Trump digs in on tariffs as global stock markets go into freefall

United States President Donald Trump has brushed off the market turmoil caused by his sweeping tariffs, likening the measures to “medicine” as panicked investors continued a massive sell-off of global stocks.

“I don’t want anything to go down but, sometimes, you have to take medicine to fix something,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Sunday.

“We have been treated so badly by other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen. They took our businesses, they took our money, they took our jobs.”

Digging in on his so-called “reciprocal tariffs”, Trump said he would not back down unless other countries balanced their trade with the US.

The US president said he had spoken with many foreign leaders over the weekend who were “dying to make a deal”.

“I said, ‘We’re not going to have deficits with your country’,” Trump said.

“We’re not going to do that, because, to me, a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or, at worst, going to be breaking even.”

Trump’s comments came as global stocks continued to plummet amid fears of a global trade war and economic downturn.

Taiwan’s benchmark TAIEX and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng plunged about 10 percent on Monday, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 dived nearly 9 percent.

In Singapore, the Straits Times Index tumbled more than 7 percent.

South Korea’s KOSPI fell more than 5 percent, while Australia’s ASX 200 dropped about 6 percent.

US stocks were set for further steep losses when Wall Street reopens, following a two-day rout last week that wiped out more than $6 trillion in market value.

Futures tied to the benchmark S&P500 were down 2.70 percent on Sunday, while those tied to the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 were down 3.55 percent.

The US began imposing a baseline tariff of 10 percent on imports on Sunday, with steeper duties of between 11 percent and 50 percent set to take effect on Wednesday.

The higher tariffs are set to hit both US rivals and allies alike.

Retaliatory measures

China, the US’s main strategic rival and its third-largest trading partner, is facing a 34 percent tariff, while the European Union, Japan and South Korea are bracing for tariffs of between 20 percent and 26 percent.

China last week announced a raft of countermeasures, including a 34 percent tariff on all US imports and restrictions on exports of some critical minerals, while the EU is preparing list of US imports to target with higher duties.

Some other US trading partners, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Indonesia and Taiwan, have ruled out tit-for-tat measures for the time being.

Amid the turmoil, analysts have sharply raised the odds of the US entering a recession within the next 12 months.

JPMorgan last week raised the likelihood of a US recession to 60 percent, while S&P Global has put the likelihood at between 30 and 35 percent.

Trump administration officials have played down the risk of an economic downturn despite the market chaos.

“There doesn’t have to be a recession… who knows how the market is going to react in a day, in a week,” US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

“What we are looking at is building the long-term economic fundamentals for prosperity, and I think the previous administration had put us on the course toward financial calamity.”