‘HANG TOUGH’: Trump Administration Placates Americans as Stock Market Continues to Drop

As the stock market continues to drop, Trump administration officials are assuring Americans that tariffs will save an economy which appears healthy from the outside but is rotting from within.

In a Truth Social post Saturday, President Donald Trump urged Americans to “HANG TOUGH.”

“HANG TOUGH, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic,” he posted.

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

The S&P 500 lost 4% in early trading Monday, bringing its three-day losses to around 13%. The Dow Jones Industrial average lost 1,363 points, or 3.5%, following back-to-back 1,500-point losses Thursday and Friday. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 4%.

Trump Officials Hit the Sunday Shows to Calm Fears

Trump administration officials joined Sunday shows to assure Americans Trump’s intentions for levying tariffs are already being realized, as foreign nations are already jumping to strike deals with the dealmaker-in-chief.

About 50 nations have reached out to the U.S. to discuss the tariffs announced on Wednesday, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday. But Lutnick said nothing will stop the levies from going forward.

Calls from foreign officials prove that “these countries know that they’ve been ripping us off,” Lutnick said, suggesting there was no room for negotiations.

“There is no postponing,” he said. “They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks.”

“We don’t make medicine in this country anymore. We don’t make ships. We don’t have enough steel and aluminum to fight a battle,” Lutnick continued. “We got to stop having all the countries of the world ripping us off.”

Reports that Trump is considering a 90-day pause on tariffs “FAKE NEWS,” according to Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary.

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told ABC’s “This Week” Sunday he had received an update from United States Trade Representative Jameison Greer. Trump’s strategy to tackle trade imbalances with 10% baseline levies and rates up to 50% is already showing results.

“I got a report from [Greer] last night that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation. But they’re doing that because they understand that they bear a lot of the tariff,” Hassett said. “And so, I don’t think that you’re going to see a big effect on the consumer in the U.S. because I do think that the reason why we have a persistent, long-run trade deficit is these people have very inelastic supply. They’ve been dumping goods into the country in order to create jobs, say, in China.”

Treasury Secretary Confirms More Than 50 Countries Have Come Calling

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” the decision to maintain the tariffs indefinitely rests with Trump.

“I can tell you that as only he can do at this moment, he has created maximum leverage for himself,” Bessent said. “And more than 50 countries have approached the administration about lowering their non-tariff trade barriers, lowering their tariffs, stopping currency manipulation.”

Bessent said tariffs during Trump’s first term brought in tens of billions of dollars in new revenue, while prices hardly increased.

“A 20% tariff on China led to a 0.7% price level increase over four years. I think that’s pretty good—if we can take in 20% in tariffs and it’s a 0.7% increase,” Bessent said. “Households saw real net wages go up, so if wages go up faster than prices—which is not what happened over the past four years.”

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