Trump won't 'predict' on a recession

US President Donald Trump, when asked in an interview that aired Sunday if he was expecting a recession this year, said, "I hate to predict things like that."

In the interview for Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, which was filmed at the White House on Thursday, Trump said: "There is a period of transition, because what we're doing is very big. We're bringing wealth back to America. ... It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us."

On March 4, Trump imposed tariffs of 25 percent on Canada and Mexico, and raised duties to 20 percent on China. But on March 6, he paused tariffs on goods covered under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade deal that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement in Trump's first administration.

Trump also heard complaints from CEOs at US automakers, whose auto supply chains are highly interconnected with Canada's and Mexico's. On March 6, he announced a 30-day pause in those tariffs.

The Canadian Department of Finance announced on March 6 that it was moving forward with 25 percent tariffs on $155 billion worth of imported US goods.

"This was not the outcome Canada hoped for — but we must respond in order to protect our economy and Canadian jobs," the statement said.

National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett said Sunday on ABC News' This Week: "What happened was that we launched a drug war, not a trade war, and it was part of the negotiation to get Canada and Mexico to stop shipping fentanyl across our borders, and as we've watched them make progress on the drug war, then we've relaxed some of the tariffs that we put on them because they're making progress."

This week, Trump reportedly plans 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, and on April 2, across-the-board reciprocal tariffs on most trading partners.

"The public companies want to make sure that we have clarity after April 2, when those reciprocal tariffs go in. Are you going to change anything after that?" Bartiromo asked. "Will we have clarity?"

Trump replied: "We may go up with some tariffs. It depends. We may go up. I don't think we'll go down, or we may go up. They have plenty of clarity. They just use that. That's almost a sound bite.

"They always say that 'We want clarity.' Look, our country has been ripped off for many decades, for many, many decades, and we're not going to be ripped off anymore," Trump said.

The flurry of tariff rollouts and reversals jarred the stock market last week, which had its worst week in six months. The S&P 500 has fallen nearly 4 percent since Jan 20, the day Trump was inaugurated.

Bartiromo said, "I think CEOs want to see predictability."

"What I have to do is build a strong country," Trump said. "You can't really watch the stock market. If you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective. We go by quarters. And you can't go by that. You have to do what's right."

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta on March 6 projected that US economic output will contract by 2.4 percent in the first quarter.

Gennadiy Goldberg, head of US interest rate strategy at TD Securities, told Bloomberg, "Just a few weeks ago we were fielding questions about whether we think the US economy's re-accelerating — and now all of a sudden the R word (recession) is being brought up repeatedly."

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's, told CNN: "The kinds of changes that are occurring under Trump are arguably unprecedented, and it's making people very nervous."

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, when asked on NBC' Meet the Press on Sunday about forecasts from major investment banks saying that a recession in the next 12 months is possible, replied, "Absolutely not. … There's going to be no recession in America."

He said that the administration's efforts to bring down government deficits would lower interest rates, while increased oil production would cut energy costs.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a speech to the New York Economic Club on Thursday, said: "Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream. The American Dream is rooted in the concept that any citizen can achieve prosperity, upward mobility and economic security. For too long, the designers of multilateral trade deals have lost sight of this."

The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by Elon Musk has been combing through federal departments and agencies to root out what DOGE considers excess or unnecessary spending.

"It's important for people to realize we run $2 trillion deficits, and Donald Trump is going to try to balance the budgets of the United States of America," Lutnick said.

Bessent, in an interview with CNBC last week, said, "We've become addicted to this government spending, and there's going to be a detox period."

hengweili@chinadailyusa.com