Worldwide tariffs are unlikely to go down, but “could go up,” U.S. President Donald Trump says.
In an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, Trump tamped down fears of a looming recession after a tumultuous week for the U.S. stock market as investors grappled with further uncertainty from Trump’s tariffs.
Trump exempted certain products traded under North American free trade rules on Thursday. Within the hours that followed, the S&P 500 had its worst trading day of the 12 months, while the Nasdaq plunged 2.6 per cent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 1.0 per cent.
Addressing the stock market tumble, Trump said that the U.S. is “going to have a disruption, but we’re okay with that.”
When asked by Bartiromo why he paused some tariffs, Trump said “I desired to help Mexico and Canada to a certain extent,” and he had also desired to “help American automotive manufacturers.”
“We’re a giant, big country they usually do a whole lot of their business with us, whereas in our case it’s much less important. We do little or no with Canada by comparison,” Trump said.
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“I assumed it could be a good thing to do and so I gave them a little bit little bit of a break for a brief time frame.”
Pressed by Bartiromo about concern that his policies—particularly his lack of clarity on tariffs—may result in a recession, Trump dismissed it by saying “the tariffs could go up as time goes by.”
“We may go up with some tariffs, I don’t think we’ll go down, but we may go up and but, you recognize, they’ve loads of clarity. They only use that. That’s like, almost a sound bite. They all the time say that, ‘We would like clarity.’”
Trump said Friday he will even soon usher in recent tariffs on Canadian dairy and lumber that match the “tremendously high” duties he says Canada charges for shipping those products to the U.S.
The tariffs, if instituted, seem like separate from the so-called reciprocal tariffs Trump is planning to start out imposing on April 2, which can match all tariffs on products sold by other countries to the U.S.
They might even be on top of sweeping 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods and 10 per cent duties on Canadian energy that began on Tuesday.
When asked by Bartiromo about “rising worries a few slowdown,” Trump said: “I hate to predict things like that. There’s a period of transition, because what we’re doing could be very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a giant thing. And there are all the time periods of – it takes a little bit time – but I believe it ought to be great for us.”
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