Tuesday during a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, President Donald Trump said his tariffs on steel and aluminum would be implemented in a “very loving way.”

Trump said, “We’ll have to see. When we are behind on every single country, trade wars aren’t so bad. Do you understand what I mean by that? When we’re down by $30 billion, $40 billion, $60 billion, $100 billion, the trade war hurts them, not us. You can also take it, in some cases we lose on trade plus give them military where we’re subsidizing them tremendously. So not only do we lose on trade, we lose on military. Hence we have these massive deficit numbers in our country.”

He added, “We are going to straighten it out and do it in a very loving way. It will be in a loving, loving way. They will like us better and respect us much more.”

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