President Donald Trump on Friday declared a national emergency to build his long-proposed border wall, as he signed a spending bill averting another shutdown and also reported progress in trade talks with China.
‘INVASION’ OF COUNTRY
Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said there was an “invasion of drugs and criminals coming into our country” and that a wall would help deter those problems.
He also predicted there would be lawsuits against his move but that he’d prevail in cases that could go all the way to the Supreme Court. In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump was acting unlawfully and that Democrats “will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the courts, and in the public, using every remedy available.”
Now read: Here’s how Trump wants to pay for the border wall after invoking a national emergency.
“We’ll win,” Trump said before an audience that included women dubbed “angel moms,” whose children were slain by undocumented immigrants.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted a photo of Trump signing the declaration Friday afternoon. Trump also signed a bill to fund numerous government agencies just hours before another partial shutdown was scheduled to take effect.
President @realDonaldTrump signs the Declaration for a National Emergency to address the national security and humanitarian crisis at the Southern Border. pic.twitter.com/0bUhudtwvS
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) February 15, 2019
Speaking rapidly, Trump gave a preview of how he saw the legal challenge playing out. “We will possibly get a bad ruling. And then we’ll get another bad ruling. And then we’ll end up in the Supreme Court and hopefully we’ll get a fair shake,” the president said.
Democrats seized on Trump’s saying he could build the wall over a longer period of time, and that he “didn’t need” to declare an emergency. “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster,” he said. “Trump admitted that there is no actual emergency,” the Democratic National Committee said in an email to reporters.
Also read: National emergency for wall creates ‘zero precedent,’ Mulvaney says.
CHINA TALKS
Trump also reported progress on talks with China, saying they were going well. “We have a large team of very talented people in China. We had a negotiation going on for about two days. It’s going extremely well — who knows what that means because it only matters if we get it done, but we’re very much working closely with China and President Xi, who I respect a lot.”
Those talks helped send the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.51% higher on Friday, a point Trump referenced as well. “The market is getting close to the new highs that we created,” he said.
See: Dow rallies more than 300 points on U.S.-China trade talk euphoria.
He also opened the door to extending a March 1 deadline for trade talks with Beijing and also keeping tariffs at 10% instead of raising them if negotiations are going well.
Trump also referenced the prospect of inking a trade deal with the U.K. as that country leaves the European Union. “So with the U.K., we’re continuing our trade and we are going to actually be increasing it very substantially,” Trump said.
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