President Donald Trump responded for the first time on Thursday on the fall of his customs announcement, which included markets nosing and foreign leaders who threatened retaliation.
Trump had no public events on his schedule one day after his dramatic disclosure of serious tariffs against almost all US trading partners, but he took a single question when he left the White House on Thursday afternoon for a trip to a golf event in Miami.
“Markets today are far down … how are things going?” asked a reporter the president.
“I think it’s going very well,” Trump replied. “It was an operation. I like when a patient is being operated on and that is a big thing. I said it would be exactly as it is.”
Trump continued to project confidence and said that nations to be affected are now trying to see if they can “enter into an agreement.”
“The markets are going to live, the stock is going to live, the country will boom, and the rest of the world will see, there is any way they can make a deal.” Said Trump. “They have benefited from us for many, many years. For many years we have been on the wrong side of the ball. And I will tell you what, I think it will be incredible.”
President Donald Trump speaks to journalists before departing from the southern lawn of the White House of Washington, DC, April 3, 2025.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Later, when he talked to journalists about Air Force One, Trump again said he is willing to enter into an appointment despite the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and others earlier in the day appear to say that the tariffs would not be changed
“The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” Trump said. “I have always used them very well in the first administration that you saw, but now we take it to a whole new level because it is a worldwide situation and it is very exciting to see.”
When asked if he was open to dealing with these countries that called him, he replied, “Well, it depends. If someone said we will give you something that is so phenomenal as long as they give us something, it is good.”
Earlier Thursday, Trump administration officials were deployed to deal with the fall of Morning News Shows.
“The president made it clear yesterday, this is not a negotiation. This is a national emergency,” Leavitt said at CNN.
He is always willing to pick up the phone to answer calls, but he put the case yesterday for why we are doing this, and these countries around the world have had 70 years to do the right of the American people and they have chosen not to do so, ”Leavitt added.
“I don’t think there’s any chance that President Trump will come back from his tariffs,” Trade Secretary Howard Lutnick said on the network.
World leaders weigh their answers to Trump’s historical charges, some of which come into force on April 5 and others on April 9.
China, which will be hit with a huge 54% customs rate, called on the United States to “immediately cancel its unilateral customs duties and solve differences correctly with its trading partners through equal dialogue.”
Vice President JD Vance arrives to attend President Donald Trump’s remarks on mutual tariffs at an event at Rose Garden in the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Domestic threw shares in the early trade on Thursday. Dow Jones Industrial Average Falling 3.75%, the Technical-Tongue Nasdaq dropped 5.75%, and S& P 500 tumbled 4.4%.
Vice President JD Vance recognized before the market’s sale that Trump’s massive new tariffs will mean a “big change” for Americans. Trump, before Wednesday’s announcement, had admitted that there could be some short -term pain.
“President Trump is taking this economy in a different direction. He ran on it. He promised it. And now he delivers. And yes, this is a big change. I don’t want to get away from it but we needed a big change,” Vance told “Fox & Friends. “
Leavitt also defended the policy as Trump “delivered his promise to implement mutual tariffs” during a performance on CNN.
“To everyone on Wall Street this morning, I will say confidence in President Trump. This is a president who doubles on his proven financial formula from her first period,” she said.
The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks to journalists outside the west wing of the White House in Washington, March 27, 2025.
Jim Lo Scalzo/Epa-Effe/Shutterstock
Neither Vance nor Leavitt directly addressed the increased costs of economists saying that American consumers are all sure to meet or how they would help Americans.
“What I want to ask people to appreciate here is that we will not arrange things overnight,” said Vance. “We are struggling as fast as we can to arrange what was left to us, but it won’t happen right away.”
On the question of negative business reaction, Lutnick told CNN, “They don’t count the factories,” which he claimed would be built in the United States as a result.
“Let Donald Trump drive the global economy. He knows what he’s doing,” Lutnick said.
Trump Wednesday said jobs will come “roaring back.”
But asked at the Air Force One on Thursday how long it would take to get American manufacture to the place where he wanted to see it, Trump said, “Well, let’s say it’s a two-year process. You know they start a plant and they’re big plants.”
He continued. “We give them approval in many cases to build the electrical facility with it. So you have the electrical generation and the plant and they are large plants. Now the good news is a lot of money in them and they can build them quickly, but they are still very large plants. I would always say it would take a year and a half to two years.
