President Donald Trump’s tariffs have rattled markets in recent weeks, spurring concerns about rising consumer prices and their impact on the labor market as White House officials have sought to defend their policies and suggest the economy will soon have more certainty.
Trump’s top economic aide, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Trump’s tariffs have gotten China, Canada and Mexico to do more about illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling, adding that once Trump’s reciprocal tariffs take effect on April 2, the policy should make more sense.
“Absolutely between now and April 2, there’ll be some uncertainty,” Hassett said on Monday. “But as April comes along, markets will see that the reciprocal trade policy makes a great deal of sense.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked by NBC News’ Kristen Welker in an appearance on “Meet the Press” if he could guarantee that there “will be no recession on President Trump’s watch?”
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“Well, Kristen, you know that there are no guarantees, like who would have predicted COVID? So I can predict that we are putting in robust policies that will be durable. And there could be an adjustment because, I tell you, this massive government spending that we’d had that, if that had kept going – we have to wean our country off of that,” Bessent said on Sunday.
“And on the other side, we are going to invigorate the private sector. I had a meeting with small bankers last week, and they are ready to start lending. And I can tell you that Main Street is going to do well,” the treasury secretary added.
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Welker followed up and asked Bessent whether his reference to the economy having an “adjustment” could potentially lead to a recession.
“There’s no reason that it has to,” Bessent responded. “But, I can tell you that if we kept on this track, what I could guarantee is we would have had a financial crisis. I’ve studied it, I’ve taught it, and if we had kept up at these spending levels that – everything was unsustainable. So here we are putting that – we are resetting, and we are putting things on a sustainable path.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS News last week that Trump’s “policies are the most important thing America has ever had.”
He added the benefits of the policies would be “worth it” even if they lead to a recession, saying that the “only reason there could possibly be a recession is because the Biden nonsense that we had to live with. These policies produce revenues. They produce growth. They produce factories being built here.”
KAROLINE LEAVITT SAYS AP REPORTER ‘CLEARLY’ FAILED TO GRASP TRUMP’S TARIFF PLAN AFTER HEATED EXCHANGE
Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in response to a question from Associated Press reporter Josh Boak about Trump’s tariffs during a press briefing that the president is “actually not implementing tax hikes” and added: “Tariffs are a tax hike on foreign countries that, again, have been ripping us off. Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people, and the president is a staunch advocate of tax cuts.”
Leavitt discussed the dust-up on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” over the weekend, where she told host Maria Bartiromo that the president’s tariffs are intended to bring in revenue that allows for a larger tax cut.
“He [Boak] clearly fails to see President Trump’s long-term economic strategy, which is to bring in so much revenue, so much wealth into our country through tariffs, that we can give larger tax cuts to the American people to put more money back into their pockets,” Leavitt said.
There is broad agreement among economists that tariffs are a tax on imported goods that is normally paid by the importing company, which in turn passes on some or most of the cost of the tariff to consumers in the form of higher prices.
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