More than 50 countries have contacted White House to start trade talks, Trump adviser says

The Manila Times

More than 50 countries have contacted White House to start trade talks, Trump adviser says  More than 50 countries have reached out to the White House to begin trade talks, a top economic adviser to US President Donald Trump said on Sunday as US officials sought to defend sweeping new tariffs that have unleashed global turmoil.  During an interview on ABC News' 'This Week,' US National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett denied that the tariffs were part of a strategy by Trump to crash financial markets to pressure the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.  He said there would be no "political coercion" of the central bank. In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump shared a video that suggested his tariffs aimed to hammer the stock market on purpose in a bid to force lower interest rates.   ABC THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS / REUTERS VIDEO  Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe   Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net   Follow us:  Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook  Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram  Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter  DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion   Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital   Check out our Podcasts:  Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify  Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts  Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic  Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer  Tune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein  #TheManilaTimes #worldnews  #tarrifs  #whitehouse  #donaldtrump

Transcript

00:00There's kind of like a logical disconnect between the stories, the competing stories

00:04that your team is using to attack President Trump.

00:07On the one hand, you're saying that the countries are really angry and they're going to have to

00:10retaliate. On the other hand, you're saying that consumers are going to bear the costs and it's

00:14going to drive inflation up. But if U.S. consumers are bearing the costs, there's no reason for the

00:19countries to be angry. So the fact is the countries are angry and retaliating. And by the way,

00:24coming to the table, I got a report from the USTR last night that more than 50 countries have

00:29reached out to the president to begin a negotiation. But they're doing that because they

00:33understand that they bear a lot of the tariff. And so I don't think that you're going to see a big

00:37effect on the consumer in the U.S. because I do think that the reason why we have a persistent

00:43long run trade deficit is these people have very inelastic supply. Well, there might be some

00:47increase in prices, but the fact is that if there were going to be a heavy burden on the U.S.

00:51consumer, then this trade deficit for 30 years we've seen really since China entered the WTO

00:57would be something that would have gone down. It would have gone down over time. It would have

01:01responded to the prices. The bottom line is that China entered the WTO in 2000. In the 15 years

01:07that followed, real incomes declined about $1,200 cumulatively over that time. And so if cheap goods

01:12were the answer, if cheap goods were going to make Americans' real wages, real welfare better off,

01:17then real incomes would have gone up over that time. Instead, they went down because wages went

01:21down more than prices went down. So we got the cheap goods at the grocery store, but then we

01:25had fewer jobs. And that's why President Obama and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and President

01:31Trump have come out saying we've got to come up with a better policy, a policy that treats our

01:35workers fairly compared to everybody else. And now President Trump, true to his word, just like he

01:39promised during the campaign, just like he put into his campaign platform, he's delivering on

01:43his word. But the president's allowed to have an opinion. The president's allowed to have an

01:48opinion. But there's not going to be any political coercion over the Fed, for sure. So you said the

01:52president's allowed to have an opinion. Is that his opinion or not? He's not trying to take the

01:55market. He's trying to deliver for American workers. I mean, what would you have him do?

01:59Again, real wages down 15 years in a row under the previous policy. And that's why Americans

02:04voted for him. They brought him in to turn the economy around for the American worker. That's

02:08what he's focused on. It is not a strategy for the markets to crash. It's a strategy to create a

02:12golden age in America for the American worker. That's his strategy. The data, we just got the

02:16data for the last month and the month before, both times manufacturing employment went up and

02:21auto employment went up. And again, we're looking at about 10,000 auto jobs, George. That's more

02:25than we got all of last year with Joe Biden. This week, they're starting to ramp up in anticipation

02:30of that. I would expect that the jobs numbers, and I'll come back and talk to you about it when

02:33they come out, are going to go up even more now that the tariffs are in place. We just saw that

02:37the Senate has agreed to budget rules that the House is negotiating with them now, that it's

02:42going to give the biggest tax cut in history in order to make space for these policies and to not

02:48have the runaway deficits that gave us all the inflation in the Biden administration.

02:53Then we've got an all of the above approach where we're reducing taxes, reducing spending,

02:58reducing regulation, and imposing a baseline tariff around the world and hitting the harder

03:04actors, the tougher actors harder. That's what President Trump campaigned on. It's a

03:08sound policy. It's why people voted him into office. And it's what we're doing right now.

03:12We're delivering out the prophecies. A tariff is a form of tax. It's a way that you collect

03:17revenue when you import products. Yes. And again, if you thought consumers are going to

03:22pay that tax, then you should be puzzled about why it is that countries are upset about it.

03:26Obviously, an ongoing negotiation with Russia and Ukraine. And I think the president made the

03:31decision not to conflate the two issues. It doesn't mean that Russia, the pulse of time,

03:34is going to be treated wildly different than every other country. And we've seen inflation

03:38coming down. I think inflation comes from runaway spending that is monetized by the Fed.

03:44That's what J. Powell and Joe Biden gave us last term. And then I saw the Fed kind of saw the error

03:49in its ways after a while and started to tighten and help get in control under inflation. And what

03:54we're seeing now on the Hill is reduced spending. And so I don't think that the inflationary spiral

03:59that we saw last term is a high risk right now.

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