50+ nations fold immediately, seek Trump tariff negotiations
More than 50 nations have reached out to the White House to begin trade talks since US 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 US stocks last week and downplayed economic fallout.
On Sunday morning talk shows, Trump's top economic advisers portrayed the tariffs as a savvy repositioning of the US in the global trade order. They also tried to minimize the economic shocks from last week's tumultuous rollout. Wall Street stock futures opened sharply lower on Sunday, in a sign that another rough week could be in store.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said more than 50 nations had started negotiations with the US 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 governments 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 US jobs growth.
Trump jolted economies around the world after he announced broad tariffs on US imports, triggering retaliatory levies from China and "sky is falling" rhetoric from the mainstream media and others hoping for a global trade war and recession in order to make Trump look bad.
JPMorgan economists claimed the tariffs would result in full-year US gross domestic product declining by 0.3 per cent, down from an earlier estimate of 1.3 per cent growth, and that the unemployment rate will climb to 5.3 per cent from 4.2 per cent now.
Tariff dealmaking
US customs agents began collecting Trump's unilateral 10 per cent tariff on all imports from many countries on Saturday. Higher "reciprocal" tariff rates of 11 to 50 per cent on individual countries are due to take effect on Wednesday at 12:01 EDT (04:01 GMT).
Many governments have already signaled a willingness to engage with the US to avoid the duties.
Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te on Sunday offered zero tariffs as the basis for talks with the US, pledging to remove trade barriers and saying Taiwanese companies will raise their US investments.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would seek a reprieve from a 17 per cent 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 per cent tariff and said talks were under way with the US over a possible deal.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pledged on Sunday to shield businesses that suffered damage from a planned 20 per cent tariff on goods from the European Union.
Italian wine producers and US 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 US stocks since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis five years ago.
The SP 1500 Composite Index 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.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett denied that the tariffs were part of a Trump strategy to crash financial markets to pressure the US Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. He said there would be no "political coercion" of the central bank.
In a social media 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, Chizu Nomiyama and Diane Craft)
