Hours ahead of what some are predicting could be a historic market sell-off Monday morning over U.S. tariffs, President Donald Trump likened his policies — and the reaction — to medicine.
“I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One Sunday evening. “What’s going to happen to the markets, I can’t tell you. But our country is much stronger.”
The president insisted that he was not intentionally manufacturing a market selloff to strengthen his negotiating hand and doubled down on his claim that tariffs are the solution, despite what the White House has indicated could be short-term pain for consumers.
Trump made the remarks as U.S. stock futures dropped Sunday, signaling that last week’s selloff is likely to continue or speed up on Monday.
Amid fallout from Trump’s tariff plan this weekend, the president participated in a Florida golf tournament, posting a video of his swing to Truth Social.
On Saturday, Trump urged Americans to “HANG TOUGH” in a Truth Social post despite the downturn in the markets.
“HANG TOUGH, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic,” he posted.
Trump said he spoke to several European and Asian leaders over the weekend and prominent tech leaders but did not disclose their identities.
The president will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday and the two are likely to discuss Trump’s 17 percent imposed “reciprocal” tariffs on Israel. Netanyahu said on Sunday he hopes to seek relief from Trump on the imposed tariffs.