Defiant Trump and officials vow to stay course as countries scramble over tariffs

US President Donald Trump and his advisers have defended sweeping tariffs on imports and vowed to stay the course, despite market turmoil and calls to avoid a trade war.

In a series of television interviews, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent played down recent stock market falls and Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, insisted reciprocal tariffs would be implemented as planned.

Bessent said there was "no reason" to expect a recession as a result of the turmoil. "This is an adjustment process," he said.

Meanwhile, another top adviser, Kevin Hassett, said more than 50 countries have contacted Trump to try to negotiate a deal.

All three major stock indexes in the US plunged more than 5% on Friday, while the S&P 500 dropped almost 6% in the worst week for the US stock market since 2020.

In a sign market fragility could continue this week, Saudi Arabia's stock exchange - which trades on Sundays - ended nearly 7% lower, its biggest daily loss since the pandemic, state-owned media said.

US banking giant JP Morgan has predicted a 60% chance of a US and global recession following Trump's tariffs announcement.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening, Trump said European and Asian countries are "dying to make a deal".

He also pushed back against a reporter's inquiry about American consumers' "pain threshold" as fears of steep price increases and a market recession grow.

"I think your question is so stupid," he told the reporter. "I don't want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something."

Challenged about the turmoil, Lutnick told CBS News on Sunday that the 10% "baseline" tariff on all imports, which came into effect a day earlier, will definitely "stay in place for days and weeks".

Lutnick went on say the steeper reciprocal tariffs were still on track.

Higher custom tariffs on roughly 60 countries, dubbed the "worst offenders", are due to come into effect on Wednesday 9 April.

When asked about these tariffs, Lutnick said they were coming. "[Trump] announced it and he wasn't kidding," he said.

Lutnick also defended tariffs imposed on two tiny Antarctic islands populated only by penguins, saying it was to close "loopholes" for countries such as China to "ship through".

'Maximum leverage'

Bessent used an interview with Meet the Press on NBC to argue Trump had "created maximum leverage for himself, and more than 50 countries have approached the administration about lowering their non-tariff trade barriers, lowering their tariffs, stopping currency manipulation".

Kevin Hassett, another top economic adviser to Trump, also repeated the claim that more than 50 countries had expressed a desire to begin negotiations. Neither Hassett nor Bessent gave further details of which countries had been in touch.