When trump was asked: “On the idea of crashing the markets on purpose, there's been some speculation partly because of the video that was posted on Truth Social, that there was some sort of deliberate effort on your part to have the market sell off. Can you talk about that one?”
He replied: “No, no, not so but I do want to solve the deficit problem that we have with China, with the European Union and other nations and they're going to have to do that and if they want to talk about that, I'm open to talking but otherwise why would I want to talk? and uh as you know because of the tariffs we have $7 trillion already committed to be invested in the United States building auto plants building uh chip companies and all sorts of companies are coming into our country at levels that we've never seen before.
I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world. They're dying to make a deal but I said, ‘We're not going to have deficits with your country. We're not going to do that.’ Because to me, a deficit is a loss. We're going to have surpluses or we're at worst, going to be breaking even. But you know, China would be the worst uh in the group because the deficit is so big and we're … it's not sustainable and you know I was elected on this. This was one of the biggest reasons I got elected … was exactly because of this and we're going to put tariffs … we've already put them on … it's not a question if we will, we're going to put them on and those tariffs next year will make us $1 trillion in addition to the $1 trillion … thousands of companies are going to relocate back into the United States. In North Carolina, already furniture people are starting to move back in uh Detroit and Michigan which I won because of when I said what I'm telling you uh car companies are starting to open up in Indiana, (No new plants are planned due to tariffs) a big one is under construction as an example, Honda but uh they're moving in like nobody has ever seen this before. So it's unsustainable for us to allow China to have surpluses of a trillion dollars. We will be taking in over a trillion dollars over the next short period of time with the tariffs that I've already instituted. They're already in place now. What's going to happen with the market I can't tell you, but I can tell you our country has gotten a lot stronger and eventually it'll be a country like no other … it'll be the most dominant country economically in the world.”
-Donald Trump, 04/03/25