The heart of President Donald Trump’s economic outlook is America First nationalism.
“It really has to do with self-respect as a nation,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with The Economist magazine.
The interview reveals a president who is deeply concerned with strengthening the American economy through trade reform, regulatory rollback, and tax cuts.
“It has very much to do with trade. We have so many bad trade deals. To a point where I’m not sure that we have any good trade deals,” Trump said.
In the interview, Trump denied that his threat to leave the North American Free Trade was a negotiating tactic.
“I was all set to terminate, you know? And this wasn’t like…this wasn’t a game I was playing. I’m not playing…you know, I wasn’t playing chess or poker or anything else,” Trump said.
Trump told the Economist that America’s trade deficit will fall after NAFTA is renegotiated, although he allows that this could take years and the deficit would not necessarily call all the way zero.
“It doesn’t have to immediately go to zero. But at some point would like to get it at zero, where sometimes we can be up and sometimes they can be up,” Trump said.