White House Urges Americans To ‘Trust In President Trump’ As Uncertainty Looms Over Tariffs

The White House wants Americans to trust President Donald Trump’s plan as economic uncertainty looms around the massive tariffs Trump imposed on nearly every country in the world on Wednesday.

Stocks tumbled after the opening bell Thursday morning as Wall Street anxiously awaits to see if Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs will turn into a full-blown trade war. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during an interview on CNN that Americans should trust the president’s “economic formula.”

“To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump,” Leavitt said. “This is a president who is doubling down on his proven economic formula from his first term. We saw wages increase. We saw inflation come down. We had a Trump energy boom. We had the largest tax cuts in history, and that’s exactly what the president intends to do.”

In a post sharing a clip of the interview on X, Leavitt wrote, “With historic tax cuts, massive deregulation, and our energy industry unleashed – we will see an economic BOOM in the months ahead. Don’t bet against President Trump!”

President Trump is doubling down on the economic agenda from his successful first term where we saw growth, low inflation, a significant increase in real wages, and American workers put first. 

With historic tax cuts, massive deregulation, and our energy industry unleashed – we… pic.twitter.com/dr6pwuBbFh

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) April 3, 2025

Vice President JD Vance told “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning that Trump’s tariffs are “a big change” but added that “we needed a big change.”

“President Trump is taking this economy in a different direction. He ran on that. He promised it. And now he’s delivering,” Vance told Fox News host Lawrence Jones, adding, “We have manufacturing disappearing. That is not working for Americans. We’ve gotta take this country in a different direction.”

President Trump has labeled his tariffs as “reciprocal,” but the tariffs appear to be based on the United States’ trade deficit divided by imports, not based on other countries’ tariffs on U.S. goods, as first pointed out by anonymous X account @orthonormalist. The Trump administration, however, has maintained that it “literally calculated tariff and non tariff barriers.”

Trump argues that foreign nations have been ripping off America for decades, imposing harsh tariffs on U.S. exports while gaining free access to the American market. Trump wrote in his order that “despite a commitment to the principle of reciprocity, the trading relationship between the United States and its trading partners has become highly unbalanced, particularly in recent years.”

Most of America’s biggest trading partners, such as China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam, were hit with steep tariffs on Wednesday. Some nations reportedly want to negotiate new trade agreements with the White House, while China and the European Union have said they will retaliate with more tariffs on U.S. goods.