit for taking on beijing. they say it's right to do to protect the american worker. chuck schumer while giving the president credit for wanting to go after the chinese said this plan needs more fine tuning. >> i would say to you, mr. president, don't swing blindly and wildly at our faux

china. establish a well-placed jab at china. set them back. let them know we mean business. >> schumer says that president trump has done a better job of identifying the target, china, much better than the bush and obama administrations did. it's not often you hear that kind of praise coming from the senate democratic leader about this particular president, trace. >> trace: yeah, i took a double take on that. thanks, mike. we're expecting president trump to sign off on his proposed tariffs any moment now. while we wait, we're going live to one u.s. steel company where some workers say they're concerned that the tariffs could cost them their jobs. that is coming up.

>> i'm lea gabrielle with the fox report. more of today's headlines. doctors accusing syria of using

chlorine gas. the government has denied using gas. an aid convey delayed by fighting and shelling in the area. a former russian spy and his daughter are in critical but stable condition. that's after someone poisoned them with a rare nerve agent in southern england. this is days after the father and daughter turned up unconscious on a park bench. sky news reports 19 other people including a police officer had to go to hospital for treatment. the kremlin denying involvement. singapore blaming a deadly plane crash in killing sailors. the news continues with trace gallagher after this. then i learn type 2 diabetes puts me at greater risk for heart attack or stroke. can one medicine help treat both blood sugar and cardiovascular risk?

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may cause low blood sugar. common side effects are nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite, indigestion, and constipation. side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. change the course of your treatment. ask your doctor about victoza®. oh thanks. say, yeah, i took your advice and had geico help with renters insurance- it was really easy. easy. that'd be nice. phone: for help with chairs, say "chair." phone: for help with bookcases, say "bookcase." bookcase. i thought this was the dresser? isn't that the bed? phone: i'm sorry, i didn't understand. phone: for help with chairs, say "chair." does this mean we're not going out? book-case. see how easy renters insurance can be at geico.com. >> trace: a couple things we got. we're looking at the roosevelt room there. the president has not walked in. he brought a lot of steel

workers with him. paul ryan is speaking at a home depot in atlanta. are we going to listen to ryan? let's listen in to the house speaker. he's talking about tariffs. >> yesterday the allegations of hush money over stormy daniels are a big deals. do you agree -- >> i haven't put it a second of thought into this. it's not on my radar screen. >> you think republicans went a step too far in taking away punishing -- >> i'm not going to comment on something i don't know a lot about. i think the focus on the nra is

overblown and misguided. that's not the issue here. i think the issue -- we're bringing the school safety bill to the floor next wednesday. so i think the nra can defend itself. the focus on the nra is overblown and misguided. ajc? is that -- yeah. go ahead. >> [question inaudible] >> is that for epilepsy? >> [question inaudible] >> is this the duck bill? i may be wrong about that or

scott perry. i'm asking the two members of the delegation here. your question is about -- >>[inaudible]. >> i don't support medical marijuana. there's -- this is an issue in my state, too. the oil which has no thc in is it is for seizures. that is something that we in our state passed. i think colorado as well and a number of other states. it has no thc in it whatsoever. that's an anti seizure medicine. that's not the same issue as medical marijuana. >> [question inaudible] >> i can't comment.

>> [question inaudible] >> that -- is this scott perry's bill? scott perry. we have about 5,000 bills in congress. i would refer you to scott perry, a congressman from pennsylvania. i'm almost certain about the nonthc anti-seizure medical oil. i'm pretty sure scott perry has a bill on that. federal bill. so i'd refer you to him. i don't know enough about it to give you a good educated answer. that's one thing i learned about answering. don't answer it if you don't know enough about it. thanks, guys. >> trace: so there goes paul ryan. he's at a home depot in atlanta. we're waiting, as you can see,

the roosevelt room. the secretary of the treasurer is there. as soon as the president comes in, we'll go to that. first, we're going to bring in john hillson and gregory mccordy. the president was supposed to start at 3:30. as you look at this, the layout and the president saying we're going to give exemptions to mexico and canada. if they're permanent, we'll raise the other tariffs. what is your make on that? >> yeah, it's a balancing act, isn't it? you have this global problem. the oversupply of steel. it's not just coming from china. at least not directly in the united states. if you block steal from coming in directly from china, it can still get in perhaps through

mexico or canada. so it is a very difficult balancing act for the president to sign a trade proclamation. >> trace: let me hold you there. here's the president coming in the roosevelt room saying hello to the steel workers. that's why it's being held in the roosevelt room versus the oval office. most of these are signed in the oval office. this one needed more room. they brought these people in from all over the country. some from pennsylvania, ohio, west virginia. those are some of the states that are concerned about this. here's the president. >> i'm honored to be here with our incredible steel and aluminum workers. you are truly the backbone of america. you know that. very special people. i've known you and people that are very closely related to you for a long time. you know that. probably the reason i'm here. so i want to thank you. i also want to thank secretary

mnuchin, secretary ross, peter navaro, mike pence, our great vice president. they've worked so hard on getting this going and getting it done and people are starting to realize how important it is. we have to protect and build our steel and aluminum industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are really friends of ours both on a trade basis and a military basis. a strong steel and aluminum industry are vital to our national security. absolutely vital. steel is steel. you don't have steel, you don't have a country. our industries have been targeted for years and years, decades in fact by unfair foreign trade practices leading to the shuttered plants and mills, the laying off of

millions of workers and the decimation of entire communities. that's going to stop. right? it's going to stop. this is not merely a economic disaster but a security disaster. we want to build our ships, we want to build our planes, we want to build our military equipment with steel, with aluminum from our country. and now we're finally taking action to correct this long overdue problem. it's a travesty. today i'm defending america i've national security but placing tariffs on foreign imports of steel and aluminum. we will have a 25% tariff on foreign steel and a 10% tariff on foreign aluminum. when the product comes across our borders. it's a process called dumping.

they dumped more than -- at any time on any nation anywhere in the world and it drove our plants out of business and drove our factories out of business. we want a lot of steel coming into our country but we want it to be fair and we want our workers to be protected. we want our companies to be protected. by contrast, we will not place any new tax on product made in the u.s.a. there's no tax of a product here. you don't want to pay tax, bring your plant to the u.s.a. there's no tax, which we will benefit from the massive tax cuts that we have in place. we have passed the largest tax cut plan in the country's history. that has caused really tremendous success between that and regulation cutting. i think maybe regulation cutting every bit as much. we have a long way to go.

but we've cut more than any president in hisly. so we're urging all companies to buy american. that's what we want. buy american. the action that i'm talking today follows a nine-month investigation by the department of commerce, secretary ross, documenting a growing crisis in our steel and aluminum production that threatens the security of our nation. also is bad for us economically and with jobs. the american steel aluminum industry has been ravaged by aggressive foreign trade practices. it's really an assault on our country. it's been an assault. they know better than anybody. other countries have added production capacity that exceeds demand and floods the mark with cheap metal that is subsidized by foreign governments and

creating jobs and take against way jobs from our country. i've been talking about this a long time. a lot longer than my political career. i've been talking about this for many years. for example, it takes china about one month to produce as much steel as they produce in the united states in an entire year. because we've closed down so much capacity. plants closed all over the united states and some plants i she massive plants from 40 years ago and they're working now in a little corner of the building. we're going to get the buildings open again and producing a again. that will be a great thing for our country, this is only the first stop. aluminum imports account for more than 90% of the primary american demand. over the last two decades, nearly 2/3s of american raw steal companies have gone out of business. more than a third of the steel

jobs have disappeared. six primary aluminum smelters, which is a big deal, have permanently shut down since just 2012. the actions we're taking today are not a matter of choice, they're a matter of necessity for our security. we're seeing the national security benefits of this order yesterday in anticipation that we would be here today, u.s. steel announced its reopening a mill in illinois, a big one and recalling 500 workers immediately. that's going on all over the country. by the way, it went on with solar panels, which we did three months ago and washing machines where they were dumping washing machines all over our country. now they're expanding plants to make washing machines. we put the tax on a lot of it while you were here. skilled trained work force in

steel is a crucial element of america's national security and must be protected. after the signing of this proclamation, central aluminum in kentucky will be investing over $100 million to restart and upgrade their idled military grade high quality aluminum production, which is critically important to our national security. that is 150,000 additional tons of aluminum. think of it. this is a closed plant. now they're doing 150,000 tons. production and an additional 300 workers and ultimately many more hired in the great state of kentucky. a package of sometimes $90,000 per worker. our greatest presidents all understood from washington to lincoln to jackson to teddy

roosevelt that america must have a strong vibrant and independent manufacturing base. has to have it. president mckinley that felt very strongly about this, the country was very, very successful. we operated out of cash flow, if you can believe it. the protective tariff policy of the republicans he said has made the lives of masses of our countrymen sweeter and brighter and brighter. it's the best for our citizenship and our civilization and opens up the higher and better destiny for our people. many politicians lamented the decline of our once proud industries and many countries announced global excess capacity. nobody took action. all of our politicians, that have seen what has happened. i've seen it 25 years. talked about japan, talked about china.

the politicians never did anything about it. now they are. our factories were left to rot and rust. all over the place. thriving communities turned into ghost towns. you guys know that. not any longer. the workers that poured their souls into building this great nation were betrayed. but that betrayal is now over. i'm delivering on a promise i made during the campaign and i've been making it for a good part of my life. i never really thought i would do this. i said let's run for president and look what happened. part of the reason it happened is you and my message. having to do with you. another messages also. security, military, the wall, the border. a lot of good messages. this is one of the most important. my most important job is to keep

american people safe. as you know, we just had approved a $700 billion military budget, the largest ever, $716 billion next year. that means not only safety but it means jobs. it also means the use of steel from our country. if the same goals can be accomplished by other means, america will remain open to modifying or removing the tariffs for individual nations as long as we can agree on a way to ensure their products no longer threaten our security. so i put ambassador lightheiser in charge of negotiating with countries that seek an alternative to the steel and aluminum tariffs. the fact is we've been treated so badly over the years by other countries, i think really we've

been treated very badly by our politicians, by our presidents, by people that represented us that didn't know what they were doing. and we lose $800 billion a year on trade. every year. $800 billion. it's been going on for a long time. $300 billion, $400 billion, $500 billion. got up to $600 billion. and it keeps going. but it's going to start changing. it has to change. we're negotiating with china. we're in the midst of a big negotiation. i don't know if anything has come from it. they've been very helpful. president xi i have a lot of respect for. i don't know if anything will come of it. but we're going to cut down the deficits. we have a deficit with china of at least $500 billion. when you add intellectual property, it's much higher than

that. that's a year. at the same time, due to the unique nature of our relationship with canada and mexico, we're negotiating right now nafta. we're going to hold off the tariff on those two countries to see if we can make the deal on nafta. national security very important aspect of that deal. if we're making the deal on nafta, this will figure in the deal and we won't have the deal on canada or the mexico. if we don't make the deal on nafta and if we terminate nafta because they can't make a deal fair for our workers and fair for or farmers, we love our farmers and fair for our manufacturers, we're going to terminate nafta and we'll start all over again or we'll just do it a different way. we'll terminate nafta. that will be it. i have a feeling we're going to make a deal on nafta. i've been saying it a long time. we make a deal or we terminate.

if we do, there won't be any tariffs on canada and there wouldn't be any tariffs on mexico. one other things. some of the countries that we're dealing with are great partners, great military allies. we're doing to be looking at that very strongly. the tariffs don't go effective for another 15 days. we're going to see who is treating us fairly, who is not treating us fairly. part of that will be military. who is paying the bills, who is not paying the bills. we subsidize many rich countries with our military. they pay not 100 cents on the dollar and in some cases not 50 cents and they're massively wealthy countries. we have to stop that. that will enter into the equation also. very interesting, i saw a tweet that just came in from elon musk who is using our wonderful space facilities and did a great job

three weeks ago. he said, for example, an american car going to china pays 25% import duty. a chinese car coming to the united states only pays 2.5%. a ten fold difference. so an american car going to china, think of that, pays 25% import duty. so we send our car over there, pay 25%. they send their car over here, 2.5%. that's from elon. everybody knows it. they have known it for years. they never did anything about it. it has to change. we're going to be doing a reciprocal tax program at some point. if china is going to charge us 25% or if indy is going to charge us 75% and we charge them nothing, if they're at 50 or they're at 75 or they're at 25, we're going to be at those same numbers.

it's a mirror tax. so they charge us 50, we charge them 50. right now we'll charge them 50, we charge them nothing. doesn't work. so that's called a reciprocal tax, a mirror tax. we're going to be doing a lot of that. the first year we have set the sta stage. a lot of it had to do with structural we had to go through certain procedures to get to this point. now we're at this point. american companies have not been treated fairly. some american companies, frankly, have taken advantage of it and gone to other countries and developed in mexico massive automobile plants, taking our jobs away and taking our companies down to mexico to make the cars. then they send them across the border without tax, without anything. so we lose the jobs, they make the cars, they get the benefits and they sell the cars back in

to the united states. so we're changing things. going to have a lot of great relationships. i think companies will be very happy in the end. i think that countries will be very happy. going to show great flexibility. again, many of the countries that treat us with the worst on trade and on military are our allies as they like to call them. we just want fairness. we just want fairness. we want everything to be reciprocal. i think in the end, we're going to have a lot of great jobs, a lot of great companies. all coming back into our country. you see it the other day, chrysler announced they're living mexico, coming back to michigan with a big plant. you haven't seen that in a long time, folks. haven't seen that in a long time. so because i said, i grew up with this group of people, i

know a lot about the steel industry and i know a lot about the aluminum industry. we're going to bring them back. i thought maybe a few of you might want to say a couple weeks. there's about 25 million people watching. so don't worry about it. you want to say something? come on up. please. >> i'm dutch stephens. i work in hallsville, kentucky. right now we're running at 40% capacity. two years ago, we shut down 60% of the capacity. we had a downturn in the market. my father worked in the industry and worked at that plant for 40 years. this hits home for all of us. these tariffs going into place, this gives us the ability to come back to 100% capacity and investing over $100 million in our plant and over 300 some odd jobs will be brought back to the communities. so i'd like to say thank you.

>> thank you very much. [applause] >> come on ever. the one thing, the quality of our steel is really much higher. it's of a much better quality, which especially for certain things is very important. please. >> my name is scott sarge. i'm president of local 227. i'd like to tell you a story about my father during the 80s. he lost his job due to imports coming into this country. i just want to tell you what that does to a man with six kids is devastating. so i never forgot that look into his eyes and my household what that does to a family. you hear about it. when you're actually involved, it impacts you. it will never leave you. so with that being said for h herman sarge, your story didn't

end. i never want to see it happen again. for these workers and these folks, i appreciate the opportunity. i'm very humbled with this. it's very important to us. i never want to see it happen again. i say that sincerely from my heart. i thank you for the opportunity for what you do. herman. yes, sir. >> your father is looking down. >> he's still alive. >> then he's even more proud. anybody else? please. let's arm wrestle. >> i'm ron davis. steel worker. i just wanted to say in 2009, my plant supplied a majority of the armor for the humvees and all the vehicles in theater. it's sad to say because of the imports coming in, our plant

will be idled in september. at one time we had 400 members. we're going to be down to about 71. these tariffs definitely have an impact. maybe not for our plant but for the other plants out there. i appreciate it. >> thank you very much. ed. [applause] >> anybody else? you're okay? you're going to accept great jobs, right? you're going to be very happy. things will be changing very rapidly. so it's really my honor to start this process. it's going to be a very fair process, very fair to other countries especially those that tweet us well. we look forward to it. we look forward to having lots of mills opening up, lots of plants opening up, both steel and aluminum and other things. we'll be doing other things, positive things. you have great people. would you like to take a picture in the oval office? i assume you've been here many

times. let's do that. let's go and do that. we'll go into the oval us a, sign this up, we'll have a picture. okay? thank you. [applause] it's about time,

>> that's right. >> yes, sir. >> you've been waiting for a long time. let's pass them around. >> thank you, sir. [applause] >> let's take a mixture in the oval office. thanks very much, everybody. thank you. great day. thank you. [applause] >> what about trans ship something. >> we're going to stop it or we're going to let it happen and they're going to pay. it's a big deal. china says it's got 2% but it's much more. we'll have a great relationship with china. but we have to do something. we're losing