Trump compares tariffs to ‘medicine’ as markets point to rough week ahead
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next couple of hours.
We start with the news that president Donald Trump says foreign governments would have to pay “a lot of money” to lift sweeping tariffs that he characterized as “medicine”, as financial markets indicated another week of steep losses could be in store.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump indicated he was not concerned about market losses that has already wiped out nearly $6tn in value from US stocks, Reuters reported.
“I don’t want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” he said.
Trump said he had spoken to leaders from Europe and Asia over the weekend, who hope to convince him to lower tariffs as high as 50 percent due to take effect this week.
“They are coming to the table. They want to talk but there’s no talk unless they pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis,” Trump said.
Trump’s tariff announcement last week jolted economies around the world, triggering retaliatory levies from China and sparking fears of a global trade war and recession.
On Sunday morning talkshows, Trump’s top economic advisers sought to portray the tariffs as a savvy repositioning of the US in the global trade order. They also tried to minimize the economic shocks from last week’s tumultuous roll out. Wall Street stock futures opened sharply lower on Sunday, in a sign of further turbulence.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said more than 50 nations had started negotiations with the U.S. since last Wednesday’s announcement.
“He’s created maximum leverage for himself,” Bessent said on NBC News’ ‘Meet the Press’. Neither Bessent nor the other officials named the countries or offered details about the talks. But simultaneously negotiating with multiple governments could pose a logistical challenge for the Trump administration and prolong economic uncertainty.
Bessent said there was “no reason” to anticipate a recession, citing stronger-than-anticipated US jobs growth last month, before the tariffs were announced.
