President Donald Trump stood firmly behind his sweeping tariff plan on Sunday despite significant recent market turmoil, calling the measures a “beautiful thing to behold” that will strengthen America’s economic position despite short-term pain.
“I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as markets declined in both U.S. and Asian markets.
The president’s comments came as financial stocks reacted negatively to the tariffs implemented Saturday, which imposed a baseline 10% duty on imports from about 90 countries, with additional “reciprocal” tariffs of up to 50% set to take effect Wednesday. U.S. stocks dropped again early Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down nearly 3% at opening and down over 11% in just the past week.
Trump appeared unmoved by the market reaction, focusing instead on his core objective of addressing trade deficits, particularly with China.
“We have a $1 trillion trade deficit with China. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose to China, and unless we solve that problem, I’m not going to make a deal,” Trump declared. “I’m willing to make a deal with China, but they have to solve this surplus.”
The president claimed his hardline stance is already yielding results, and said that leaders from numerous countries are reaching out to negotiate.
“I spoke to a lot of leaders — European, Asian, from all over the world. They’re dying to make a deal,” Trump said.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that approximately 50 countries have initiated contact regarding the tariffs, though he emphasized the administration would not postpone any of the measures.
Trump insisted his administration would accept nothing less than balanced trade relationships moving forward.
“We’re going to have surpluses, or we’re, at worst, going to be breaking even,” he said, adding that “a deficit is a loss.”
The president blamed the Biden and Obama administrations for allowing unfavorable trade relationships to develop over the years.
“We have been treated so badly by other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen,” Trump said. “They took our business, they took our money, they took our jobs.”
Despite the market turbulence, Trump maintained that the tariffs are bringing “billions of dollars” into the U.S. and claimed they have secured “over $7 trillion in committed investments” for manufacturing plants, semiconductor facilities, and other industries.
When asked directly about the stock market decline, Trump responded: “What’s going to happen to the markets I can’t tell you. But our country is much stronger.”
Financial markets are now speculating that the mounting recession risk could prompt the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates as early as May, a dramatic shift from previous expectations of rate cuts beginning later in the year.