President Donald Trump declared Sunday evening that he is not purposely causing the latest stock market sell-off, but he said little to discourage it.
“I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One Sunday night when asked about the markets.
The comments came after U.S. market futures fell on Sunday evening, with Dow Jones Industrial Average futures down 4.1%, extending losses from Thursday and Friday and implying that additional selling is expected to occur Monday morning.
He mentioned the trade gap with China as the reason for continuing with his tariffs plan despite recent market volatility.
“We have to solve our trade deficit with China,” he told reporters. “We have a trillion-dollar trade deficit with China, resulting in annual losses of hundreds of billions of dollars. And unless we fix that problem, I will not make a deal.”
“I’m willing to deal with China,” he said, “but they have to solve their surplus.”
He also stated that he spoke with European and Asian leaders over the weekend about his administration’s tariffs, which are set to go into force in the next week.
Trump’s statements match those of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who stated on Sunday that the government will stick to its plans for reciprocal tariffs on major US trading partners, despite the worldwide stock market sell-off. Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, stated that the stock market slump was not part of a premeditated strategy.
The comments by Trump and his team came after the president himself published a link to a video on his Truth Social account claiming that the president was intentionally causing the markets to fall as part of his larger economic objectives.
The video, which first surfaced on TikTok in March, was uploaded by Trump on April 4th, two days after his tariff announcement.
