Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick shot down the possibility of a forthcoming recession in America, in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“Absolutely not,” Lutnick said when asked whether Americans should brace for a recession.
“Donald Trump is a winner. He’s going to win for the American people. That’s just the way it’s going to be,” Lutnick added.
NBC News’s Kristen Welker noted that consumer sentiment is dropping, inflation has ticked up and major banks, like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, say a recession in the next 12 months is becoming increasingly likely.
“There’s going to be no recession in America,” Lutnick said.
After months of threats, Trump’s 25 percent tariffs went into effect this week against America’s neighbors to the north, marking a turning point in the relationship between the U.S. and two of its top trading partners.
But days later, Trump signed off on tariff exemptions for most imports from Canada and Mexico, delaying their implementation until April 2 — at which point the president plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on foreign nations that have duties on U.S. imports.
Despite the extension, the tariff threats are having economic impacts in the U.S. and elsewhere, and they’ve been met with strong pushback. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau slammed the tariff plan as “a very dumb thing to do.”
Lutnick said he expects global tariffs to come down in response to the threat of reciprocal tariffs.
“Global tariffs are going to come down because President Trump has said, ‘You want to charge us 100 percent? We’re going to charge you 100 percent.’ And you know what they say? They say, ‘No, no, no, no, no, don’t charge us 100 percent. We’ll bring ours down,’” Lutnick said.
“We’ll unleash America out to the world, grow our economy in a way we’ve never grown before. You are going to see, over the next two years, the greatest set of growth coming from America,” he said.
