'The market's gonna boom,' says Trump as Wall Street tumbles over tariffs
WASHINGTON − A day after President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs sent global markets tumbling - and his administration urged the American public to be patient - the president struck an optimistic note.
Wall Street and global stock exchanges took a sharp nosedive Thursday as investors braced for the possibility of a recession, after Trump imposed higher tariffs on dozens of countries − including some of America’s biggest trading partners.
The S&P 500 was down 3.4% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 1,100 points or 2.6% at 12:40 p.m.
On Thursday, Trump, who has declined to rule out the possibility of a recession, compared his “Liberation Day” tariffs to surgery as he delivered a positive prognosis on the White House South Lawn.
"I think it's going very well. It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated," he said, adding that the move was already bringing in close to $7 trillion in investment.
"The markets are gonna boom. The stock is gonna boom, the country's gonna boom, and the rest of the world wants to see is there any way they can make a deal," he said. "They've taken advantage of us for many, many years."
On Wednesday, as he unveiled his reciprocal tariffs plan in the Rose Garden, Trump said he was charging the countries a “discounted” reciprocal rate “because we are being very kind” as he announced tariffs ranging from 10% to 49%.
In a Thursday morning post on TruthSocial, Trump said the country would emerge stronger after the "operation."
“THE OPERATION IS OVER! THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING,” he wrote. “THE PROGNOSIS IS THAT THE PATIENT WILL BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday defended the president's tariff move and said it would take time to see the benefits of the tariff and deregulation policy.
“What I’d ask folks to appreciate here is that we are not going to fix things overnight," Vance said Thursday during a FOX & Friends interview. “We’ve seen closing factories, we’ve seen rising inflation. President Trump is taking this economy in a different direction."
While some nations will face the universal baseline tariff of 10%, imports from dozens of other countries will be charged a higher country-specific tariff.
For instance, China, which was previously hit with a 20% tariff to address its role in the production of synthetic opioids, recieved an additional 34%, bringing the total to 54%. Cambodia was hit with a 49% tariff while Thailand came in at 36%. The reciprocal tariffs will go into effect on April 9.
"Reciprocal. That means they do it to us, and we do it to them," Trump said from the Rose Garden.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Trump’s 20% tariffs on the bloc of 27 countries “is a major blow to the whole economy.”
“The global economy will massively suffer,” she said. “Uncertainty will spiral and trigger the rise of further protectionism.”
The EU chief said she was prepared to implement “countermeasures.”
A top House Democrat vowed try forcing a vote to block the tariffs.
“I'll soon introduce a privileged resolution to force a vote on ending the made up national emergency Trump is using to justify these taxes,” Rep. Greg Meeks, D-N.Y., the Foreign Affairs Committee's ranking member, wronte in a post on X.
"Trump just hit Americans with the largest regressive tax hike in modern history − massive tariffs on all imports," he said.
While Democrats panned Trump’s tariff plans, Republicans were quick to defend the president. Rep. Rick Allen, R-Ga., said the president was “undoing decades of unfair trade practices and putting American workers, businesses, and manufacturers FIRST.”
“These reciprocal tariffs are simply leveling the playing field and will help ensure the U.S. is no longer on the losing end of global trade,” he tweeted on X.
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for Paste BN. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal