President-elect Donald Trump speaks to members of the media during a press conference at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Jan. 7, 2025. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump said during a wide-ranging press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday he wanted to see the country’s debt limit addressed while cutting spending and would not rule out military force to expand U.S. territory.
Trump, who will take office Jan. 20 after lawmakers breezily certified the election results Monday, continued to place blame on outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden for what he will be left with in his second term as he dives into an ambitious GOP agenda.
“We are inheriting a difficult situation from the outgoing administration, and they’re trying everything they can to make it more difficult,” Trump said. “Inflation is continuing to rage and interest rates are far too high, and I’ve been disappointed to see the Biden administration’s attempt to block the reforms of the American people and that they voted for.”
Reconciliation
As Republicans look to use a complicated legislative process known as budget reconciliation to pass significant immigration, border security and tax policy changes, as well as address the country’s debt limit, Trump said Tuesday that he wanted to avoid defaulting on the nation’s debt.
“I just don’t want to see a default. That’s all I want,” he said. “Nobody knows what would happen if there was a default — it could be 1929, and it could be nothing.”
He added that raising or suspending the debt limit had no effect on his goal to lower federal spending.
Though Trump said he is OK if Republicans pass their policy goals through one reconciliation package, he noted that “if two is more certain, it does go a little bit quicker because you can do the immigration stuff early.”
Jan. 6 pardons
Meanwhile, the day after the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, Trump echoed his campaign pledge that he would pardon those charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot.
However, he did not specify whether he would pardon those who were charged with violent offenses, saying: “We’ll be looking at the whole thing, but I’ll be making major pardons.”
Foreign affairs
Trump also did not rule out using military force to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland — two locations with critical implications for the transport of global commerce.
The Panamanian government was given full control of the canal in 1999. Denmark has sovereignty over Greenland, an autonomous territory. Greenland’s access to natural resources and implications to national security are increasingly important for the long-term interests of the United States.
“No, I can’t assure you on either of those two,” Trump said when asked if he could assure the world that he would not use military or economic coercion to take over both locations.
“But I can say this: We need them for economic security,” Trump said. “I’m not going to commit to that — it might be that you’ll have to do something.”
He also said “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the hostages taken by Hamas are not released by the time he is back in the Oval Office.
Trump also announced that a Dubai-based company, DAMAC Properties, would be investing at least $20 billion in the United States to support “massive new data centers across the Midwest, the Sun Belt area and also to keep America on the cutting edge of technology and artificial intelligence.”
The president-elect said the first phase of the investment would be in Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas.
He added that the Gulf of Mexico should be renamed the Gulf of America.
Offshore drilling
Trump slammed Biden’s decision earlier this week to prohibit future oil and gas drilling off the entire East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the remaining portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea, saying he would “reverse it immediately.”
It appears unlikely Trump can unilaterally reverse the protections. In the early months of his first term, he tried to undo protections placed by then-President Barack Obama, but a federal judge ruled that was beyond his authority.
“We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said. “We’re going to be drilling in a lot of other locations, and the energy costs are going to come way down — they’ll be brought down to a very low level, and that’s going to bring everything else down.”
Trump also said he would end a “mandate” for electric vehicles. There is no federal electric vehicle mandate, but Trump has said he wants to end the $7,500 consumer tax incentive, and Republicans have sometimes characterized the Biden administration’s regulations tightening automotive emissions as an EV mandate.
Trump added that he wanted to move away from wind energy.
“We’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built,” he said.