Video - Donald Trump on Squawk Box - Aug. 1, 2011
"Eventually you have to balance the budget. And this is a long way from balancing the budget, and this is just a joke. This is a down-payment at most. Now the President got something that was just fantastic. He got the deal past the election. If he had this going on again -- and it will go on in drips and drabs -- the fact is if this were going on sometime during the election he would have zero chance of getting reelected. That was the only thing he was really fighting for."
"Our leaders are not as smart as leaders in China. China is eating our lunch. Obama is incompetent or close to incompetent. When I say incompetent, he's competent at getting elected and re-elected but as far as running a country he's incompetent."
China continues to manipulate its currency to give it an unfair edge in global trade.
"Our product is better than their product, but when they can price it due to a manipulation of currency at a lower number, so much lower that you really have to buy there, our leaders are not doing their job."
To restore business confidence in the country, the government needs to somehow tax countries that "abuse" the U.S. and focus more on rebuilding the U.S. and less on rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We put up a school in Afghanistan and they blow it up. We rebuild it and they blow it up again and we rebuild it a third time. In Brooklyn we can't get schools built. In Iowa you can't get schools built. We have to look inward, we have to get back to rebuilding this country."