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1. The E.U. is one of our largest trading partners, and any negotiations legally must be conducted at the E.U. level and not with individual nations.
2. My obligation is to disclose companies in which I’m an officer, a director, or an investor.
3. We’ll be aggressive on trade because we know that deals that have been made historically have resulted in the great loss of manufacturing jobs, a great amount of closed manufacturing businesses. We don’t want that to continue.
4. The whole idea of a trade deal is to build a fence around participants inside and give them an advantage over the outside. So there’s a conceptual flaw in that, one of many conceptual flaws in NAFTA.
5. The United States is the least protectionist country in the world but has the largest trade deficit, while other countries are highly protectionist and have huge trade surpluses. This cannot continue.
6. We are the world’s biggest importer. We need to treat the other countries as good suppliers.
7. If you want to do something to destroy consumer spending, just eat away at the middle class because the other problem we have is the structural problem of middle class America.
8. The fact that you’re successful doesn’t mean that you can’t relate to working people.
9. Part of the reason why I’m supporting Trump is that I think we need a more radical, new approach to government — at least in the U.S. — from what we’ve had before.
10. Regulations don’t solve things. Supervision solves things. If we could figure out that the subprime thing was a train wreck that was coming, where were the regulators?
11. Absent some international interruption, there’s no real justification for oil being more than $90 or $100 a barrel.
12. I see myself as a private-equity investor that helps rebuild companies. Restructuring is a cottage industry in that there aren’t that many serious practitioners.
13. One of the problems with industries that have been in relatively long-term declines is that, very often, the managements in those industries develop a kind of loser mentality. And when you ask them what’s wrong with the business, they’ll point to extraneous forces.
14. Mexico has 44 treaties with other countries that make it very advantageous to do international shipping from Mexico rather than from the United States.
15. The rules of origin in NAFTA need some tightening. Rules of origin are what let material outside of NAFTA to come in and benefit from all the taxes and tariff reductions within NAFTA.
16. The problem with regional trade agreements is you get picked apart by the first country. Then you negotiate with the second country. You get picked apart. And you go with the third one. You get picked apart again.
17. We’re in a trade war. We’ve been in a trade war for decades. That’s why we have the deficit.
18. The E.U., China, and Japan all talk free trade, and they all practice protectionism.
19. Between the Community Redevelopment Act, requiring banks to make what I would call very weak loans, and specific quotas that the Congress imposed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that created the market demand that really led to the subprime phenomenon.
20. We think, over the long term, the real key to value of a bank is does it have true deposits from true long-term customers? People who actually know the bank, live in the neighborhood, work there, maybe have a mortgage there, credit card… That, to us, is the key to a bank.