Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, also downplayed a post Trump shared on social media saying he was “purposely crashing the market.”
Where does the money generated from tariffs go?
The Trump administration predicts tariffs will generate billions of dollars, but where will that money go?
WASHINGTON – After President Donald Trump announced wide-reaching tariffs on American trade partners last week, the U.S. stock market suffered its worst losses since the COVID-19 pandemic.
White House officials and Cabinet secretaries fanned out over the weekend to defend Trump’s economic strategy, underlining his efforts to spur companies to create more domestic manufacturing jobs and reduce trade deficits with other countries.
But Trump’s aides also addressed the hit markets took after the president’s tariff rollout last week. In the two trading days since Wednesday’s announcement, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 9.2%, the S&P 500 fell 10.5% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 11.4%.
“The idea that we didn’t know that there would be some uncertainty just isn’t true,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We knew there would uncertainty.”
But Rollins urged Americans not to look at Thursday and Friday’s trading and say, “the world is ending; the markets are crashing.” Instead, she argued, “the markets are adjusting.”
Trump’s top officials were repeatedly asked on Sunday about fears of a global recession and widespread anxiety over the near certainty among analysts that prices will rise for many goods. And they were pressed on the president’s own repost of a video that said he was “purposely crashing the market.”
Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, was asked on ABC’s “This Week” about the post Trump shared, which argued his tariff regime was part of a strategy to ultimately lower interest rates.
“He’s not trying to tank the market; he’s trying to deliver for American workers,” Hassett said. “It is not a strategy for the markets to crash.”
Scott Bessent, Trump’s treasury secretary, urged Americans who have lost money in the market to take a long-term view on their investments.
“Don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations at what’s happening,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Despite White House calls for Americans not to worry, the economic uncertainty prompted by Trump’s tariffs has become one of the first major points of difference between the president and congressional Republicans.
Four GOP senators joined with Democrats last week to pass legislation that would rein in his control over tariff policy, though the legislation has no chance of passage in the House.
However, two senators − one Republican and one Democrat − also introduced a bill last week that would require the president to get congressional approval for universal tariffs.
