Trump FINALLY gets a question he respects as president grins from ear-to-ear after big week on Wall Street
Donald Trump gushed over a reporter's question about whether he 'outsmarted' the financial markets with his industry-shaking tariffs.
The president grinned from ear-to-ear as a reporter asked him for his reaction to Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Sløk saying Trump may have 'outsmarted everyone' with his tariffs.
'Mr. President, a leading global economist just did a one-eighty and says your tariff plan, you may have outsmarted everybody with it. What is your message?' the reporter asked.
Trump smiled as he responded: 'I love this. I love this question. This is the favorite. This is the best question I've ever been asked because I've been going through abuse for years on this.
'Because, as you know, we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars, no inflation whatsoever.'
The reporter added in a follow-up question for Trump's 'message to critics who think your tariff plan caused a recession?'
'I think they should go back to business school,' Trump responded.
'It's so obvious. It's so obvious. I mean, we're taking in billions and billions of dollars from China and a lot of other countries.'
It came as Wall Street continued its recent rally this week, with the S&P500 and Nasdaq hitting all-time closing highs on Friday.
In Sløk's report that Trump appeared to enjoy, the economist speculated that Trump would keep tariffs below his most aggressive rates to ease market uncertainty while using them as leverage to get better trade deals.
'Maybe the strategy is to maintain 30% tariffs on China and 10% tariffs on all other countries and then give all countries 12 months to lower nontariff barriers and open up their economies to trade,' he wrote.
The report came as Trump's 90-day pause on 'reciprocal tariffs' is set to come to an end early next month.
Sløk said that Trump should consider extending the deadline to a whole year, which he said would give the global markets time to adjust to a 'new world with permanently higher tariffs.'
'This would seem like a victory for the world and yet would produce $400 billion of annual revenue for US taxpayers,' he said.
'Trade partners will be happy with only 10% tariffs and U.S. tax revenue will go up.
'Maybe the administration has outsmarted all of us.'
Trump shocked the global markets in April as he introduced a raft of 'Liberation Day' tariffs, but the gamble may have paid off as markets soared in recent weeks and the US signed a number of trade deals with foreign nations
The soaring stock market numbers came as trade deal hopes fueled investor risk appetite and economic data helped solidify expectations for rate cuts from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
The rise came even after Trump terminated trade negotiations with Canada in response to its digital tax on technology companies.
'This market's been pretty resilient,' said Chuck Carlson, chief executive officer at Horizon Investment Services in Hammond, Indiana. 'Investors are riding momentum and looking for breakouts.'
'They don't want to get caught on the wrong side of this thing,' Carlson added. 'Many investors already have missed out. And now you have the S&P flirting with an all-time high.'
While tariffs have yet to affect price growth, inflation continues to hover above the Fed's 2% annual inflation target.
A separate report from the University of Michigan confirmed consumer sentiment has improved this month, but remains well below December's post-election bounce.
Financial markets have priced in a 72% likelihood that the Fed will implement its first rate cut of the year in September, with a smaller, 21% probability of a rate cut coming as soon as July, according to CME's FedWatch tool.
Washington and Beijing reached an agreement to expedite rare-earth shipments to the U.S., a White House official said, well ahead of the July 9 expiration of the 90-day postponement of U.S. President Donald Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs.
Additionally, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration's trade deals with 18 of the main U.S. trading partners could be done by the September 1 Labor Day holiday.
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