President Trump said in an interview Sunday that rising prices on certain items amid his trade wars are “peanuts” in comparison to less expensive gas.
In the interview on “Meet the Press,” NBC News’s Kristen Welker noted that “some prices are going up, tires, strollers, some clothing in the wake of your tariffs.”
“Excuse me, that’s peanuts compared to energy,” Trump interrupted. “Energy is 60 percent of the costs. Energy is the big —”
Welker cut in, noting that Trump “campaigned on a promise to bring prices down on day one.”
“Well, I don’t know, when you say, ‘Strollers are going up,’ what kind of a thing — I’m saying gasoline is going down. Gasoline is thousands of times more important than a stroller,” Trump said.
By Trump’s 100th day in office last week, the average price of gas had dipped around 50 cents per gallon from a year prior, according to data from AAA.
Trump’s recent tariffs, meanwhile, have rattled markets across the globe, strained relationships with longtime allies such as Canada and the European Union and increased anxiety around the economy in the U.S. and abroad.
The massive tariffs he has imposed on China in particular — going as high as 145 percent — are raising fears about empty shelves and soaring prices.
Trump alluded to the exchange later Sunday while speaking with reporters on Air Force One.
“Inflation’s down. All costs are down. Everything is down other than, as Kristen said, the thing that you carry the babies around in,” he said.
During the “Meet the Press” interview, the president claimed credit for positive aspects of the economy and went after former President Biden for the struggling parts.
“I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy, because he’s done a terrible job,” Trump said. “He did a terrible job on everything.”
In a Sunday opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent defended what he called Trump’s “economic rebalancing” amid growing concerns regarding his handling of the economy.
Bessent said in the Journal piece that the president “wants to ensure working families aren’t left behind in the next era of economic growth — as many were in the last.”
“In the first 100 days of his presidency, we have laid the groundwork to rebalance global trade, restore America’s industrial base, and build an economy that allows Wall Street and Main Street to rise together. To understand the urgency of this economic rebalancing, it’s critical to understand why it is necessary in the first place,” he said.
—Updated at 8:53 p.m. EDT
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