WHEN: Today, Thursday, March 10th
WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk Box"
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump on CNBC's "Squawk Box" (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Thursday, March 10th. Following are links to the video on CNBC.com: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000500479, http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000500481 and http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000500471.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
TRUMP ON DEVALUING
You can devalue, but you can do something else which I think is probably much better than devaluing. You can charge a surtax so you can charge a tax for products that they sell in the United States…they are taking advantage of our country, you know, we don't have strong leadership. I don't think we have strong economic leadership at all. You look at what is going on with the world and you look at what other people are doing to us and what other countries are doing to us if it's – I mean China is the grand master of all. And my relationships with China are fantastic. I have great relationships and business relationships with China and even those people say they can't believe what they are getting away with.
TRUMP ON CHINA TAX
I mean you should do an investigation of how much China is taxing product going into China. Well free trade means we are not taxing each other. You can't have one nation being taxed and the other nation not being taxed. So you know, there are a lot of things wrong and I believe that I will be able to straighten it out.
TRUMP ON TAKING ADVANTAGE
When you look at Komatsu tractor and you see how well they are doing compared to Caterpillar, you end up taking so much business away because the Japanese do numbers on the yen in terms of devaluation and it is very hard to compete. So it's a very difficult situation and we have to be stronger as a country and we have to get better people in that know what they are doing. We can't let the world take advantage of us from an economic standpoint and that is what they are doing.
TRUMP ON FREE TRADE
The concept of free trade is great. I love it. I love it. I think it's great. That's the good news. The bad news is it's not good when you don't have the right people representing you.
TRUMP ON TED CRUZ
The problem with Ted is that he will never get anything done. And the bigger problem is that it is impossible for him to get elected. He will never be able to get elected. He's very strident. He will never be able to get elected. He has no chance. And he will never win states that you have to win. He can't because of his views on things.
TRUMP ON ECONOMY
Tremendous amounts of waste, fraud and abuse that we will be able to cut, in addition to the fact that the economy will become dynamic. Because right now, you look at GDP for last quarter and it was essentially zero. If that ever happened to China, it would be a depression of the likes that nobody has ever seen. You know China goes down to 7% and it's a massive disruption. We're at zero;. I mean, we are actually at zero and slightly above. But I mean, whoever heard of a thing like that?
TRUMP ON PFIZER
Pfizer to me is, it's just incredible that Pfizer is moving. And they are moving for a number of reasons. They are moving because taxes are too high. We are the highest tax nation in the world, but its corporate inversions and they are moving for something else. They can't get their money back. I mean, I know companies that are thinking about moving because they can't get their money into this country.
TRUMP ON THE ESTABLISHMENT
The establishment or whoever, whatever name you want to call, some people call them the elites, which I guess would indicate that I am not elite – you know which is fine. But whoever these people are, they should embrace what has taken place. And you know, I will say this, if for some reason I don't make it or it ends, you know, I don't get there, they are going to have millions of millions of people that are going to walk away from the polls and never vote. And the Democrats are assured a victory.
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