This hardly needs to be pointed out to Trump. The lifelong businessman is an avid market watcher; indeed, he made a booming sharemarket a marker of presidential success, claiming credit when it rose and savaging former president Joe Biden when it fell.
But on Sunday he sang from an entirely different song sheet, telling Fox: “What I have to do is build a strong country. You can’t really watch the stockmarket.”
On Monday, as the markets tumbled, the White House’s strategy was to lie low and otherwise blame Biden. Trump did not appear on camera; a rarity for a president who has made a show of being busy and answering reporters’ questions on a daily basis, in contrast to his predecessor.
Instead, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller appeared on cable network NewsNation to deflect the blame. “I don’t think you appreciate the magnitude of what President Trump is in the process of repairing,” he said, claiming Biden had left the US “on a path to economic oblivion”.
And in a written statement, deputy press secretary Kush Desai pointed to large investments that companies had pledged to make in the US since Trump’s election, without mentioning the market slump. Trump delivered growth in his first term and would do so again, Desai asserted.
In recent statements, Trump and his key advisers have displayed an indifference to the consequences of their drive to remake America. The president has repeatedly acknowledged there may be short-term pain, and his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said the economy could enter a “detox period”.
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But looking at what Trump says can be a fruitless exercise. And what he has actually done on tariffs – the flip-flopping and reverse pikes – reveals a level of skittishness.
On Monday, Ontario, Canada’s most populous and important state, whacked a 25 per cent surcharge on energy exports to the US. Trump responded in a late-night social media post: “Your [sic] not even allowed to do that … Canada is a tariff abuser, and always has been, but the United States is not going to be subsidising Canada any longer.”
