Former President Donald Trump recently shared a video on his Truth Social account, originally posted on TikTok in March, where he discussed the stock market’s current volatility. The ad appeared just two days after Trump first announced his plan for tariffs on steel and aluminum. This plan is poised, in the coming week, to go into effect.
The stock market is experiencing a tremendous storm. On Sunday night, US equity futures were down as much as 4.1%, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures getting hit the hardest. His comments… …partly as fears mount that the current sell-off is shaking investor confidence.
In the video, Trump asserted his belief that the current stock market drop is not part of an intentional strategy. He expressed a willingness to engage with China to address trade imbalances, stating, “We have to solve our trade deficit with China.” Kevin Hassett, an economic advisor, took up this refrain with great passion. He added that the US must address its trillion-dollar, per year trade deficit with China and yearly losses that exceed a hundred billion dollars annually.
Trump made a strong case for taking action on these issues quickly. Even after implementation, he claimed the trade deficit as a primary justification for continuing forward with his tariffs. We have a trillion-dollar trade deficit with China, that is hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose with China. And until we fix that, I’m not doing a deal,” he said.
Trump projected an optimistic outlook on changes to the economy that were overdue. “I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” he remarked, acknowledging the difficult choices that may lie ahead.
Kevin Hassett fleshed out some of these points further, stressing that the recent downturn in the stock market is not being designed for. Instead, he attributed it directly to the long-running economic malaise and trade talks.
As the US continues to wade across a difficult fiscal shoal, President Trump’s Tariffs plan aims to address retaliatory trade inequities imposed by China. Concurrently, it has tried to avoid domestic economic destabilization amid the increasing market uncertainty. Now, the administration is preparing to roll out its strategy over the next few weeks. It will be particularly watching to see how this impacts the stock market and relations between the US and global trading partners.