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Donald Trump firm on tariff plans amid market turmoil: 'What’s going to happen, I can’t tell you'
On global markets, Donald Trump said that sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday reacted to the fall in American and global markets, saying that sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something. He also showed no sign of backing away from his tariff plans.
"Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something," Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from a weekend of golfing in Florida, reported AFP.
He reiterated his claim that trading partners have treated the United States “badly” and blamed the previous Joe Biden-led administration for it.
"We have been treated so badly by other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen," he said, according to Reuters.
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On the turmoil in the financial markets in the United States and globally, Trump said: “What’s going to happen to the markets, I can’t tell you. But our country is much stronger."
The US president told reporters that he had engaged with world leaders on the issue of tariffs over the weekend and claimed that "they are dying to make a deal."
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Trump's announcement of reciprocal tariffs on several countries, including 34% for China, sent financial markets in the US and globally reeling. Nearly $6 trillion in value has been wiped out from American stocks.
Donald Trump's team rejects market fears
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s top economic officials have dismissed investors’ fears of inflation and recession, Bloomberg reported.
“The tariffs are coming,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Lutnick told CBS, adding that Trump “announced it and he wasn’t kidding.”
Also Read | Donald Trump says 'time to get rich' as Dow Jones crash sparks recession fears
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told NBC that more than 50 countries had called the Trump administration, but any talks are going to take time.
“They’ve been bad actors for a long time. And it’s not the kind of thing you can negotiate away in days or weeks,” Bessent said. “…We are going to have to see the path forward. Because, you know, after 20, 30, 40, 50 years of bad behaviour, you can’t just wipe the slate clean.”
