U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office, on the day he signs executive orders, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. March 6, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Major stock indices dropped sharply this week, as rattled investors struggled to get a handle on President Donald Trump’s sweeping and shifting tariff policies.
But when asked in the Oval Office on Thursday whether he thought it was his tariffs that were scaring the markets, Trump pinned the blame elsewhere.
“Well, a lot of them are globalist countries and companies that won’t be doing as well,” Trump replied, “Because we’re taking back things that have been taken from us many years ago.”
Trump did not elaborate on what those things were.
“We’ve been treated very unfairly as a country,” he continued. “We protect everybody. We do everything for all these countries, and a lot of these are globalist in nature.”
It was not clear what was globalist in nature, but NBC reported Thursday that the Trump administration is considering an overhaul of how it interacts with NATO allies.
Later in the same press event, Trump again blamed “globalists” for the market downturn. “I think it’s globalists that see how rich our country’s going to be, and they don’t like it.”
Over the course of an hour, Trump used “globalist” to describe people, companies and countries, making it difficult to pin down specifically what he was talking about.
But during his first term, Trump repeatedly denounced a set of ideas he called “globalism,” and labeled some of his political opponents “globalists,” as he pushed his nationalist, isolationist worldview.
The word has drawn condemnation from critics who say it is linked to antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish people.
According to the American Jewish Committee, the term “globalist” is used today as “a coded word for Jews who are seen as international elites conspiring to weaken or dismantle ‘Western’ society using their international connections and control over big corporations.”
It was unusual for Trump to use the term “globalist” as a catch-all for what he claimed was driving day-to-day movements of the stock market.
The White House did not immediately reply when asked for additional context about Trump’s invocation of the term.
The Oval Office remarks came as Trump, just two days after imposing 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, issued temporary exemptions for many goods coming into the U.S. from the two neighboring countries.
He denied that those pauses came in response to the market rout.
“Nothing to do with the market,” he said, adding, “I’m not even looking at the market.”
Even as Trump seemed to reject the idea that his tariffs spurred a sell-off, he once again acknowledged that those duties could at least briefly roil markets.
“There’ll always be a little short term interruption,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be big, but the countries and companies that have been ripping us aren’t particularly happy with what I’m doing.”
“Again, there’ll be disruption,” he added.
