Trump says he’s ready to talk as new stock market losses fuel tariff chaos

The massive query as international inventory sell-offs level to a different week of plunging markets within the US is how a lot ache President Donald Trump is ready to inflict to check his tariff theories.

Trump stated Sunday night that he’s “open to speaking” to world leaders about new offers as he put a courageous face on the chaos unleashed by his trade wars after a weekend enjoying golf at his unique Florida properties. Trump additionally claimed that he’d spoken to “many international locations” and that regardless of fury overseas over his “Liberation Day” commerce assaults, “They’re being very good.”

However as he flew again to Washington aboard Air Drive One, shares tumbled on the opening in Tokyo and US futures suggested extra enormous losses are seemingly on Wall Avenue on Monday.

“What’s going to occur with the market? I can’t inform you, however I can inform you, our nation has gotten rather a lot stronger, and ultimately it’ll be a rustic like no different,” Trump stated.

With markets closed over the weekend after days of pummeling losses, the administration had the possibility to take inventory. However there isn’t any contemporary readability over its technique because the political stakes grow to be extra fraught.

Prime officers sent conflicting signals Sunday over whether or not Trump sees the financial warfare he unleashed final week as a lever for near-term dealmaking — or whether or not he’s critical a couple of bid to remake the world economic system that would take years.

The confusion got here in opposition to a backdrop of rising discomfort amongst some Republican lawmakers in regards to the commerce onslaught and as massive crowds throughout the nation held anti-Trump protests within the largest present of dissent of his second time period.

The president and his senior aides additionally appear oblivious to anxiousness within the nation over the likelihood his insurance policies may trigger a recession — or really feel so positive of their views they don’t actually must care. Trump posted a video of himself teeing off in Florida, and the White Home put out a weird assertion noting his win in a golf membership championship match.

It was a reminder that Trump and his millionaire and billionaire associates don’t share the troubles of normal American households, who’re involved about their retirement financial savings and the way they’ll afford groceries and vehicles when tariffs hike costs. Whereas the president insists his plans for tax cuts will depart everybody extra affluent, he’s nonetheless taking a chance after successful a second time period partially as a result of voters felt the Biden administration did a poor job tackling inflation.

The rationale for Trump’s tariffs on 185 nations and territories is that the remainder of the world has spent a long time ripping off America and that essentially the most aggressive protectionism in a long time will return jobs to hurting US industrial heartlands.

It’s true that the income of globalization — which noticed many US jobs disappear abroad — haven’t been equally shared. However the USA is the richest, strongest nation in historical past, and profited most from the free buying and selling system Trump seeks to destroy.

And the influence of his bigger-than-expected tariffs threatens to trigger a lot disruption that it throws the US and the world into a recession, inflicting enormous job losses and wrecking the funds of tens of millions of individuals. Such fears are partly behind the meltdown on international markets final week and fears that worse is to come back.

Uncertainty deepens over Trump’s endgame

It was left as much as Trump’s Cupboard on Sunday to attempt to clarify the strategy behind his tariff warfare, an method he’s lengthy wished to implement however that many economists regard as silly and harmful.

CNN’s Jake Tapper requested Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins how lengthy the tariff chaos would final and whether or not it was a negotiating tactic. Her reply laid naked the coverage contradiction that’s inflicting deep uncertainty and haunting inventory markets.

“This can be a nationwide safety challenge. That is about reshoring hundreds, a whole lot of hundreds, tens of millions of jobs,” Rollins stated on “State of the Union,” seeming to substantiate that Trump is bent on a elementary reordering of the worldwide economic system with an try to re-create the manufacturing power of the peak of the commercial period.

However Rollins then stated that fifty international locations have been “burning the cellphone strains into the White Home” and implied the tariffs have been meant merely as leverage. “That is the last word dealmaker who’s a businessman on the head of our authorities,” she stated.

This was in line with Trump’s later remarks on Air Drive One which he was prepared to speak to China and the European Union about decreasing commerce deficits with the USA. The feedback is likely to be seen in some quarters as an try to restrict the injury anticipated to hit inventory markets Monday.

Bilateral negotiations with scores of nations may conceivably yield new buying and selling situations that would enhance the place of the USA. However such an method wouldn’t be ample to re-create the late nineteenth century golden age of producing that Trump is promising. And it’s questionable whether or not the positive factors would justify the financial destruction the president is wreaking.

The administration appears to be solely within the sort of “offers” that might require different international locations to embrace complete capitulation. “This isn’t a negotiation,” Trump’s high commerce adviser, Peter Navarro, stated on Fox Information’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” He warned that providing the US a zero tariff wouldn’t be ample, and signaled nations should cede to White Home calls for on different points, together with non-tariff boundaries and currencies.

Whereas Trump’s concern for People left behind by the twenty first century economic system is laudable, his obsession with commerce deficits and the commerce in items represents an archaic worldview. It ignores how the US economic system has grow to be a tech and providers behemoth and the way it won’t ever have the ability to produce fundamental items corresponding to garments as economically as lower-wage economies overseas. Making fundamental items in the USA would value extra, would increase the price of residing and would hurt the prosperity of many People.

Whereas Rollins gave the impression to be following the instance of Trump final week by suggesting tariffs have been leverage, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick dug in on Sunday.

“There isn’t a suspending,” he stated of the duties on account of come into drive Wednesday. “They’re undoubtedly going to remain in place for days and weeks,” Lutnick stated on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He added: “The president must reset international commerce. … The international locations of the world are ripping us off, and it’s bought to finish.”

Lutnick seems to be betting that US power can drive weaker nations to fold. He informed CNN’s Pamela Brown final week that it will be unwise to retaliate. “Should you’re indignant and also you battle again to the best buyer on the earth, you’re going to lose. We’re the sumo wrestler of this world.”

Such is the ability of the US that it would triumph in one-on-one showdowns with most different nations. However the administration hardly ever talks in regards to the influence of multifront tariff retaliation concurrently from all the nice buying and selling powers. China, for example, now faces a cumulative 54% tariff on its imports to the US, which implies that shopping for energy of US customers will likely be severely constrained since — regardless of Trump’s insistence that different international locations pay for tariffs — shoppers will foot the invoice. This might hammer US retailers and squelch shopper confidence, establishing the situations that would result in a recession. China additionally imposed a 34% tariff on US imports, making a tough-to-crack market much more tough for American corporations.

Indifference over rising financial fears within the US

Monumental losses on US inventory markets final week — the Dow and the S&P 500 have been both down by greater than 5% on Friday alone — alarmed tens of millions of People whose retirements rely on their 401(ok) plans.

However Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted there didn’t should be a recession and dismissed the long-term influence of inventory market losses, utilizing phrases like “choppiness” and “adjustment course of” to clarify the panic. And talking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Bessent rejected the concept that individuals who need to retire quickly had taken a critical blow. “People who’ve put away for years of their financial savings accounts, I feel they don’t take a look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s taking place,” Bessent stated. He added: “The rationale the inventory market is taken into account a very good funding is as a result of it’s a long-term funding. Should you look day-to-day, week-to-week, it’s very dangerous. Over the long run, it’s a very good funding.”

Technically, Bessent is appropriate, and over years and a long time, shares have been a sound funding, via market corrections and recessions. However his feedback have been the newest remarkably tone-deaf commentary from a multimillionaire Cupboard member. Bessent is a rich former hedge fund supervisor.

Such attitudes increase the query of whether or not the president’s technique will value him public assist — particularly if the tariffs stay in place for months and value hikes start to actually punish households. Current nationwide surveys from The Wall Street Journal, CBS News and Marquette University Law School, all taken earlier than Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement, discovered majorities of People disapproved of the president’s tariff insurance policies.

Some Republican senators are already nervous. A number of have signed on to a measure backed by GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley to require presidents to justify new tariffs to Congress. Lawmakers must approve them inside 60 days or they’d expire.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat co-leading the hassle with Grassley, stated Sunday that bipartisan momentum was rising behind the invoice and that seven GOP senators have been now listed as co-sponsors in an uncommon break with Trump.

“I’m positive they take heed to their constituents. Shopper challenges are already beginning to floor, and definitely the inventory market’s influence on retirement revenue is shaking lots of people,” Cantwell stated on CBS. The measure, nonetheless, faces a far tougher path within the Home, and it’s uncertain at this level it may amass veto-proof majorities.

After months of mourning their November loss, Democrats are exhibiting indicators of life. A liberal candidate won a wide victory in a race for a Wisconsin Supreme Courtroom seat final week. And the scale of protests in opposition to Trump and Elon Musk in lots of cities Saturday might augur an awakening of a resistance motion extra a 12 months and a half earlier than the 2026 midterm elections.

However Trump is exhibiting no signal of a course correction. He wrote on his Fact Social community on Saturday that “we’ve got been the dumb and helpless ‘whipping put up,’ however not any longer.” The president added: “THIS IS AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, AND WE WILL WIN. HANG TOUGH.” The following day, he was again on the golf course.

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