CNN — 

The big question as global stock sell-offs point to another week of plunging markets in the US is how much pain President Donald Trump is prepared to inflict to test his tariff theories.

Trump said Sunday evening that he’s “open to talking” to world leaders about new deals as he put a brave face on the chaos unleashed by his trade wars after a weekend playing golf at his exclusive Florida properties. Trump also claimed that he’d spoken to “many countries” and that despite fury abroad over his “Liberation Day” trade attacks, “They’re being very nice.”

But as he flew back to Washington aboard Air Force One, stocks tumbled at the opening in Tokyo, leading Asian markets downward, and US futures suggested more huge losses are likely on Wall Street on Monday.

“What’s going to happen with the market? I can’t tell you, but I can tell you, our country has gotten a lot stronger, and eventually it’ll be a country like no other,” Trump said, while downplaying stock losses that have damaged the retirement accounts of millions of Americans.

“I don’t want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” he said.

Related article Dow futures tumble as the massive market sell-off continues

With markets closed over the weekend after days of pummeling losses, the administration had the chance to take stock. But there is no fresh clarity over its strategy as the political stakes become more fraught.

Top officials sent conflicting signals Sunday over whether Trump sees the economic warfare he unleashed last week as a lever for near-term dealmaking — or whether he’s serious about a bid to remake the world economy that could take years.

The confusion came against a backdrop of rising discomfort among some Republican lawmakers about the trade onslaught and as massive crowds across the country held anti-Trump protests in the largest show of dissent of his second term.

The president and his senior aides also seem oblivious to anxiety in the country over the possibility his policies could cause a recession — or feel so sure in their views they don’t really have to care. Trump posted a video of himself teeing off in Florida, and the White House put out a bizarre statement noting his win in a golf club championship match.

It was a reminder that Trump and his millionaire and billionaire friends don’t share the worries of regular American families, who are concerned about their retirement savings and how they’ll afford groceries and cars when tariffs hike prices. While the president insists his plans for tax cuts will leave everyone more prosperous, he’s still taking a gamble after winning a second term in part because voters felt the Biden administration did a poor job tackling inflation.

The rationale for Trump’s tariffs on 185 nations and territories is that the rest of the world has spent decades ripping off America and that the most aggressive protectionism in decades will return jobs to hurting US industrial heartlands.

It’s true that the profits of globalization — which saw many US jobs disappear overseas — have not been equally shared. But the United States is the richest, most powerful nation in history, and profited most from the free trading system Trump seeks to destroy.

And the impact of his bigger-than-expected tariffs threatens to cause so much disruption that it throws the US and the world into a recession, causing huge job losses and wrecking the finances of millions of people. Such fears are partly behind the meltdown on global markets last week and fears that worse is to come.

It was left up to Trump’s Cabinet on Sunday to try to explain the method behind his tariff warfare, an approach he’s long wanted to implement but that many economists regard as foolish and dangerous.

CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins how long the tariff chaos would last and whether it was a negotiating tactic. Her answer laid bare the policy contradiction that is causing deep uncertainty and haunting stock markets.

“This is a national security issue. This is about reshoring thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of jobs,” Rollins said on “State of the Union,” seeming to confirm that Trump is bent on a fundamental reordering of the global economy with an attempt to re-create the manufacturing strength of the height of the industrial era.

But Rollins then said that 50 countries were “burning the phone lines into the White House” and implied the tariffs were meant simply as leverage. “This is the ultimate dealmaker who is a businessman at the head of our government,” she said.

This was consistent with Trump’s later remarks on Air Force One that he was willing to talk to China and the European Union about reducing trade deficits with the United States. The comments might be seen in some quarters as an attempt to limit the damage expected to hit stock markets Monday.

Bilateral negotiations with scores of countries could conceivably yield new trading conditions that could improve the position of the United States. But such an approach would not be sufficient to re-create the late 19th century golden age of manufacturing that Trump is promising. And it’s questionable whether the gains would justify the economic destruction the president is wreaking.

The administration seems to be interested only in the kind of “deals” that would require other countries to embrace total capitulation. “This is not a negotiation,” Trump’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” He warned that offering the US a zero tariff wouldn’t be sufficient, and signaled nations must cede to White House demands on other issues, including non-tariff barriers and currencies.

While Trump’s concern for Americans left behind by the 21st century economy is laudable, his obsession with trade deficits and the trade in goods represents an archaic worldview. It ignores how the US economy has become a tech and services behemoth and how it will never be able to produce basic goods such as clothes as economically as lower-wage economies abroad. Making basic goods in the United States would cost more, would raise the cost of living and would harm the prosperity of many Americans.

While Rollins seemed to be following the example of Trump last week by suggesting tariffs were leverage, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick dug in on Sunday.

“There is no postponing,” he said of the duties due to come into force Wednesday. “They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks,” Lutnick said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He added: “The president needs to reset global trade. … The countries of the world are ripping us off, and it’s got to end.”

Lutnick appears to be betting that US strength can force weaker nations to fold. He told CNN’s Pamela Brown last week that it would be unwise to retaliate. “If you’re angry and you fight back to the greatest customer in the world, you’re going to lose. We are the sumo wrestler of this world.”

Such is the power of the US that it might triumph in one-on-one showdowns with most other nations. But the administration rarely talks about the impact of multifront tariff retaliation simultaneously from all the great trading powers. China, for instance, now faces a cumulative 54% tariff on its imports to the US, which means that buying power of US shoppers will be severely constrained since — despite Trump’s insistence that other countries pay for tariffs — consumers will foot the bill. This could hammer US retailers and squelch consumer confidence, setting up the conditions that could lead to a recession. China also imposed a 34% tariff on US imports, making a tough-to-crack market even more difficult for American firms.

Enormous losses on US stock markets last week — the Dow and the S&P 500 were both down by more than 5% on Friday alone — alarmed millions of Americans whose retirements depend on their 401(k) plans.

But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted there didn’t need to be a recession and dismissed the long-term impact of stock market losses, using words like “choppiness” and “adjustment process” to explain the panic. And speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Bessent rejected the idea that people who want to retire soon had taken a serious blow. “Americans who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening,” Bessent said. He added: “The reason the stock market is considered a good investment is because it’s a long-term investment. If you look day-to-day, week-to-week, it’s very risky. Over the long term, it’s a good investment.”

Technically, Bessent is correct, and over years and decades, stocks have been a sound investment, through market corrections and recessions. But his comments were the latest remarkably tone-deaf commentary from a multimillionaire Cabinet member. Bessent is a wealthy former hedge fund manager.

Such attitudes raise the question of whether the president’s strategy will cost him public support — especially if the tariffs remain in place for months and price hikes begin to really punish families. Recent national surveys from The Wall Street Journal, CBS News and Marquette University Law School, all taken before Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement, found majorities of Americans disapproved of the president’s tariff policies.

Some Republican senators are already nervous. Several have signed on to a measure backed by GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley to require presidents to justify new tariffs to Congress. Lawmakers would have to approve them within 60 days or they would expire.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat co-leading the effort with Grassley, said Sunday that bipartisan momentum was growing behind the bill and that seven GOP senators were now listed as co-sponsors in an unusual break with Trump.

“I’m sure they listen to their constituents. Consumer challenges are already starting to surface, and certainly the stock market’s impact on retirement income is shaking a lot of people,” Cantwell said on CBS. The measure, however, faces a far harder path in the House, and it’s doubtful at this point it could amass veto-proof majorities.

After months of mourning their November loss, Democrats are showing signs of life. A liberal candidate won a wide victory in a race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat last week. And the size of protests against Trump and Elon Musk in many cities Saturday may augur an awakening of a resistance movement more a year and a half before the 2026 midterm elections.

But Trump is showing no sign of a course correction. He wrote on his Truth Social network on Saturday that “we have been the dumb and helpless ‘whipping post,’ but not any longer.” The president added: “THIS IS AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, AND WE WILL WIN. HANG TOUGH.” The next day, he was back on the golf course.

This story has been updated with additional developments.