Unlock the White House Watch watch newsletter for free
Your guide on what the US elections of 2024 mean for Washington and Le Monde
Donald Trump’s main economic officials have promised to continue with deadly imports on imports from around the world, rejecting fears of an imminent recession while investors were preparing for new disorders in the financial markets.
In a television interviews on Sunday morning, Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary, and Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, defended Trump’s ultra-protectionist trade policies as a necessary overhaul of world trade and rejected the brutal sale last week of shares.
They also suggested additional samples on imports of a wide range of countries, which should take effect on Wednesday, would not be delayed. These are in addition to a “base” rate of 10% implemented on Saturday which struck most of the imported goods.
“He announced it and he was not joking. The prices arrive, of course,,” Larick told CBS on Sunday, adding that there was “no postponement”.
“The president must reset world trade.”
Senior US officials said that Trump announced that his new price plan last Wednesday in the White House pink last Wednesday, more than 50 countries had been in contact with the administration to ask for negotiations to mitigate the prices.
But while they left the door open to talks, they were skeptical about the conclusion of a succession of transactions, which would lead to a general decline in American prices.
“This is not the kind of thing you can negotiate in days or weeks … We will have to see what the countries offer and if it is credible,” said Bessent, speaking to NBC.
“After 20, 30, 40, 50 years of bad behavior, you cannot just wipe the slate.”
The political pressure on Trump and his team on the price levels increased quickly. The great drop in American shares last week led the Democrats to refine their attacks on the administration and even some Republicans to decline in the Order of the White House.
On Friday, the president of the federal reserve, Jay Powell, warned that the prices set by Trump risked providing both higher inflation and slower growth in the greatest world economy, revealing a concern to the American Central Bank.
The move of China to retaliate against the last series of American prices with its own samples from American products has further feared the benefits.
But Bessent denied that financial markets or economic prospects would be affected by long -term negative effects. “There must not be a recession,” he said.
Samples are a “unique price adjustment,” he added, and the Americans would not be too disturbed by volatility to Wall Street.
“Who knows how the market will react in a day, in a week?” Said Bessent.
“The Americans who want to retire at the moment, the Americans who have put aside for years in their savings accounts, I think they do not look at the daily fluctuations of what is going on.”
However, Lawrence Summers, a former American secretary of the Treasury of Democratic President Bill Clinton, warned that “more turbulence” was to strike the markets unless Trump changes course.
“Until the president recognizes that this is a very serious error which will probably have very negative consequences, I think that is likely to make things very difficult,” Summers told ABC.
“I think people are right not to make new purchases, companies are right to be careful. People are right to want to have money. What we need is a reversal of these policies, and until we have a reversal, I think we are going to have a real problem. ”
