President Donald Trump on Friday continued to push his plan for the United States to take control of the Gaza Strip and threatened a host of new tariffs against American allies to be rolled out at a press conference next week.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office during a bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Trump said he’d be announcing the trade actions — which amount to a unilateral tax increase on Americans — as part of his program for ensuring what he has called “reciprocal” trade with American allies.
“I’ll be announcing that next week, reciprocal trade so that we’re treated evenly with other countries. We don’t want any more, any less. So I’ll be announcing that next week, and many other things having to do, not even with trade, but other things. But I’ll be talking about reciprocal trade sometime next week, we’ll have a news conference, and we’ll lay it out pretty simple,” he said.
The president has had no qualms about threatening to impose import taxes on countries he claims are “taking advantage” of America, often because the U.S. imports more manufactured goods than it exports to given countries, though the U.S. often has a trade surplus with services provided to those same countries as well.
Asked by reporters if he’d had any further talks about his plan for the United States to seize control of Gaza and send the territory’s 2.1 million residents to neighboring countries so it could be rebuilt, Trump said there had not been any.
But he said the proposal, which has been flatly rejected by the entirety of the Arab world, has been “been very well received.”
He told reporters that the U.S. would “view it as a real estate transaction, where we’ll be an investor in that part of the world,” and said there was “no rush to do anything” with regard to the proposal.
He also said American troops wouldn’t be required to take over the territory.
“It would be supplied and given to us by Israel. They’ll watch it terms of security,” he said.
“We’re not talking about boots on the ground or anything, but I think the fact that we’re there, that we have an investment there, I think would go a long way to creating peace,” he added.
