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. In the hours that followed, the S&P 500 had its worst trading day of the year, 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 wanted to help Mexico and Canada to a certain extent,” and he had also wanted to “help American car manufacturers.”
“We’re a big, big country and they do a lot of their business with us, whereas in our case it’s much less significant. We do very little with Canada by comparison,” Trump said.
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“I thought it would be a fair thing to do and so I gave them a little bit of a break for a short period of time.”
Pressed by Bartiromo about concern that his policies—particularly his lack of clarity on tariffs—may lead to 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 know, they have plenty of clarity. They just use that. That’s like, almost a sound bite. They always say that, ‘We want clarity.’”
Trump said Friday he will also soon bring in new 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, appear to be separate from the so-called reciprocal tariffs Trump is planning to start imposing on April 2, which will match all tariffs on products sold by other countries to the U.S.
They would also 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 about a slowdown,” Trump said: “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of – it takes a little time – but I think it should be great for us.”
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