US President compares tariffs to medical treatment amid significant market distress and widespread selling of global stocks.
“I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes, to fix things, you must take medicine,” Trump remarked to journalists on Air Force One.
“We’ve been mistreated by other countries due to foolish leadership that permitted this. They’ve taken our businesses, our money, and our jobs,” Trump asserted.
Standing firm on his “reciprocal tariffs,” Trump insisted he wouldn’t relent unless other nations balanced their trade with the US.
The president added he spoke with numerous foreign leaders over the weekend, who, he claims, are keen to strike a trade deal.
“I conveyed, ‘We aren’t accepting trade deficits with your nations,'” Trump said, labeling a trade deficit as a loss and aiming for trade surpluses or, at a minimum, a break-even.
Trump’s statements followed a plummet in global stocks, fueled by fears of a broad trade conflict and an economic slump.
Taiwan’s TAIEX and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng each dropped approximately 10 percent, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell nearly 9 percent. The Straits Times Index in Singapore plummeted over 7 percent, and the KOSPI in South Korea fell more than 5 percent, with Australia’s ASX 200 not far behind at about 6 percent.
US stocks braced for more substantial losses upon reopening Wall Street, following a two-day plunge that erased over $6 trillion in market value.
Futures linked to the S&P500 slid by 2.70 percent, and those tied to the tech-focused Nasdaq-100 sunk 3.55 percent on Sunday.
The US on Sunday started levying a 10 percent baseline tariff on imports, with the duties escalating to between 11 percent and 50 percent on Wednesday.
China, a key US rival and third-largest trading partner, will face a 34 percent tariff.
In response, Beijing announced measures including a 34 percent tariff on all US imports and restrictions on critical mineral exports.
Amidst the turbulence, forecasts of the US slipping into recession have grown more pessimistic.
JPMorgan increased the likelihood of a US recession to 60 percent, and S&P Global cited it as between 30 and 35 percent.
Despite the market chaos, officials from Trump’s administration dismissed the risk of an economic downturn.
“There doesn’t necessarily have to be a recession. The market’s response in a day or week is uncertain,” US Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“What we’re focused on is building long-term economic foundations for prosperity, which we believe the previous administration steered us away from, toward financial turmoil.”
