Full text of Trump, Netanyahu in Oval Office: ‘We’re having direct talks with Iran’

Full transcript of statements by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and their Q and A with reporters in the Oval Office of the White House, April 7, 2025.

President Trump: Thank you very much. It’s an honor to have a very, very special person, I’ve dealt with him for a long time. Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel. And we had lunch together. We had meetings together, along with his very capable staff. And I think we’ve come up to some pretty good solutions and conclusions. And we’ll be working a little bit after this. And then I assume you’re going back home. This is a quick stop in and out.

But we appreciate you being here and we are a friend of Israel, as you know. I would say that I’m by far the best president that Israel has ever even thought of seeing. And it’s an honor to be so and to be so thought of.

[I have] many friends in Israel. They are not in an easy area, doesn’t go easy, but we are helping them. And likewise, they’ve been helping us very much. And so we’ll see how it all works out.

But we had great discussions today, I think, on the obvious subject of Iran, and also the less obvious subject with respect to Israel and that’s trade. And I think the prime minister is going to tell you a little bit about trade and what they’re doing for the United States.

So I want to thank you all for being here. Thank you very much.

The level of respect and honor the Trump Administration is giving Benjamin Netanyahu is truly heartwarming and incredible to see. pic.twitter.com/n4Z0IXM0cV

— Vivid.???????? (@VividProwess) April 7, 2025

Prime Minister Netanyahu: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Donald.

Mr. President, I want to first thank you for inviting me again to the White House. You’ve been a remarkable friend of the State of Israel. You stand by us. You’re standing with us. You are a great, great champion of our alliance. And you actually do the things that you say you do. And I think that people respect that enormously. I certainly do, and the people of Israel do.

And I think the Jewish people do as well. We just saw your representative in the Department of Justice fighting anti-Semitism, standing up for Israel in international forums. I just want you to know, from the heart, it’s deeply, deeply appreciated.

As you said, we had the opportunity to talk today about many subjects. First, if I can mention tariffs, it’s a subject of some interest today. I can tell you that I said to the president a very simple thing. We will eliminate the trade deficit with the United States. We intend to do it very quickly. We think it’s the right thing to do. And we’re going to also eliminate trade barriers, a variety of trade barriers that have been put up unnecessarily.

And I think Israel can serve as a model for many countries who ought to do the same. I recognize the position of the United States that says, we allow other countries to put tariffs on us, but we don’t put tariffs on them. And I’m a free trade champion and free trade has to be fair trade. And I think that’s basically the position that you have put forward, Mr. President.

We are going to eliminate the tariffs and rapidly. I had the opportunity to speak to Secretary Lutnick yesterday. We talked about how we could effect this quickly, and I hope to bring the solution very quickly. We’re not talking about intentions. We’re not talking about just words. We’re talking about results. Those results are going to come back. That’s the first thing.

Trump: Thank you very much. That’s very nice.

Question: Mr President, what about the hostages?

Trump: Let him finish.

Netanyahu: We did. We spoke about not only the hostages, but about Gaza. The hostages obviously is a human story of just unbearable agony. I speak to the families. I spoke to them yesterday. I spoke to another one when I was in Hungary before I came here. I speak to them every day, they’re in agony. The hostages are in agony. And we want to get them all out.

Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s very able representative, helped us get a deal that got 25 out. We’re working now on another deal that we hope will succeed. And we’re committed to getting all the hostages out, but also eliminating the evil terrorist of Hamas in Gaza and enabling the people of Gaza to freely make a choice to go wherever they want. I mean, they should have that choice.

And the president put forward a vision, a bold vision, which we discussed as well, including the countries that might be amenable and are amenable to accepting Palestinians of their free choice if they choose to go there.

That’s the second thing that we discussed. But the hostages came right on top.

We also discussed the situation in Syria. We have had neighborly relations with Turkey that have deteriorated, and we don’t want to see Syria being used by anyone, including Turkey, as a base for attacking Israel. Turkey is a country that has a great relationship with the United States. The president has a relationship with the leader of Turkey. We discussed how we can avoid this conflict in a variety of ways, and I think we can’t have a better interlocutor than the president of the United States for this purpose.

Whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons

And of course, we also discussed Iran.

Look, we’re both united in the goal that Iran does not ever get nuclear weapons. If it can be done diplomatically, in a full way, the way it was done in Libya, I think that would be a good thing. But whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. That’s the end of my speech.

Clamor of questions.

Trump: Wait, wait, wait. We’re having direct talks with Iran. And they’ve started, it’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting and we’ll see what can happen.

Everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious

And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious. And the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with or, frankly, that Israel wants to be involved with if they can avoid it. So, we’re going to see if we can avoid it. But it’s getting to be very dangerous territory, and hopefully those talks will be successful.

And I think it would be in Iran’s best interest if they are successful. We hope that’s going to happen. And we had just a lot of good talks on a lot of things.

I appreciate very much what you said about the tariffs. We’ve been ripped off and taken advantage of by many countries over the years and can’t do it anymore. We just can’t do it anymore. We can’t be the stupid people anymore. And it’s all because of the people that sat in the seat right here, — not your seat, but this seat. They allowed things to happen to our country that they shouldn’t have allowed to happen on trade and other things, many other things.

I mean, look at what’s happened with our last president, where he allowed millions of people to come into our country with an open border. Who would want an open border? How stupid was that.

But he allowed millions and millions of people. And of the millions, and I think it was 21 million people, but let’s say three of them were serious criminals, serious murderers and drug dealers and gang members and people from jails. All the jails emptied out right into our country, right along the open border on Mexico, generally the Mexico.

They came in from Canada, too, by the way a lot, but generally speaking on the southern border. And what a shame it is that we are now working very hard to get them out, get the criminals out, get the murderers out, the drug dealers, the mentally insane, get them out. They dropped the mentally insane in our country too. And this was all done by the Biden administration. It’s a disgrace that we have to work so hard.

And then we have judges that try and protect these people, but they didn’t protect us when the people were being let in. But to get them out is never easy with these people. So I think we’re doing a great job. The border is the best it’s ever been. Even as strong as it was, I had a great solid border. I think it might even be tougher right now, and stronger. So people are coming into our country, but they’re coming in legally. We have a legal process and we have that moving along properly, because we need people to come into our country, but we want people that can love our country and cherish our country. So that’s where we are, and with that, any questions?

Question: [Inaudible] … the markets today and would you be open to a pause in tariffs to allow for negotiations?

Trump: Well, we’re not looking at that. We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us and they’re going be fair deals. And in certain cases, they’re going to be paying substantial tariffs. They’ll be fair deals.

As you know, I spoke this morning with the prime minister of Japan, and we had a very good conversation. They’re coming. And I said, one thing you’re going to have to open up your country, because we sold no cars, like zero cars in Japan, and they sold millions of cars into our country. They don’t really take our agriculture — a little bit of it just to keep us slightly happy, but they don’t take what they’re supposed to be taking. So we have a great relationship with Japan. We’re going to keep it that way, but they’re coming in to meet, and other countries are coming in.

With China, as you know, against my statement, they put a 34 percent tariff on, above what their ridiculous tariffs were already. And I said if that tariff isn’t removed by tomorrow at twelve o’clock, we’re putting a 50 percent tariff on, above the tariffs that we put on. So they’ve gone for years. They’ve become a rich country because of people again that were in the White House that allowed this to happen.

Hundreds of billions of dollars a year they’d make on us on trade and it shouldn’t be that way. I have a great relationship with President Xi. I hope it’s going to stay that way. I have great respect for China, but they can’t do this. We’re going to have one shot at this and no other president is going to do this, what I’m doing.

And I’ll tell you what, it’s an honor to do it because we have been just destroyed, what they’ve done to our system. We have 36 trillion dollars of debt for a reason. And the reason is that people allowed it to get that way. So we’ll be talking to China. We’ll be talking to a lot of different countries. If we can make a really good deal, and a fair deal for the United States — not a good deal for others. This is America first. It’s now America first. And we didn’t put America first. We put America last. The people that were in the Oval Office put America last, and we’re not going to stand for it.

Question: Two questions. Do you expect any of these deals to be made before April 9. And secondly, there have been some mixed messages from your administration. You’re talking about negotiations and yet others in your administration are saying that these tariffs are actually permanent. What is that?

Trump: Well, they can both be true. There can be permanent tariffs and there couls also be negotiations because there are things that we need beyond tariffs. We need open borders. We almost had a deal with China where we’re going to open up China. It was almost done. Some of you remember it, during my first term.

And it was very disappointing. We ended up making a great deal, $50 billion worth of product or so, fifty billion — you’d like that in Israel. And I made that deal, but it wasn’t the deal that I wanted. The deal that I wanted was that, plus they were going to open up China so that our companies could go into China and compete with other countries and China for a large number of people. And at the very end, that deal was terminated, and we went to a piece of the deal.

So there are a lot of things outside of tariffs, but tariffs are very important. But there are a lot of things, like opening up countries that were totally closed. China is essentially a closed country. In fact, it is a closed country. And what they do is they charge tariffs so that if you sell cars, or if you sell anything, nobody is going to buy it because the price is out of control.

But that’s true with a lot of other countries also. So we’re going to get fair deals and good deals with every country. And if we don’t, we’re going to have nothing to do with them. They’re not going to be allowed to participate in the United States.

Clamor of questions.

Trump: Hold it, hold it. We’re going to have plenty of time. This gentleman has all day long.

Question: Many Palestinian Americans who voted for you voted for you and not for Biden because you promised them to end the war in Gaza.

Trump: Honored by that.

Question: The war is still going on, and there’s no hostage deal. Do you have any update on that?

Trump: Well, I’d like to see the war stop. And I think the war will stop at some point that won’t be in the too distant future. Right now, we have a problem with hostages. We’re trying to get the hostages out. We got quite a few of them out, but it’s a long process. It shouldn’t be that long.

We have a big problem that we’ve done. I think I’ll ask Pete to maybe talk about it for a second because a lot of people are asking [about] the Houthis. We’ve been very tough and very successful militarily. We’ve really damaged them badly. These were people shooting down ships and other things, by the way. Flying objects like airplanes.

And we’ve put a major hurt on the Houthis, which nobody’s been able to do. We’ve really hit them hard and they know it and they don’t know what to do. And it’s every night, night after night. And we’ve gotten many of their leaders and their experts. They’re experts on missiles. I mean they actually make missiles, nobody thought that, but they make missiles. It’s highly sophisticated, and they’re very tough, but they’ve been very badly damaged. Nobody else was able to do that. But Pete, you want to discuss that please?

Pete Hegseth, secretary of defense: Yes, sir. It’s been a bad three weeks for the Houthis, and it’s about to get worse. It’s been a devastating campaign, whether it’s underground facilities, weapons manufacturing, bunkers, troops in the open, air defense assets. We are not going to relent. And it’s only to get more unrelenting until the Houthis declare they will stop shooting at our ships. And we’ve been very clear to the Iranians as well, they should not continue to provide support to the Houthis and that message has been made very clear.

So we have a lot more options and a lot more pressure to apply, and we know because we see the reports how devastating this campaign has been in them and we will not relent.

Trump: We have a great military. There’s no military like our military. And despite Biden having given a lot, but nevertheless a pretty small piece, but it was a lot of our military away in Afghanistan, in one of the dumbest situations and maybe the most embarrassing situation we’ve ever been involved in  — that short period of time in Afghanistan. What a disgrace that was — left a lot of our military behind.

You see them in their annual parades, where they’re parading trucks that are armor-plated and different things that they got, but it’s many billions of dollars we left behind. But despite that, we have a tremendous military. That was a very small portion because we rebuilt the military during my first term. And we have great things happening with our military.

We also essentially approved a budget, which is in the vicinity of one trillion dollars and nobody has seen anything like it. We have to build our military and we’re very cost-conscious, but the military is something that we have to build and we have to be strong because you got a lot of bad forces out there now.

So we’re going to be approving a budget. And I’m proud to say actually the biggest one we’ve ever done for the military. We’re cutting other things that were under DOGE, but under a lot of other… When you look at a woman getting two billion dollars for environmental, and it had nothing to do with environmental, and they had one hundred dollars in the bank and they give her two billion. In many, many of those cases, all that stuff is going to be cut out.

But we are getting a very, very powerful military. We have things under order now, the likes of which we’ve never had before. We’ve never had the kind of aircraft, the kind of missiles or anything that we have ordered. And it’s in many ways too bad that we have to do it, because hopefully we’re not going to have to use it. But the military is very, very powerful and it’s going to remain that way.

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. I want to ask you about Iran because this is the first time we hear that the US is having a direct contact with the Iranians. Is it possible to give us some more information, at what level?

Trump: Very high level. We’re dealing with the Iranians. We have a very big meeting on Saturday, and we’re dealing with them directly.

You know, a lot of people say, oh, maybe you’re going through surrogates or you’re not dealing directly, you’re dealing through other countries. No, we’re dealing with them directly and maybe a deal is going to be made, that’ll be great. It’ll be really great for Iran, I can tell you that. But hopefully, we’re not going to have to get into that. We are meeting very importantly on Saturday at almost the highest level, and we’ll see how it works out.

Question: How do you ensure, Mr. President, that these tariffs don’t drive US trading partners into the hands of the Chinese?

Trump: I’m not worried about it. They want to be in the hands of the US They don’t want to be in the hands of the Chinese. The Chinese have turned out to be really not very good at that.

People that are with us, they’re with us, but we cannot be taken advantage of any longer. I used to watch these deals for years. I’ve been talking about it for years. I’ve been talking about it for thirty-five years, how our country is being ripped off. I mean, thirty years ago it was Japan, then it was something else, then it was another group, then it was China. China is doing the best job of it, frankly. And it’s just not going to happen.

Question: Mr. President, you have said that the EU has offered zero-for-zero tariffs on cars and industrial goods. Is that not enough?

Trump: No, it’s not enough. The EU has been very tough over the years. It was I always say it was formed to really do damage to the United States and trade. That’s the reason it was formed. It was formed with all of the countries from Europe, I guess most of them, not all of them, but most of them.

And they formed together to create a little bit of a monopoly situation to create a unified force against the United States for trade. So they have NATO, which is largely the same countries, and they took advantage of us dollar-wise and militarily until I got there. I was able to get six hundred billion dollars from NATO, where they paid NATO, because most of these nations weren’t even paying. We were paying for NATO. So we’re paying them to guard them militarily and they’re screwing us on trade. So that’s not a good combination.

So now it’s really turned around; it’s the opposite. And the European Union has been very bad to us. They don’t take our cars — like Japan in that sense. They don’t take our agricultural product. They don’t take anything practically. And yet they send millions of cars in a year — Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, BMWs. They’re sending millions and millions of cars into the US. But we don’t have a car that’s been sold to the European Union or other places, but let’s go to the European Union.

And it’s not going to be that way. It’s got to be fair and reciprocal. It’s got to be fair. It’s not fair. We have a deficit with the European Union of three hundred and fifty billion dollars and it’s going to disappear fast. And one of the reasons and one of the ways that that can disappear easily and quickly, is they’re going to have to buy our energy from us, because they need it. They’re going have to buy it from us. They can buy it. We can knock off three hundred and fifty billion dollars in one week. They have to buy and commit to buy a like amount of energy. And we have that, we have more energy than any country in the world.

I don’t know if you know that. He knows everything. The one thing you may not know, we have more energy than any country in the world. We have more of every kind of energy, every form of energy from oil and gas to coal, and people talk about, I call it beautiful clean coal. As you know, Germany is opening up a coal plant a week. They tried the windmills and it didn’t work. They tried all the other solutions and they were ready to go out of business. Now they’re doing a coal plant a week.

China is now up to two coal plants. They’re opening two major coal plants every single week in China, all over China. And then, we’re not allowed to use coal. Well, we have clean beautiful coal, more than anybody else. We have oil and gas, more than anybody else. We have the most energy of any country in the world — including Saudi Arabia, including everybody, by a lot.

And I took it to number one. We were number three and I took it to number one during my administration. And the reason that we were hurt so badly and the reason that we went into such incredible inflation during Biden, is energy. It was also their bad spending, but energy, because they played around with this incredible thing that we had built, this administration had built, and the energy costs went through the roof. And when that went up, everything else followed.

Now, if you look at what’s happening, you’re going to see this today. I said, we’re going to try and get groceries down, right? An old-fashioned term, but a beautiful term. Eggs. So when I got in, the press went absolutely crazy the first week. They said, “Eggs have quadrupled in price.” I said, “I just got here. Tell me about it.”

And Brooke Rollins and our team did a great job, and eggs are down now seventy-nine percent and they’re all over the place. And this was a problem that somebody else would have taken a long time to cure.

We have energy is down. We have interest rates are down. We have groceries, meaning food, is down. We have everything is down at levels that nobody ever thought possible. Energy looks like it’s going to be in the two dollar and fifty cent a gallon range and maybe below that for a car, so, for gasoline.

So we are really doing amazing. I mean, we’re cutting prices, because prices got so high people couldn’t live. I mean, the prices for groceries, the prices for standard groceries, standard things, were going through the roof. They couldn’t live. And now those prices are coming down. So call them groceries, but that’s down, energy is down and interest rates are down. Everything is down.

And the interest rates, the beauty there is when we refinance debt, debts become such a big factor in this country. We’re going to start paying debt off with tariffs and other things. But it’s such a big factor because the interest rate is so high. Well, now that’s coming way down. So our budget is going to look a lot better because interest costs are way down. And I guess I’ve done that.

Question: Many Israelis are watching you now on live show. So what is your specific way of getting the hostages out from the horrific captivity?

Trump: We are trying very hard to get the hostages out. We’re looking at another ceasefire. We’ll see what happens. But we want to get the hostages out. The Israeli people want the hostages out. More than anything, they want the hostages out.

This man is working very hard with us to do that. I mean, I don’t know, I hope he’s being appreciated because he’s been a great leader. He’s working very, very hard on the hostages and many other things. And there are plenty of things you have to work on. It’s a tough place in the world.

Netanyahu: I have a good partner.

Trump: You do have a good partner, and so do we. We’re working very hard on the hostages.

Question: Mr. President, if you’re going to negotiate a new deal with Iran, can you elaborate how it’s going to be more effective than the JCPOA?

Trump: Well, I can’t really say that, but I think it will be different and maybe a lot stronger.

[The president returns to the issue of the hostages.] But they were so happy when we made that first deal because we did get a lot out. I had people right in this office, this beautiful Oval Office, they came in, ten people, hostages, you know that. And I said to them, so how was it? And the stories they told me, as an example: I said to them, was there any sign of love? You were there, ten people. It’s only ten, but it’s pretty representative. Did the Hamas show any signs of, like, help or liking you? Did they wink at you? Did they give you a piece of bread extra? Did they give you a meal on the side? Like you think of doing — like what happened in Germany, happened elsewhere, people would try and help people that were in unbelievable distress.

I said, did they ever wink at you, like you’ll be okay. You’re going to be okay. No, they didn’t do that. They’d slap us. The hatred is unbelievable

They said no. I said all of them. I said, did they ever wink at you, like you’ll be okay. You’re going to be okay. No, they didn’t do that. They’d slap us. The hatred is unbelievable and the lives, you know they lived in a pipe, not really a tunnel, it was a pipe. And they always thought they were suffocating, they were going to suffocate. And then they’d open up the pipe and it was like three and a half feet high. This isn’t, you know, we hear tunnels, bad, but pipes are worse. And the stories I heard were incredible. But I just said, was there any sign of potential love or affection? And there were none whatsoever. It was amazing to me. There was nothing like, here take this, just a little extra meal or something. They lived like hell.

I don’t know. They seemed to be, they were amazing to me, because they seemed to be pretty normal. They weren’t scarred, but I guarantee underneath they have to be scarred. And one was there for three hundred fifty-six days, another was there for about one hundred and eighty days, a long time. And these are people that have been really, really horribly treated. I’ve never seen anything like it, actually. I was very surprised to hear the answer.

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. Are there two or three countries on your list that you feel are farther along in getting their tariffs lowered?

Trump: Well, I think there are many that want to get rid of tariffs right now. European Union, I mean, as badly as they’ve treated us, they’ve brought their car tariffs essentially off. I guess they brought it down to two and a half and I hear maybe to nothing. But it’s not only tariffs, it’s non-monetary tariffs. It’s tariffs where they put things on that make it impossible for you to sell a car. It’s not a money thing. They make it so difficult, the standards and the tests. They drop a bowling ball on the top of your car from twenty feet up in the air and if there’s a little dent, they say, “No, I’m sorry, your car doesn’t qualify.” When the same car from Germany or any would dent likewise. Unless you can have an army tank, it’s gonna dent.

So they come up with rules and regulations that are just designed for one reason: that you can’t sell your product in those countries. And we’re not going to let that happen. Those are called non-monetary barriers. They make barriers that are so tough that it’s impossible to qualify. So tariffs are a big part of it, but there’s another big part of it and that’s barriers.

They also do something else. They manipulate their currency, and they drive it down. They want to drive it, they want to have low currencies. It sounds better to have a high currency, a strong dollar or whatever, but they bring their currency down. And when it competes with our currency, it’s very hard to sell a tractor. It’s very hard to sell product. Because their currency is low and ours is much higher, relatively. And so it makes it very hard. I speak to a lot of companies that do business, tractor companies, and they say it’s so hard to sell because what they’ve done is they’ve lowered the Yen or they’ve lowered the Wan or they’ve lowered their currency so that it’s very hard to compete. We don’t want that either. So we have a lot of things that we’re talking about, but we’re going to fix it properly and it’s going to be fair to everybody. And in the end, I think we’re going to have a world that does a lot better, you know?

But they have to respect the United States. Nobody but me would do this. You know, it would be nice to serve a nice easy term, but we have an opportunity to change the fabric of our country. We have an opportunity to reset the table on trade. We lose billions of dollars.

We lose billions of dollars. We lose close to two trillion dollars a year on trade. We lose one trillion dollars a year to China, a trillion. We lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year on trade to China. We lose hundreds of billions of dollars overall, probably close to two trillion dollars. Why would we do that? Number one, why would we do that?

And then you have to say, is it sustainable? Then you hear about all of the people that say, well, deficits, if we have a deficit with the country or if the country has a big surplus with us, like China has a massive surplus, that they take and they spend on their military. Well, we don’t want that. I don’t want them to take five hundred, six hundred billion dollars a year and spend it on their military. I don’t want them spending money on their military.

And I shouldn’t have to spend money. We shouldn’t have to spend it either. Because hopefully, and I said this to President Xi, hopefully it’s money that we’re never going to use. In other words, because we’re not going to use those incredible weapons that we have and that they have. We don’t want that.

So it’s going to be very interesting. It’s the only chance our country will have to reset the table, because no other president would be willing to do what I’m doing or to even go through it. Now, I don’t mind going through it because I see a beautiful picture at the end, but we are making tremendous progress with a lot of countries.

And the countries that really took advantage of us are now saying, Please negotiate. You know why? Because they’re getting beaten badly because of what’s happening. They’re getting beaten badly. They’re being devalued as countries. But it’s the only chance we’re going to have to reset the table on trade. And when we do, we’re going to come out unbelievably well.

We’re going to have a strong country economically again, and we’re going to have those factories that are empty all over the United States. We’ve lost ninety thousand plants and factories. Think of this, ninety thousand plants and factories since NAFTA, which was by the way the worst trade deal ever developed, ever had by any country anywhere, NAFTA. And I terminated NAFTA.

Everybody said it would be impossible. And I terminated it. Through Congress, we terminated it. You had to get it through Congress. It was a trap. It was a horrible thing. We got it done. And we went to the USMCA, which was much better. The problem is they cheat. They cheat like crazy.

Canada cheats, Mexico cheats, just one of those things. But we’re resetting a table and we’re going to have great trade and we’re going to have a very strong country. Our country is going to be at a level that it has maybe never been or maybe — our country was the strongest, believe it or not, from 1870 to 1913. You know why? It was all tariff-based.

We had no income tax. Then in 1913, some genius came up with the idea of let’s charge the people of our country, not foreign countries that are ripping off our country. And the country was never, relatively, it was never that kind of wealth. We had so much wealth. We didn’t know what to do with our money. We had meetings. We had committees. And these committees worked tirelessly to study one subject: We have so much money. What are we going to do with it? Who are we going to give it to? And I hope we’re going to be in that position again.

Question: Mr. President, do you plan to reduce the tariffs that your government put on Israeli goods? Seventeen percent.

We give Israel four billion dollars a year. That’s a lot. Congratulations, by the way. That’s pretty good

Trump: Well, we’re talking about a whole new trade. Maybe not. Maybe not. Don’t forget, we help Israel a lot. We give Israel four billion dollars a year. That’s a lot. Congratulations, by the way. That’s pretty good. But we give Israel billions of dollars a year, billions. It’s one of the highest of, and we give a lot of countries money. You wouldn’t believe if I said we give Afghanistan a lot of money, do you?

That was a Biden deal, another Biden deal. Not only did he embarrass us with that, but they give them billions of dollars, Afghanistan, right? So, but we take good care of our friends and we don’t take care of our enemies. We’re not taking care of our enemies anymore, but we do take care of our friends.

Question: Mr. President. Lazar Berman, from the Times of Israel. The IDF is fighting again in the Gaza Strip. I myself might be called up in a month. Do you think that’s the way to pressure Hamas to get to a deal? And do you think blocking humanitarian aid is also an effective pressure?

Trump: Well, you know how I feel about the Gaza Strip. I think it’s an incredible piece of important real estate. And I think it’s something that we would be involved in, but having a peace force like the United States there, controlling and owning the Gaza Strip, would be a good thing. Because right now all it is, is for years and years all I hear about is killing and Hamas and problems.

The level of death on the Gaza Strip is just incredible. I don’t understand why Israel ever gave it up. Israel owned it. It wasn’t this man, so I can say it. He wouldn’t have given it. They took ocean-front property and they gave it to people for peace. How did that work out? Not good

And if you take the people, the Palestinians, and move them around to different countries, and you have plenty of countries that will do that. And you really have a freedom zone. You call it the freedom zone, a free zone, a zone where people aren’t going to be killed every day. That’s a hell of a place. It’s a — you know what I call it? A great location that nobody wants to live in because they really don’t. And when they have good living, real living, where Hamas and all of the problems they have, the level of death on the Gaza Strip is just incredible. And I’ve said it. I don’t understand why Israel ever gave it up. Israel owned it. It wasn’t this man, so I can say it. He wouldn’t have given it. I know him pretty well. There’s no way. They took ocean-front property and they gave it to people for peace. How did that work out? Not good.

Question: Is the immigration plan still on the agenda?

Trump: Which immigration?

Reporter: From Gaza.

Trump: All it is is a concept that I had, that I think is good and now people are copying it. Bibi, you want to tell — people are talking about the Trump plan, gee, why don’t we do that? Would you like to answer that question?

Netanyahu: I think what the president talked about is first of all to give people a choice. Gazans were closed in. In any other place, including in arenas of battle, I mean, whether it’s Ukraine or Syria or any other place, people could leave.

Gaza was the only place where they locked them in. We didn’t lock them in. They’re locked in. And what is wrong with giving people a choice? Now, we’ve been talking, including over lunch, about some countries, I won’t go into them right now, that are saying, if Gazans want to leave, we want to take them in.

And I think this is the right thing to do. If you give — it’s going to take years to rebuild Gaza. In the meantime, people can have an option. The president has a vision. Countries are responding to that vision. We’re working on it. I hope we’ll have good news for you.

Trump: Excuse me. People really do love that vision. It’s a long-term vision, but so importantly is to have that be a safe field because you’re right smack in the middle of the Middle East, you’re right along Israel, and it should have never ever been given away. It shouldn’t have been given away by Israel. I don’t know why they did it.

I mean, I do know why because they were promised peace but that didn’t work out too well, because it’s one of the most dangerous pieces of land anywhere in the world. Gaza is one of the most dangerous places in the world. So they gave it away for good intention and it didn’t work out that way.

And a lot of people like my concept, but you know, there are other concepts that I like too and there are some concepts I don’t like. You know what I don’t like? The way it is now, because right now it’s a dangerous death trap, Gaza.

Question: Mr. President. Thank you, sir. Can you talk a little bit about your meeting, potential meeting with Vladimir Putin? Do you still plan to meet with him? Could that happen in Saudi Arabia? And maybe you could elaborate as well on not providing tariffs on Russia?

Trump: So the reason we’re not talking about tariffs with Russia is because we’re not doing business essentially with Russia because they’re in a war. And I’m not happy about what’s going on with the bombing because they’re bombing like crazy right now. They’re bombing. I don’t know what’s happening there. That’s not a good situation. So we’re meeting with Russia. We’re meeting with Ukraine, and we’re getting sort of close, but I’m not happy with all the bombing that’s going on the last week or so. Horrible. It’s a horrible thing. It’s a horrible thing.

Question: Mr. President, can countries negotiate to get below ten percent?

Trump: In terms of tariffs?

Reporter: In terms of tariffs. Yes.

Trump: Look, we’ve been ripped off and taken advantage of for forty, fifty, sixty years. And the reason we got ripped off and the way they did it was tariffs.

They would charge tariffs, massive numbers of dollars. And when you look at China, when I took over, it was 507 billion dollars they were making. I call it making. A lot of people say, oh, it doesn’t mean anything. Having a surplus means a lot in my opinion.

It’s almost like a profit or loss statement. And when I took over, was 507 billion dollars that China was — this is originally, first term. And we were very, very tough on them because they were taking that money and they were building a military with it. And when Biden came in, he let him get away with murder. He had no idea. I’ll tell you what, that man had no idea what was happening, whether it was the border or China or anything else. He had no idea what was going on.

And they got — they went wild. China went wild. And the money they make is ridiculous. Okay? It’s just not gonna happen. And hopefully, we’ll get along with China. If we do, that’s great. And if we don’t, that’s okay too. But we can’t let that continue because that’s an abuse. They abused the poor people that sat in the seat, that poor Biden. He was abused by them. They took advantage of him. And I’m surprised. You know, they have smart people. They were radical left lunatics, but they’re smart. I’m surprised they’d allow that to happen. But we are going to bring great trade, and we’re gonna be fair to other countries. And I will say this, virtually every country wants to negotiate. If I didn’t do what I did over the last couple of weeks, you wouldn’t have anybody wants to negotiate.

We would have gone to these countries. You want to talk? And they were, well, we don’t want to talk. Now they’re coming to us. They’re offering things like, even Bibi, and this is unrelated, because it’s a different kind of a relationship. But he started off our conversation today that he’s cutting all of the tariffs. He’s cutting everything. He’s going to get down to a free base. He’s going to do things that, in all fairness, other countries if they said that, would have never even thought about doing it. Now they’re offering things to us that we would have never even thought of asking them for, because they’re experiencing a lot of hurt.

And the hurt is that they’ve taken advantage of us, and we finally fought back. Tariffs will make this country very rich. We’re rich anyway, but we’re rich in a certain way. We have thirty six trillion dollars in debt. I want to get rid of it, and we can do it quickly with proper deals.

So when countries don’t allow us to sell our product, but we allow them to sell their product, when they charge us massive amounts of money for the privilege of going into their country, those days are over.

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. On Iran, two questions, please. First, if you can give us more details about where the meeting on Saturday is going to take place.

Trump: I can’t tell you that. I can just tell you there’s a major meeting going on between us and Iran, and that will take place on Saturday, and it’s at top level.

Question: And the second question about this. A lot of people think that those talks are not gonna lead anywhere because the Iranians will never give up their nuclear program.

Trump: Maybe not. That’s a possible.

Question: If diplomacy fails, is the United States under your leadership ready to take military action to destroy the Iranian nuclear program and remove this threat?

It’s not a complicated formula. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon

Trump: I think if the talks aren’t successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger. And I hate to say it. Great danger, because they can’t have a nuclear weapon. It’s not a complicated formula. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That’s all it is. Can’t have it. Right now we have countries that have nuclear power that shouldn’t have it.

But I’m sure we’ll be able to negotiate out of that too as part of this, later on down the line. But Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And if the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it will be a very bad day for Iran if that’s the case.

Question: Mr. President, was October seventh the death blow of the two-state solution? And would you consider classifying the Palestinian Authority as a terrorist organization for its continued pay-for-slay financing terrorists?

Trump: October seventh was a horrible day that some people, they deny it. I can’t believe they deny it from the standpoint unless they do it because they think it’s good politically. But October seventh, I’ve seen the tapes. I’ve seen things that you don’t want to see. October seventh was a horrible day and it will go down as one of the really bad days in the history of the world. It was a horrible, horrible thing that happened.

And they grabbed some of these people. I’ll give you an example. When I was with the ten hostages a few weeks ago, I said, “So how many are there?”

“Fifty-nine.”

I said, “Oh, so fifty-nine, so we can get fifty-nine.” They sort of knew the territory pretty good. And I said, “How are they doing?” They said, “Well, only twenty-four are living, the rest are dead.” And these are young people largely. Young people don’t die. Young people have an amazing ability to live. They can live through horrible things, but these are young people. And when they said that twenty-four are living and the rest are dead. And I’ve had parents come up, Israeli parents largely, we have some Americans and we had, I guess we have one left, Alex, we have the one left. But I’ve had Israeli parents come up to me at events and say, “My son is there.”

I said, “Well, how’s he doing?”

“Well, he’s dead. But would you do me the biggest favor ever? Could you bring his body back home?” They talked about a young dead boy and a young dead girl like they were living.

And that could have something to do with religion, that could have something to do with, I guess, maybe any parent would be. But I was surprised. They said, “Sir, my son is dead. It is just as important to bring that body back home.”

I asked that question, as if he were alive. So you have a lot of them dead and we’ll be able to bring them back, but it’s a horrible thing that’s happened.

These are young, largely young people, some old ones too, frankly. And those people have lived in hell. When they came up, the second group that came out, they looked like they just got out of a concentration camp. They looked exactly like pictures that I see from the 1940s, the concentration camps. And then they got a little bit better, you know, that second group, those people came out, and I said, this is unbelievable.

We’re going back into a chapter in history that is one of the worst ever. It’s really very bad.

Question: Mr. President, thank you. You’ve said it could take two years to get American manufacturing fully up to speed in response to these tariffs. What happens in the meantime? Should Americans be prepared potentially for years of uncertainty and disruption?

Trump: I’ll tell you what happens. We have now 7 trillion dollars, think of this, seven trillion of commitments from companies wanting to go in, from Apple to many, many companies. Many from Taiwan.

Reporter: That takes time, to fully manufacture products here in the US.

Trump: Of course, it takes time. Are you asking me a question, or are you telling me? Yeah, it takes time. You got to build a thing called a factory. You have to build your energy. You have to do a lot of things. I’m giving them energy. We’re going to let them build their own power plants. They’ll be their own essentially, they’re going to be in charge of the power plant because our power is not reliable enough. You have a grid that’s old and susceptible to a lot of things including bombing and weather and a lot of other things. And we’re going to give them record timing in terms of approvals for electric plants. Most of them want to build electric plants. We need massive amounts of electricity if we’re going to compete with China and others.

And interestingly, we’re way ahead right now with the AI race with China. But the way we lose that race is if we can’t give them electricity. But we have more plants being built. We have everything, we’re doing so great, and we want to keep it that way. And tariffs will be an important part of it.

But one of the other things, Lee Zeldin is doing a fantastic job, head of environmental protection. And he’s doing very rapid approvals for people to get, for big companies that are going to build a plant that’s going to cost billions of dollars, and we’re going to get them their approvals. They have to be environmentally perfect, everything good, but they’re going to be in record time, a matter of months versus a matter of many, many years.

Question: Liza Rosovsky from Haaretz. Turkey claims it will stabilize the situation in Syria. Israel doesn’t want Turkey to influence Syria. What do you think? Do you think Turkey’s influence in Syria can actually make it a better, more peaceful country or vice versa?

Trump: Well, I have great relations with a man named Erdogan. Have you heard of him?

Reporter: Yes.

Trump: And I happen to like him, and he likes me and I know the press will get very angry. “He likes Erdogan.” But I do and he likes me and we’ve never had a problem and we’ve gone through a lot and we’ve never had a problem.

We’d always got, as you remember, we got our minister back from Turkey. You remember that? And this was a big deal at the time and we got him back. And I told the prime minister, I said, just, Bibi, if you have a problem with Turkey, I really think I’m going to be able to work it out. I have a very, very good relationship with Turkey and with their leader. And I think we’ll be able to work it out. So I hope that’s not going to be a problem. I don’t think it will be a problem.

Now, with that being said, I believe it was Turkey, and I said that to him. I said it. I said, “Congratulations. You’ve done what nobody’s been able to do in two thousand years. You’ve taken over Syria, with different names, but same thing. I said, “You’ve taken it over.” He’s taken it over through surrogates.

He goes, “No, no, no, no, no, It was not me.” I said, “It was you. But that’s okay. You don’t have to say.”

“Well, it sort of maybe was me.” Okay. But what he did, he’s a tough guy. He’s very smart. And he did something that nobody was able to do. You know? You gotta hand it to him.

Any problem that you have with Turkey, I think I can solve

Any problem that you have with Turkey, I think I can solve. I mean, as long as you’re reasonable. You have to be reasonable. We have to be reasonable.

Benjamin Netanyahu is leaving the White House after a successful meeting with President Trump, as he bids him farewell.

A lot of respect between these two great leaders.

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— Vivid.???????? (@VividProwess) April 7, 2025

Thank you very much, everyone.