(VOVWORLD) -More than 50 countries have reached out to negotiate tariffs, Director of the US National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, told ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday.
 The White House in Washington, D.C., USA. Photo: Xinhua/VNA
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US President Donald Trump on April 2 announced reciprocal tariffs on imports from nearly all of the US's trading partners. The announcement was met with reactions from countries and is believed to increase the risk of global trade conflicts.
President Trump reposted a link on his Truth Social platform Friday morning to the minute-long video which opened: “Trump is crashing the stock market…this month, but he’s doing it on purpose.”
ABC News' "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Hassett, “on Truth Social, the president retweeted a post that said the market drop was part of a deliberate strategy to force the Fed to lower interest rates. Is that the president's strategy? If not, why did he post it?”
Hassett said “Yeah, that, you know, the bottom line is the president has been talking about tariffs for 40 years and this is like been absolutely the policy that he's focused on in the campaign and throughout his political career. And you know, the cyclical cycle of the Fed, it comes and goes. That's a different matter. But this is President Trump's desired policy. He's been arguing for it ever since. I think he was on “The View” 30, 40 years ago, and it's exactly -- the baseline tariff is exactly what he -- he put into the convention.”
He denied that the tariff policy was President Trump's strategy to tank the market so the Fed will lower interest rates.
JPMorgan experts predict that the impact of tariffs could reduce US GDP this year by 0.3% compared to the previous forecast of 1.3%, while the unemployment rate could increase from 4.2% to 5.3%.