Tariffs: Over 50 countries have contacted White House to start trade talks – Trump’s aide

A top economic adviser to President Donald Trump said on Sunday that over 50 countries have reached out to the White House to begin trade talks as US officials sought to defend sweeping new tariffs that have unleashed global turmoil.

US National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, speaking during an interview on ABC News’ ‘This Week,’ 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.

According to him, there would be no “political coercion” of the central bank.

Trump, in a Truth Social post on Friday, shared a video that suggested that his tariffs aimed to hammer the stock market on purpose in a bid to force lower interest rates.

In another interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed the stock market drop, saying there was no reason to anticipate a recession based on the tariffs.

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The US president jolted economies around the world after he announced broad tariffs on US imports on Wednesday, prompting retaliatory levies from China and sparking fears of a globe trade war and recession.

Top Trump’s officials, on Sunday morning talk shows, sought to portray the tariffs as a savvy repositioning of the US in the global trade order and the economic disruptions as a short-term fallout.

Newspot reports that US stocks have tumbled by around 10% in the two days since Trump announced a new global tariff regime that was more aggressive than analysts and investors had been anticipating.

Hassett said that Trump’s tariffs had so far driven more than 50 countries to contact the White House to begin trade talks.

Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te on Sunday offered zero tariffs as the basis for talks with the US, pledging to remove trade barriers rather than imposing reciprocal measures, saying that Taiwanese companies will raise their US investments.