The US president has acknowledged that his “economic revolution” will require sacrifices
US President Donald Trump has warned Americans they could face hardships before his “liberation day” tariffs restore the country’s economic power.
Trump’s sweeping tariffs on the majority of US trading partners came into effect on Thursday, causing the US stock market to suffer its worst crash since the COVID-19 pandemic. China has reacted by imposing a 34% levy on American goods, with other countries also promising retaliation.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday, the US president told the American public to “hang tough” in anticipation of the international community’s response to his economic policies.
“It won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic,” Trump insisted.
The tariffs represent “an economic revolution, and we will win… we will make America great again,” he added.
“China has been hit much harder than the US, not even close. They, and many other nations, have treated us unsustainably badly. We have been the dumb and helpless ‘whipping post,’ but not any longer,” Trump wrote, explaining his decision.
The US president insisted that his administration is “bringing back jobs and businesses like never before. Already, more than five trillion dollars of investment, and rising fast.”
Tens of thousands of left-wing activists took to the streets across the US on Saturday to decry the tariffs and other policies of the Trump administration. The organizers of the “Hands Off!” protests claimed that more than 1,400 rallies were held outside state capitols, federal buildings, city halls and parks.
On Friday, a top senator in the Republican Party, Ted Cruz, warned that the import taxes could result in a global trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy.”
If the tariffs stay in place over a long term and push America into “a bad recession,” the midterm elections in “2026 in all likelihood, politically, would be a bloodbath” for the Republicans, he cautioned.
JPMorgan raised its estimate of the possibility of a global recession from 40% to 60% in the wake of Trump’s announcement of tariffs. “The effect of this tax hike is likely to be magnified – through retaliation, a slide in US business sentiment, and supply chain disruptions,” its chief economist Bruce Kasman said.
