President Donald Trump on Monday said that “virtually every country wants to negotiate” as his sweeping worldwide reciprocal tariffs are set to take effect Wednesday.
While talking with reporters alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump detailed the dynamic that has unfolded since last Wednesday, or as he calls it “Liberation Day,” when he announced the tariff overhaul.
“I will say this, virtually every country wants to negotiate. If I didn’t do what I did over the last couple of weeks, you wouldn’t have anybody who wants to negotiate,” he said.
“We would have gone to these countries, ‘You want to talk?’ and they’d go, ‘Well, we don’t want to talk.’ Now, they’re coming to us,” he said.
Trump emphasized that his private conversation with Netanyahu began with the prime minister announcing he would nix all tariffs.
“Even Bibi, and this is unrelated because it’s a different kind of a relationship, but he started off our conversation today that he’s cutting all of the tariffs. He’s cutting everything. He’s going to get down to a free base,” Trump emphasized.
Trump said that other nations around the world are “offering things to us that we would have never even thought of asking them for because they’re experiencing a lot of hurt, and the hurt is that they’ve taken advantage of us, and we finally fought back.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business’s Kudlow on Monday that nearly 70 countries have reached out to the administration.
“I can tell you that there are 50, 60, maybe almost 70 countries now who have approached us. So it’s going to be a busy April, May, maybe into June,” Bessent said.
Japan is one nation that has reached out, and Bessent said he expects they will receive “priority just because they came forward very quickly.”
The comment echoes Eric Trump’s warning to other nations last week that they want to be the first at the negotiating table with his father.
“I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump. The first to negotiate will win – the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life,” he wrote.