White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett spoke with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos over the weekend about the number of countries reaching out to the Trump Administration, ready to negotiate on tariffs.
“I got a report from the USTR last night that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation. But they’re doing that because they understand that they bear a lot of the tariff,” Hassett said. “And so, I don’t think that you’re going to see a big effect on the consumer in the U.S. because I do think that the reason why we have a persistent, long-run trade deficit is these people have very inelastic supply. They’ve been dumping goods into the country in order to create jobs, say, in China.”
Watch the clip above.
On NBC’s Meet The Press, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cited the same number after noting that the decision to maintain the tariffs indefinitely rests with Trump.
“I can tell you that as only he can do at this moment, he has created maximum leverage for himself,” Bessent said. “And more than 50 countries have approached the administration about lowering their non-tariff trade barriers, lowering their tariffs, stopping currency manipulation.”
Watch the interview below:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that there was “no reason” for markets to be concerned a recession is coming. Bessent said, “I think we can see from the jobs number on Friday that it was well above expectations that we are moving forward. So… pic.twitter.com/PMov0BrvzX
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