President Donald Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday where he discussed a range of topics from interest rate hikes to the 2020 election and the Mueller investigation.
Discussing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Trump said that he respects Powell's interest rate hikes but suggested he's worried the dollar could become too strong.
"America is now booming like never before," Trump said. "Other countries are doing very poorly. That makes it even harder for us to be successful. Plus, we have a gentleman that likes raising interest rates in the Fed," he said, referring to Powell.
"We have a gentleman that loves quantitative tightening in the Fed. We have a gentleman that likes a very strong dollar in the Fed. So with all of those things — we want a strong dollar but let's be reasonable — with all of that we're doing great. Can you imagine if we left interest rates where they were? If we didn't do quantitative tightening? I want a dollar that's great for our country but not a dollar that's prohibitive for us to be doing business with other countries."
On tariffs, Trump said he and China's President Xi Jinping have a strong relationship and "great respect" for one another.
"How is it possible you got away with this for so long? Because nobody asked us to change," Trump said, noting that China increased tariffs on U.S. products up to 40 percent because nobody ever told China to stop. "We should have been doing the same thing to them but we didn't. It's hard to believe."
Saturday has been a year since Trump made his comments that "trade wars are good and easy to win."
"We're renegotiating, right now, horrible trade deals. We're cracking down on countries that cheat and standing up for the American worker for the first time in many, many decades. Our workers have been treated horribly," Trump said, saying days where companies shut down plants in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania and then move them to Mexico are "all gone."
"It's very hard for a company to fire its 4,000 workers and move to Mexico," Trump said. "They can do it I guess, if they want, but it's costly. It's painful. I used to say it's almost like they're giving them an incentive to leave our country."
Trump also talked about immigration and suggested that immigrants can help fill new jobs opening in the U.S.
"We're down to 3.7 percent unemployment, the lowest it's been in a long time," he said. "I know some people in the room won't like this. We need workers for these companies. Companies are roaring back into our country and now we want people to come in, we need workers to come in, but they got to come in legally and come in through merit.They have to be people who love our country, not hate our country. Right now we have people in Congress that hate our country."
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