President Donald Trump on March 11 rejected the notion that a recession could be on the horizon.
After stock markets were rattled by comments he made over the weekend where he didn’t exclude the possibility of a recession, he said in his latest comments that the recent volatility reflects an economic overhaul currently underway and is no cause for concern.
“The markets are going to go up and they’re going to go down but what we really have to do is rebuild our country,” Trump said.
“We’re the biggest and the best, and I’m very optimistic we’re going to make our country wealthy again, and we’re going to bring the jobs back.”
Over the past month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down more than 7 percent, the Standard & Poor 500 declined more than 8 percent, and the Nasdaq fell more than 11 percent. Approximately $4 trillion in market value was erased over the same timeframe.
Markets have followed Trump’s remarks repeatedly over the past weeks, with investors looking for signs about how trade policies and tariffs could impact equities. Seesawing foreign policy negotiations punctuated by on again, off again tariff threats with Mexico and Canada have left finance experts without clear direction.
Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla, among a host of other companies, saw their stock prices hammered in recent days.
Cryptocurrencies were also slammed over the past month, with Bitcoin falling nearly 16 percent and Ethereum dropping more than 28 percent.
Rumors of an incoming recession persist but Trump is confident a turnaround is imminent.
“Long-term, what I’m doing is making our country strong again.”
The president said the decline in market value is a result of former President Joe Biden’s policies.
“Biden left us a mess ... gave us a horrible economy,” Trump said. “The market was going to go very, very bad.”
“The numbers that we see today ... are a snapshot of a moment of time,” she said. “We are in a period of economic transition ... from the mess that was created ... from an economic nightmare.”
Decades-long policies of exporting jobs were described as “devastating globalization” that produced “harrowing statistics,” with “towns and families destroyed.”
Leavitt said the president’s agenda to bring back manufacturing jobs and generate revenue through the use of tariffs will benefit communities across the nation.
Trump later told a group of executives at a business roundtable that “the tariffs are having a tremendously positive impact.”
Combined with deregulation and tax cuts, the administration is confident that Americans will reap the rewards, pointing to recent improvements in home mortgage loan costs as a sign that cost of living relief is on the way.
“The president wants the American people to have so much money in their pockets that they don’t know what to do with it,” Leavitt said.
