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Trump administration officials on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s massive tariff action last week, saying it has triggered a flood of requests for negotiations from countries hit by the sweeping new duties.
“We’ve got 50 countries that are burning the phone lines into the White House up,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And probably the president’s cell phone as well, and probably [Commerce Secretary] Howard Lutnick as well. And I’ve heard from some as well.”
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” also said he had heard Saturday night from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that “that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation.” Neither Rollins nor Hassett specified which countries had reached out.
Trump’s decision last week to impose a baseline tariff of at least 10 percent on nearly every country, and duties ranging up to 50 percent on about 60 trading partners that the Trump administration believes treats the United States most unfairly in trade, triggered a massive stock market sell-off and increased fears of a recession caused by higher costs for consumer, increased uncertainty for businesses and foreign trade retaliation.
In addition, Trump and other administration official have sent mixed signals about the primary aim of the tariffs — whether their purpose is to raise “trillions of dollars” of new revenue and boost domestic manufacturing, as Trump said last week, or to pressure countries into a negotiations to reduce their own tariffs and other trade barriers. The two goals are somewhat contradictory because the more Trump strikes deals to remove the tariffs, the less revenue they will bring in.
There was no immediate word from the White House nor USTR of the countries lining up to seek talks, but several trading partners, including the 27-nation European Union, have signaled their desire for deal. Vietnam’s top leader, To Lam, spoke by phone with Trump last week after the tariff announcement and sent a letter this weekend asking for a 45-day delay to provide time to negotiate a deal, according to published reports.
China has harshly criticized Trump’s action and responded with 34 percent tariffs on American goods, the equivalent of the duty that Trump imposed on Chinese in his latest tariff action. However, that’s on top a 20 percent duty he imposed earlier this year to pressure the country to do more to stop fentanyl and fentanyl-precursor chemicals from entering the United States.
USTR is a small agency of around 250 people, raising questions about how fast it can respond to a surge of simultaneous requests for negotiations.
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it was Trump’s call whether to negotiate or not, but he warned against expecting quick deals.
“Well, I think that’s going to be a decision for President Trump,” Bessent said. “But I can tell you that as only he can do at this moment, he has created maximum leverage for himself. And more than 50 countries have approached the administration about lowering their non-tariff trade barriers, lowering their tariffs, stopping currency manipulation. And … you know, they’ve been bad actors for a long time. And it’s not the kind of thing you can negotiate away in days or weeks.”
Bessent also downplayed the potential for the tariffs to cause inflation, saying there is a difference between a “one-time price adjustment” as a result of higher import taxes and “consistent” price increases. He also called the stock market decline an “adjustment” that doesn’t necessarily mean a recession is coming.
“Who knows how the market is going to react in a day, in a week? What we are looking at is building the long-term economic fundamentals for prosperity,” he said.
The 10 percent baseline tariff went into effect early Saturday morning, while the higher tariffs on around 60 trading partners go into effect early Wednesday.
Lutnick, in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” vigorously defended the new taxes on imports as necessary for the long-term national security of the United States and also seemed to rule out the possibility of any quick agreements to pause or eliminate them.
“There is no postponing. They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks. That is sort of obvious. The president needs to reset global trade everybody has a trade surplus and we have a trade deficit,” Lutnick said.
“The tariffs are coming,” Lutnick added later in interview, when asked again about any possibility of delay, saying of Trump: “He wasn’t kidding. The tariffs are coming. Of course, they are.”
Hassett also downplayed the potential negative impact of the tariffs, saying any increase in prices would not be as much as critics of the duties expect. He also criticized earlier U.S. trade policy decisions, such as supporting China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, which he said hurt wages and employment more than they lowered prices. “We got the cheap goods at the grocery store, but then we had fewer jobs,” he said.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, an economist who served in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. called Trump’s tariff move “the biggest self-inflicted wound we put on our economy in history.
“We’re increasing inflation because the prices are higher because of the tariffs that gives people less spending power, fewer jobs,” Summers said in an interview on “This Week.”
“Markets are looking at all of that, and they think companies are going to be worth $5 trillion less than they thought before these tariffs started. And that’s just the loss to companies, adding the loss to consumers, a reasonable estimate would probably be something like $30 trillion,” Summers said.
He also took a shot Trump’s decades-old belief that tariffs are good for the economy, calling it “the economic equivalent of what creationism is to biology or what ending vaccines is to medicine.”
“The question is whether his advisers are going to have the courage to tell him that and the courage to step away from being part of the policies,” Summers said.
