President Donald Trump reacted for the first time on Thursday to the fallout from his tariff announcement, which included markets nosediving and foreign leaders threatening retaliation.
Trump had no public events on his schedule a day after his dramatic unveiling of severe tariffs against virtually all U.S. trading partners, but he did take a single question as he left the White House Thursday afternoon for a trip to a golf event in Miami.
“Markets today are way down … How’s it going?” a reporter asked the president.
“I think it’s going very well,” Trump responded. “It was an operation. I like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is.”
Trump continued to project confidence and said nations to be affected are now trying to see if they can “make a deal.”
“The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom, and the rest of the world wants to see is there any way they can make a deal.” Trump said. “They’ve taken advantage of us for many, many years. For many years we’ve been at the wrong side of the ball. And I’ll tell you what, I think it’s going to be unbelievable.”
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters prior to departing from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 3, 2025.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Later, speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump again said he’s willing to make a deal despite White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and others earlier in the day appearing to say the tariffs would not be changed
“The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” Trump said. “Always have, I’ve used them very well in the first administration, as you saw, but now we’re taking it to a whole new level, because it’s a worldwide situation, and it’s very exciting to see.”
Asked if he were open to deal with these countries calling him, he answered, “Well, it depends. If somebody said that we’re going to give you something that’s so phenomenal, as long as they’re giving us something, that’s good.”
Earlier Thursday, Trump administration officials were deployed to deal with the fallout on the morning news shows.
“The president made it clear yesterday, this is not a negotiation. This is a national emergency,” Leavitt said on CNN.
He’s always willing to pick up the phone to answer calls, but he laid out the case yesterday for why we are doing it this and these countries around the world have had 70 years to do the right thing by the American people, and they have chosen not to,” Leavitt added.
“I don’t think there’s any chance that President Trump is gonna back off his tariffs,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on the network.
World leaders are weighing their response to Trump’s historic levies, some of which go into effect on April 5 and others on April 9.
China, which is going to be hit with a whopping 54% tariff rate, urged the U.S. to “immediately cancel its unilateral tariff measures and properly resolve differences with its trading partners through equal dialogue.”
Vice President JD Vance arrives to attend President Donald Trump’s remarks on reciprocal tariffs at an event in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 2, 2025.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Domestically, stocks plunged in early trading on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 3.75%, the tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 5.75% and the S&P 500 tumbled 4.4%.
Vice President JD Vance, before the market selloff, acknowledged that Trump’s massive new tariffs will mean a “big change” for Americans. Trump, ahead of Wednesday’s announcement, had admitted there could be some short-term pain.
“President Trump is taking this economy in a different direction. He ran on that. He promised it. And now he’s delivering. And yes, this is a big change. I’m not going to shy away from it, but we needed a big change,” Vance told “Fox & Friends.”
Leavitt, too, defended the policy as Trump “delivering on his promise to implement reciprocal tariffs” during an appearance on CNN.
“To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump. This is a president who is doubling down on his proven economic formula from his first term,” she said.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks to reporters outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Mar. 27, 2025.
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Neither Vance nor Leavitt directly addressed the increased costs economists say U.S. consumers are all but certain to face or how they would help Americans.
“What I’d ask folks to appreciate here is that we’re not going to fix things overnight,” Vance said. “We’re fighting as quickly as we can to fix what was left to us, but it’s not going to happen immediately.”
Asked about negative business reaction, Lutnick told CNN, “they’re not counting the factories” that he claimed would be built in the U.S. as a result.
“Let Donald Trump run the global economy. He knows what he’s doing,” Lutnick said.
Trump on Wednesday said jobs will come “roaring back.”
But asked on Air Force One on Thursday how long it would take to get American manufacturing to where he’d like to see it, Trump said, “Well, let’s say it’s a two-year process. You know, they start a plant, and they’re big plants.”
He continued. “We’re giving them approval to also, in many cases, to build the electric facility with it. So, you have electric generation and the plant, and they’re big plants. Now, the good news is a lot of money for them, and they can build them fast, but they’re still very big plants. I’d always say it would take a year-and-a-half to two years.
