President Donald Trump on Thursday used a medical phor to explain the situation of his “mutual tariff” plan he implemented on what he called “liberation day.”
“The surgery is over! The patient is alive and healing,” Trump wrote in The Truth Society. “The prognosis is that patients are stronger, bigger, better and more resilient than ever before. Make America great again!!!”
The Dow Jones industrial average opened more than 1,000 points lower on Thursday morning after Trump announced his most severe tariff collection at the White House Rose Garden Ceremony a day ago, but administrative officials remained optimistic in an early morning television interview. They touted the expected impact of overseeing US manufacturing and further strengthening American work.
White House press chief Caroline Leavitt told CNN that the United States is “no longer fooled by foreigners around the world.”
Senate approves Trump’s resolution on Canadian tariffs hours after the “liberation day” event
President Donald Trump keeps charts when making mutual tariff remarks at an event entitled “Make America Walthy” in the White House in Washington, DC on April 2, 2025 (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Brendan Smialowski/AFP)
“We have a trade deficit and count of $1.2 trillion. 90,000 factories have been closed in recent decades,” Leavitt told CNN. “Since 1997, Americans have been kicked out of five million manufacturing jobs. These are more than just statistics. These are real American lives that have been affected, and when there’s a president who actually does something about it.
Lewitt said the country that was targeted by Trump’s mutual tariffs “has spent 70 years doing the right thing by the American people.”
“They tore American workers apart. They took our work abroad,” Leavitt said.
She also told CNN that Trump has already launched a “massive deregulation agenda” that “saved millions of dollars to American taxpayers.” Leavvitt said the president “unleashes the power of the American energy industry,” claiming that the stifling energy industry had fueled inflation during former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Vice President JD Vance told Fox & Friends Thursday morning that critics during Trump’s first term were inflation, but instead inflation fell to 1.5% until “a terrible year in the Biden administration.” Vance said that because of the “globalist economy,” the US “has a huge debt to buy what other countries make for us.”
The American flag is on display on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, February 24th, 2025 (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, file)
“To make that a little more clear, we borrow money from Chinese farmers and buy what those Chinese farmers produce,” Vance said. “It’s not a recipe for economic prosperity. It’s not a recipe for low-cost, it’s not a recipe for good work in the United States.”
Some countries targeted by Trump’s tariffs are calling for negotiations, and China says there is “no winner in the trade war.”
The Vice President said the “Joe Biden Globalist Pathway” led the US to a $2 trillion “extinction” of peacetime debt, deficits and manufacturing.
Addressing criticism from Wall Street following Trump’s “liberation day” event at the White House Rose Garden, Vance said “many people are getting rich from American jobs moving abroad, but American workers aren’t getting rich” and American companies “have not become wealthy from the growing number of overseas manufacturer competitors.”
“They charge us ridiculous tariffs. They engage in a number of non-tariff practices, like currency manipulation,” Vance said. “It was terrible for Main Street in the United States.”
President Donald Trump will sign two executive orders at a wealthy American event held at the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, April 2, 2025 (Demetrius Freeman by Getty Images/Washington Post)
Regarding concerns about tariffs that potentially raise costs, Vance said the administration is “fighting very hard to lower prices,” leading to “the largest deregulation in the country’s history.”
“If tariffs are introduced, foreign goods may be a little more expensive, but domestic goods aren’t,” Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS News.
“For the first time in your life, you’re going to think about the Americans who actually make the products, the Americans who produce these products and work in these factories,” he said. “It’s time for us to take care of the world, not care for them.”
Trump said his administration has secured a committed investment of around $5 trillion, but Lutnick said CBS “people are going to build factories right now.”
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“That means all construction work is about to begin,” Rutnick said he vowed that the president’s plan would be built in March on the 150,000 jobs that had already been added to the US economy. “It starts hiring Americans today. You see plants being built, factories being rebuilt. All the changes are now running hot all over the United States. You will see jobs jumping from today.”
Daniel Wallace is a news and political reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and to X:@danimwallace.
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