By Douglas Gillison, Ben Blanchard and Sara Rossi
WASHINGTON/TAIPEI/VERONA, Italy (Reuters) -More than 50 nations have reached out to the White House to begin trade talks since U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out sweeping new tariffs, top officials said on Sunday as they defended levies that wiped out nearly $6 trillion in value from U.S. stocks last week and downplayed economic fallout.
On Sunday morning talk shows, Trump’s top economic advisers sought to portray the tariffs as a savvy repositioning of the U.S. in the global trade order. They also tried to minimize the economic shocks from last week’s tumultuous rollout, ahead of Monday’s expected bumpy opening of Asian stock markets.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said more than 50 nations had started negotiations with the U.S. since last Wednesday’s announcement, putting Trump in a position of power.
Neither Bessent nor the other officials named the countries or offered details about the talks. But simultaneously negotiating with multiple countries could pose a logistical challenge for the Trump administration and prolong economic uncertainty.
“He’s created maximum leverage for himself,” Bessent said on NBC News’ ‘Meet the Press.’
Bessent downplayed the stock market drop and said there was “no reason” to anticipate a recession based on the tariffs, citing stronger-than-anticipated U.S. jobs growth.
Trump jolted economies around the world after he announced broad tariffs on U.S. imports, triggering retaliatory levies from China and sparking fears of a global trade war and recession.
JPMorgan economists now estimate the tariffs will result in full-year U.S. gross domestic product declining by 0.3%, down from an earlier estimate of 1.3% growth, and that the unemployment rate will climb to 5.3% from 4.2% now.
As investors girded for the opening of stock markets in Asia, the Republican president spent the weekend in Florida, playing golf and posting a video of his swing to social media on Sunday.
TARIFF DEALMAKING
U.S. customs agents began collecting Trump’s unilateral 10% tariff on all imports from many countries on Saturday. Higher “reciprocal” tariff rates of 11% to 50% on individual countries are due to take effect on Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. EDT (4:01 a.m. GMT).
Some nations have already signaled a willingness to engage with the U.S. to avoid the duties.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te on Sunday offered zero tariffs as the basis for talks with the U.S., pledging to remove trade barriers and saying Taiwanese companies will raise their U.S. investments.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would seek a reprieve from a 17% tariff on the country’s goods during a planned meeting with Trump on Monday.
An Indian government official told Reuters the country does not plan to retaliate against a 26% tariff and said talks were under way with the U.S. over a possible deal.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – a Trump ally – pledged on Sunday to shield businesses that suffered damage from a planned 20% tariff on goods from the European Union.
Italian wine producers and U.S. importers at a wine fair in Verona on Sunday said business had already slowed and feared more lasting damage.
NO STRATEGY TO TANK STOCK MARKET
Tariff-stunned markets face another week of potential turmoil after the worst week for U.S. stocks since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis five years ago.
The S&P 1500 Composite Index, among the widest measures of the U.S. market, lost nearly $6 trillion in value in the two days after Trump’s announcement and has had almost $10 trillion wiped out since mid-February, a significant blow to millions of Americans’ retirement nest eggs.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett denied that the tariffs were part of a Trump strategy to crash financial markets to pressure the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. He said there would be no “political coercion” of the central bank.
In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump shared a video that suggested his tariffs aimed to hammer the stock market on purpose in a bid to force lower interest rates.
The social media post fueled global debate over whether Trump’s tariffs were part of a permanent new tariff regime or simply a negotiating tactic that could lead to the tariffs being eased through concessions by other countries.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested on CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation’ that they could be the latter, saying the tariffs would remain in place “for days and weeks.”
The process used to determine the tariffs came under scrutiny last week after they were applied to uninhabited Antarctic islands populated by penguins and other tiny, remote places.
Lutnick said a comprehensive approach was needed so that small nations could not be used by larger countries to circumvent the tariffs.
“Basically (Trump) said, ‘I can’t let any part of the world be a place where China or other countries can ship through them,'” Lutnick said.
(Reporting by Douglas Gillison, Ted Hesson, Kanishka Singh and Susan Heavey in Washington; Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Sara Rossi in Verona, Italy; Khanh Vu and Francesco Guarascio in Hanoi; and Shivangi Acharya and Aftab Ahmed in New Delhi; Writing by Ted Hesson; Editing by Ross Colvin and Chizu Nomiyama)
