President Trump said Tuesday that ongoing trade negotiations will result in more free trade, urging a Missouri crowd to “stick with us” amid increasing concern about tit-for-tat tariffs.
“We’re opening up markets, you watch what is going down. Just be a little patient,” Trump said at the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ national convention in Kansas City.
[Trump: ‘Tariffs are the greatest!’]
Trump said that despite appearances to the contrary, other countries are working behind the scenes to resolve trade disputes that led to an escalating series of tariffs this year.
“We’re making tremendous progress, they are all coming, and they don’t want to have those tariffs put on them. They are all coming to see us,” Trump claimed in the midterm election battleground state.
Trump blamed widespread concern about the negative effects of tariffs on lobbyists and hostile reporters.
“Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” he said, adding that he believed foreign countries “have lobbyists like nobody has ever seen. They have the best lobbyists ever put together.”
Trump said he chose to apply new tariffs this year because of a booming economy, saying the country was “in the midst of a great economic revival. And it’s that reason that I chose this as the time.”
[Opinion: Boom — jobs aplenty as economy steams ahead]
Trump’s policies have triggered widespread concern, including among fellow Republicans, who fear that the U.S. is stumbling into a multi-front trade war, rather than moving toward greater free trade.
Critics of Trump’s policies say the price of imported goods will increase for consumers, and that U.S. exports, including agricultural imports, will drop.
In a recent vote, 88 senators expressed a desire to weigh in on tariff policy under Trump, whose executive actions have resulted in a mounting series of retaliatory tariffs between the U.S. and China, the European Union, Canada, and Mexico.
“They are all coming in to see me tomorrow. They are all coming to the White House,” Trump claimed.
