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Trump Says Supreme Court Ruling Against Tariffs Deeply Disappointing; Trump Says There Are Methods Available to Implement Tariffs; Trump Says He Will Implement Additional 10 Percent Global Tariff Today. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired February 20, 2026 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:30:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: But a much more powerful right than many people ever thought we even had, but not the right to charge a fee. How crazy is that? Our country is the hottest country anywhere in the world right now, and it was a dead country one-and-a-half years ago under an incompetent president.

But now, I'm going to go in a different direction, probably the direction that I should have gone the first time. But I read the language. I'm very good at reading language, and it read our way 100 percent. But now, I'll go the way I could have gone originally, which is even stronger than our original choice.

As Justice Kavanaugh, whose stock has gone so well, you have to see I'm so proud of him, wrote in his dissent, although I firmly disagree with the court's holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a president's ability to order tariffs going forward. So, think of that, the decision might not substantially constrain and it doesn't. He's right. In fact, I can charge much more than I was charging.

So I'm going to just start -- although I firmly disagree with the court's holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a president's ability to order tariffs going forward. That's because numerous other federal statutes, which is so true, authorize the president to impose tariffs and might justify most, if not all, of the tariffs issued in this case, even more tariffs actually.

Those statutes include, think of that, those statutes include, for example, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Section 232. All of these things I know so well. The Trade Act of 1974, Sections 122, 201, 301, and the Tariff Act of 1930, Section 338, all clear. But it's a little bit longer process.

I thought I'd make things simple, but they didn't let us do that. I would like to thank Justice Kavanaugh for his -- frankly, his genius and his great ability, very proud of that appointment.

In actuality, while I am sure that they did not mean to do so, the Supreme Court's decision today made a president's ability to both regulate trade and impose tariffs more powerful and more crystal clear, rather than less. I don't think they meant that. I'm sure they didn't.

It's terrible. And to think that the Democrats who oppose this -- only because they want to go the opposite way. They'd like to pack the court. They want to put on 21 people. They want to pack the court, pack the Supreme Court. May they should do it. Maybe they would be better off if they did it. They want to pack the court. They want to do anything to hurt our country.

There will no longer be any doubt, and the income coming in and the protection of our companies and country will actually increase because of this decision. I don't think the court meant that, but it's the way it is. Based on longstanding law and hundreds of victories -- and even, as I was pointed out before, even thousands of victories over the years to the contrary, the Supreme Court did not overrule tariffs.

They merely overruled a particular use of IEEPA tariffs. And essentially, it's to use to get a fee. I can do anything I want with IEEPA, anything. I just can't charge anybody for it. I can license. I just can't charge them. It's ridiculous. But it's okay because we have other ways, numerous other ways.

The ability to block, embargo, restrict, license, or impose any other condition on a foreign country's ability to conduct trade with the United States under IEEPA has been fully confirmed by this decision. So now, there's no doubt. Because, you know, there were a lot of questions about tariffs because no president was smart enough to use them to protect our country from those countries and businesses that were ripping us off.

You took a look at the deficits that we had with some of these countries. It was disgraceful what they got away with for many, many decades. But now, we know because this decision affirms all those things that some people weren't sure about.

In order to protect, and it says so, in order to protect our country, a president can actually charge more tariffs than I was charging in the past period of a year under the various tariffs authorities. So we can use other of the statutes, other of the tariff authorities, which have also been confirmed and are fully allowed.

[13:35:00]

Therefore, effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232 and existing Section 301 tariffs -- they're existing, they're there -- remain in place, fully in place, and in full force and effect. Today, I will sign in order to impose a 10 percent global tariff under Section 122 over and above are normal tariffs already being charged.

And we're also initiating several Section 301 and other investigations to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And I say quite simply, which I've said for a long time, Make America Great Again. And interestingly, we've already made it great, so I don't have to use that. But I don't think we'll ever give up on MAGA. MAGA is always going to be with us.

If you have a few questions, you can let us know. But just to end, so we're going forward. We will be able to take in more money, and there'll no longer be doubt, because there was always doubt. I know the people that brought the lawsuit, and you know, they're sleazebags, major sleazebags, but I know them. And they're foreign-country- centric.

They were sending things into our country and the people representing them knew full well. But they were sending things into our country and they were beneficial to other countries, but very, very bad for us. And I stopped it, and we'll just keep it going.

So we have more of a -- we have a totally firm decision now. And I don't think the court meant it, because the court doesn't show great spirit toward our country, in my opinion, a lot of bad decisions. But there are usually ways around it. This is something we could have done, as Justice Kavanaugh said. We could have done this originally, but we're doing it now. And the numbers could be far greater than the hundreds of billions we've already taken in.

Yeah, please.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, I'm very curious. You've spoken about --

TRUMP: Right before you, in the (inaudible).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you so much, Mr. President. Justice Thomas and Alito, as you know, are the most conservative constitutional justices. Do you think that you'll get to appoint two more justices later this term with similar ideologies? And what type of vetting process will they go through to ensure they uphold of the Constitution?

TRUMP: I don't know, but they're great justices. That's all I could say. And I hope they're going to be around a long time. I hope they're going to stay healthy. They're great people. They're great. And Justice Alito, too, to add to the group. These are great -- these are great men with a great love of our country and a great understanding of the law.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, are you going to ask Congress to take additional action on tariffs now?

TRUMP: I don't need to. It's already been approved. I mean, I would ask Congress and probably get it. When people look at the real numbers and you look at hundreds of billions of dollars that have come into our country. Yesterday, I was at a steel plant, as you know, and went to great, great place, great plant, great, wonderful people. And they were telling me, I said to him, you were there, a lot of the press in this room.

Of course, I don't think this plane's big enough to take the press in this room, but a lot of the press right here were in Georgia. And I said to the owner -- I made a speech at a factory. They made steel products. And I said, how are you? Nice to meet you. How's business?

President, I'd love to kiss you. This is a very powerful man. I don't want to be kissed by that man. But a very powerful, strong man. He's been in the steel business for many years. His father started it. And he said, sir, I want to kiss you. I said, why? He said, because we were down to working one hour a week. And then you came in and imposed tariffs and all of that foreign junk that they were dropping into our country stopped. And we're now going to double shifts, seven days a week. And we may be very soon going to 24 hours around the clock, almost seven days a week.

He said, sir, I want to kiss you so badly. And I said, no, thank you. But you know what? Just to finalize it, he said, oh, this is a great place in Georgia. He said, all up and down the highway, same exact answer, sir. We're all going out of business. We're going to go bankrupt. We're all going out of business. And now, every one of us is thriving and we're hiring people like we haven't. He said, like I've never. And he's been in business for, I think, 45 years, like we've never hired before.

That's because of tariffs. And we're going to keep it going the same way. And you're going to start to see the results in a year from now, when all those factories start that are under construction right now.

[13:40:00]

You see all the construction numbers are so good. Those construction workers are building factories that are going to be open, including not only A.I., which is big, but car plants coming in from Canada who ripped us off at 30 percent of our market. Mexico ripped us off for a big portion.

Over the years, they've taken our market. They've taken our cars. They manufacture them in Japan, Germany, and all over the place because nobody's standing in this position. The position I have as president of the United States, had the insight, the courage -- I don't know what it is -- to charge tariffs. You can make your product outside. You can put our people out of business.

You can put everybody on the unemployment rolls. But if you're going to make a car in some other country, you're going to pay a 15, 20, 30 percent tariff. And those things would have never happened. We wouldn't have lost our business. Same thing with, as an example, Taiwan.

Taiwan came in. They stole our chip business. They make chips. For 30 years longer, they made chip, chip, chip. And they put our companies -- Intel would be now the largest company. I saved Intel. I literally saved it at the beginning of this administration.

And now, all those companies in Taiwan are building factories in Arizona, Texas, and various other places because they don't want to pay tariffs. They're all pouring into the United States. But just like that great patriot said yesterday, sir, what you've done, nobody thought was possible.

And Steve Moore, a highly respected economist, came into my office yesterday. He said, you've done something nobody has ever done. Twenty-two Nobel Prize winners in economics said we would right now be in a recession. And you said, no, we're going to have a booming country. We're going to have a booming country. You were right. All 22 were wrong. And you were right. This country is booming.

And it's booming because of the election on November 5th. And it's booming for another reason. It's booming because of tariffs. Yeah, please. Go ahead.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible) ahead of this decision that yes, the Supreme Court ruled --

TRUMP: Yeah, please go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. President. What will you say to foreign nations who seek to renegotiate their deals? And what did you mean a moment ago when you said that the Supreme Court has been swayed by foreign interests?

TRUMP: Well, I think that foreign interests are represented by people that I believe have undue influence. They have a lot of influence over the Supreme Court, whether it's through fear or respect or friendships, I don't know. But I know some of the people that were involved on the other side, and I don't like them. I think they're real slime balls and kind of do what's right for the country.

You got to do what's right for the Constitution. That's why I respect so much Justice Thomas and Alito, Kavanaugh, because they not only dissented, their dissent is so strong. When you read their dissent, a lot of times you'll read the dissent and it's like, well, you don't know, it could go either way. There's no other way.

The good news is, it's like Justice Kavanaugh said, very strongly said, you have other ways you can go. You don't have to go that way. You can go the way. There are numerous other ways you can go. And frankly, this should have been done by presidents many years ago.

They allowed our country to be eaten alive. We lost 50 percent of our car business make -- we used to make cars. We made all the cars, and then Mexico came, Canada came, Japan and Germany. But they're all coming back now. They're all coming back at record levels.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Please, please. I'm not. I'm not talking to you. I don't talk to CNN. It's fake news. Go ahead, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President. Yesterday, you made the case that the economy is the hottest it's been in a long time. January jobs report beat expectations. CPI report beat expectation. Real wages -- what would you tell Americans who are worried that this decision will kind of throw the economy that you have projected going in the right direction at a very rapid pace off track?

TRUMP: Well, thank you for the question. And I will say this. We really are at a very important point. I've been waiting for this decision so long, they could have made this decision a long time ago. Not complex, they're wrong on it. It's a ridiculous decision. But they should have released this a long time ago. We waited months. And that gave uncertainty. Now we have certainty. And I think you're going to see the country get much stronger because of it.

Look, we were ripped off by almost every country in the world. If you look at the surpluses, almost every country in the world that did business with us, our people were stupid. And I blame presidents for it, because they're ultimately the leader.

We were being ripped off by almost every single country in the world had massive, some massive surpluses.

[13:45:00]

China had hundreds of billions of dollars in surpluses with the United States. They rebuilt China. They rebuilt the army. We built China's army by allowing that to happen. I have a great relationship with President Xi, but he respects our country now. Now, what we've done, I charged China a 20 percent tariff as a penalty for sending fentanyl in.

And that was 20 times more than they could make by selling fentanyl. And I said, you know, at some point you're going to say, like, and they have reduced it. You know, fentanyl is down by more than 30 percent coming into our country. Part of that is a strong border. We have a strong border now. But thank you -- thank you for your question.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, sir, you warned once in a social media post that if the Supreme Court did this, shot down your tariffs, the U.S. would be "financially defenseless." Are we financially defenseless?

TRUMP: No, because we're doing something in a different way. We're doing something in a very powerful way. And we're using things that some people thought we should have used in the first place. But it's more complicated. It's a little more complicated. The process takes a little more time, but the end result is going to get us more money. And I think it's going to be great.

Yeah, please. Peter, go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, President Trump. So, since Liberation Day, there's about $175 billion in tariff revenue that is now in limbo. Do you have to refund $175 billion?

TRUMP: Think of it, Peter. Very fair question. They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don't even discuss that point. We've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars, not millions, hundreds of billions of dollars. And so I said, well, what happens to all the money that we took in? It wasn't discussed.

Wouldn't you think they would have put one sentence in there saying that keep the money or don't keep the money, right? I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years. So they write this terrible, defective decision, totally defective. It's almost like not written by smart people.

And what they do? They don't even talk about that. Your question is very basic. That was the first question I asked also, to make you feel good. I said, what about all the money that we've taken in? Sir, they don't discuss that. How crazy is that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What you're saying is -- are you saying that you don't plan to honor refunds for companies that file for them?

TRUMP: I just told you the answer, right? I told you the answer. It's not discussed. We'll end up being in court for the next five years.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Go ahead. Green.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Mr. President. When you are talking about the relationship with countries that you have sought trade deals with, do you anticipate that they will seek to renegotiate those? What do you say to them? And do you view this as a potential undermining power?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: We're going straight ahead with 10 percent straight across the board, which was the absolute right to do, and that's taking place. That's a lot of money coming into our country. And then during that period of about five months, we are doing the various investigations necessary to put fair tariffs or tariffs period on other countries.

So we're doing that period. But we're immediately instituting the 10 percent provision, which we're allowed to do. And in the end, I think we're taking more money than we've taken in before.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, you've used the tariff revenue to pay for a host of federal policies. You claim that they will pay for them. What happens to those things?

TRUMP: Well, like the farmers. We took care of farmers. You know, the farmers were mistreated by foreign countries very badly -- very, very badly. And last week, I gave them $12 billion out of tariff money.

We intend to -- out of tariff money -- because just so you understand, we have tariffs. We just have them in a different way. And now, they've been confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States.

So, there's no longer that question out there about tariffs. And we'll be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars. And countries that have treated us badly will have to pay a price for treating us badly.

And countries that have been good to us will be treated very well. We just left the top person in a place called Vietnam -- just left my office -- great gentleman, strong and smart. He said, you know, I think this means you're allowed to charge us more tariffs than before.

And Canada said to Jamieson -- I might want to say it, Jamieson -- but Canada said, I hope you win this decision because if you don't win, you'll actually be allowed to charge us, with a little additional work, higher tariffs. Jamieson, you want to comment on that?

JAMIESON GREER, UNITED STATES TRADE REPRESENTATIVE: Yes, sir. So, to the president's point, we have a lot of tools out there. We have Section 122, which will be implemented today -- will be signed today, implemented very shortly. We have Section 301 investigations, which are incredibly legally durable, where we can address -- investigate and address unfair trading practices that have led to our huge trade deficit.

[13:50:00]

And so, you can look forward in the coming days and weeks to seeing all of that come out. And we're going to keep continuity in the program. We're going to keep addressing this, so that the deficit can keep going down. That's the trend it has. And we can Make America Great Again.

TRUMP: Yeah.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Several of Republicans in Congress have supported this decision by the Supreme Court. And Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, has called you a wannabe king. Why would --

TRUMP: I would call him a low-IQ king.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But why would --

TRUMP: He doesn't even know -- and I watched him the other day interview. The guy doesn't even know what a tariff is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But there's been bipartisan criticism on the tariffs.

TRUMP: No, not bipartisan. Excuse me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's several Republicans who have said that.

TRUMP: Yeah, a few people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But why wouldn't you just work with Congress to come up with a plan --

TRUMP: I don't have to.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- to push tariffs through?

TRUMP: I have the right to do tariffs. And I've always had the right to do tariffs. And it's all been approved by Congress, so there's no reason to do it. All we're doing is we're going through a little bit more complicated process -- not complicated very much, but a little more complicated than what we had.

We'll be able to take in tariffs, more tariffs. And the Congress people --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The House just voted down the Canadian tariffs last week. There's been votes in the Senate against it.

TRUMP: Yeah, because we lost two Republicans or three Republicans because they're not good Republicans. What you don't say -- see, you don't say that we had -- that we got 215 votes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You need 215 for something to pass.

TRUMP: Yeah. Sure do. We might have lost three votes. And we got -- and what was the score on the Republican side? 215-3, right? But you don't say that. We have great unity. There's great unity in the Republican Party. And I hope everyone is going to vote Republican because otherwise, you won't have a country left because these people have been destroying -- they are destroying our country. Please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, the 122 tariffs, that 10 percent, is that going to be for 150 days, or do you want to charge that indefinitely?

TRUMP: We have a right to do pretty much what we want to do, but we're going to charge it starting effectively, I think, it's three days from now. Yeah, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, you speak to a lot of factory workers, a lot of manufacturing workers. What does the Supreme Court ruling say? What's that message to those factory workers?

TRUMP: Well, I think the factory workers are happy because we're now telling them that they're going to -- look, the man I met with yesterday, who owned a factory, was out of business. He was out of business. And now, he's employing five times. In fact, I walked in, he's got a brand new crane. I said, how old is that crane? We got it in December.

He's allowed to write it off in one minute. The Great Big Beautiful Act gave no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. He said this Great Big Beautiful Bill, frankly, has been the best thing that's ever happened for the workers of the -- much more so than for rich people.

The only thing it does for rich people, it allows them to hire a lot more people. But when I saw him -- and then he said, it's all up and down the line. This is a place in Georgia. All up and down, other factories doing different, not only steel products, different.

He said every one of us was out of business. We could barely make it. Some of them were down to less than an hour a week. Think of it, one hour a week to make just a few little trinkets or whatever they make. Now, they're going round the clock.

I had it -- a month ago, I went to Michigan, went to Ford, and I met with Bill Ford, the Head of Ford. And we were in one of the biggest plants -- an original plant from the early 1900s where, by the way, just -- I might add this. It's not really relevant, but it's all relevant. Murders are down the lowest since 1900, around the time that he had this plant.

That's 125 years. We have the lowest murder rate. Okay. And our crime is way down in the country. The factories that we're talking about, the people that we're talking about, they are so thrilled with Trump.

So whether we charge IEEPA tariffs or whether we charge tariffs under a different section, that's what we're going to be doing. There's no way we can -- this is what happened to our country. This is why we owe $38 trillion, which we'll get rid of in pretty good course. We have a very incompetent Fed chairman who likes high interest rates -- for political reasons, he likes them.

But we're going to have somebody very good. Interest rates should come down very substantially, I think. And we should pay -- we should pay the lowest interest rates on the planet. There should be no country -- and we don't do that. We're number 38. This is just bad policy for a long period of time.

But what's happened is we've made America strong again. We've Made America Great Again. We should pay. As an example, the country of Switzerland, we were getting almost no tariffs from them. We had a $40 billion deficit. And the prime minister called me up. She said, but we are a small country, because I said we're going to raise it to 39 percent from nothing.

[13:55:00]

That would have rendered them not very successful, as opposed to right now, they're considered elite.

But if we put a tariff -- and I realized then, she said, but sir, we are a small country. I said, you're a small country with a big deficit for us. You're making a lot of money off the United States. If we do that -- a lot of these elite countries, they're elite because we let them make so much money. And I want them to do well.

But I don't want them to do well on the backs of the American taxpayers. So, I appreciate your question. I think it's (inaudible).

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good evening, President Trump, you said that you were disappointed with that, but were you surprised with his decision? What are -- what you felt when you -- TRUMP: I was surprised because I thought that what we did was, number

one, according to -- I mean, I read the paragraphs. I read very well. Great comprehension. I read everything there is to read. And I said, we can't lose this case. But we can when judges are political, when they want to be politically correct, when they're catering to a group of people in D.C. maybe.

I don't know what it is, because when you read it, there's no other interpretation. We have -- there is no other interpretation. But it's okay, because what has come out -- and I'll say it for the third time and maybe the last time in a while -- is that we've taken the uncertainty of tariffs out, because we had uncertainty.

We got sued by sleazebags -- I know them well -- that are very outside-country -- China-centric, but outside-country-centric. And they're going to end up not doing as well as they did before. America was becoming really, really -- we're strong again. Hey, we have the strongest military. I built -- I rebuilt the military in the first term. We have the most powerful military.

We make the best equipment. And even then, you know, we have to -- we could do much better. We have people that get paid a lot of money to manufacture Patriot missiles and Javelins and all the different things. But when you want them, they're too slow.

And we put them on notice, and they're going to make -- we're going to -- our country is building a lot of things right now, and our country is doing really well. And we're going to keep it that way. The bottom line is that the word 'certainty' is now in the equation.

Every single thing I said today is guaranteed certainty. It's been tested, as Jamieson said a thousand times, literally, I said hundreds of times. He said, sir, actually thousands of times, and won in all of the courts. And we're just going back to that. And the problem is that we had other presidents that weren't into trade. Maybe they weren't business-oriented. Maybe they weren't smart.

We had some dummies, too, you know. I respectfully say, we had some real dummies. So, we are going to keep it going just as before, probably more so. But it's -- you're no longer going to be asked -- every time I got up, you'd ask, well, what happens if you can't charge tariffs? Now we can. And by the way, in their decision, they specifically said, we can do these. We have alternatives. Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the trade deals that were negotiated using IEEPA tariffs --

TRUMP: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- do those stand now? Or are they -- have to be redone?

TRUMP: Well, some of them stand. Many of them stand. Some of them won't and they'll be replaced with the other tariffs.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, the Supreme Court justices who ruled against this -- the policy, striking it down, are they still invited to your State of the Union next week?

TRUMP: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah. And will you still speak with them?

TRUMP: They are invited. Barely. Barely.

Three are happily invited. No, no. They're barely -- they're barely invited. Honestly, I couldn't care less if they come, okay?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Mr. President.

TRUMP: Go ahead, you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Mr. President. On the trade deal, which is the framework which is signed -- to be signed with India sometime soon, will that stand now?

TRUMP: Yeah, it does. Nothing changes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nothing changes?

TRUMP: No, nothing changes. We're -- they'll be paying tariffs. And we will not be paying tariffs. Our deal with India is they pay tariffs. This is a reversal from what it used to be, as you know. India, I think -- Prime Minister Modi is a great gentleman -- a great man, actually.

But he was much smarter than the people that he was against, in terms of the United States. He was ripping us off, and India -- so we made a deal with India, and it's a fair deal now. And we are not paying tariffs to them, and they are paying tariffs. We did a little flip.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: No, the India deal is on, yeah.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you so much, Mr. President.

TRUMP: All the deals are on. We're just going to do it a different way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you so much, Mr. President. I think there's another war that you stopped and you should take the credit, which is in Syria. Secretary Rubio, after his meeting in Munich with the Syrian foreign minister and the Kurdish General, Mazloum Abdi, he said that President Trump was directly involved with the forces to stop the fighting between the Kurds and the Syrians.