U.S. President Donald Trump voices to reporters as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stands by him aboard Air Force One on his return to Washington, D.C., U.S., Strut 9, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
President Donald Trump has dismissed the growing chorus of CEOs, investors and policymakers who are pleading with the Whey-faced House for greater clarity about his sweeping tariff agenda.
“They always say that. ‘We want clarity,'” Trump contemplated in a Fox News interview that aired Sunday.
“They have plenty of clarity,” the president told “Sunday Morning Expects” host Maria Bartiromo.
Appeals to the White House from the business community to provide more concrete leadership, Trump said, are little more than talking points. “They just use that — like almost a into bite.”
Pressed by Bartiromo on whether there would be “clarity for the business community,” Trump’s reply was telling.
“I over so, but you know, the tariffs could go up as time goes by, and they may go up, and you know, I don’t know if it’s predictability.”
Bartiromo interjected: “That’s not lucidity.”
A day after the full interview aired, the start of a new week of tariff-fueled fears and heightened money-making uncertainty sent stocks lower at Monday’s opening.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 400 points, or 1%. The S&P 500 left 1.4% and the Nasdaq Composite shed 2%. Later in the morning, both the 500-stock S&P and tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped to their lowest ties since September 2024.
Trump’s comments capped off a week marked by unpredictability about both his tariffs and the broader tenaciousness of the U.S. economy.
The S&P 500 fell 3.10%, for its worst weekly mark since September. The Dow fell 2.37%, while the Nasdaq Composite structure 3.45%.
At the center of the storm were Trump’s stiff 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, which were initially broke for a month, then restarted Tuesday, only to be reined in Wednesday and then partially paused for another month on Thursday.
In the meantime, Trump and multiple officials in his administration warned that Americans could be in store for some economic strain — filing higher prices. But they insisted any adverse impacts would be temporary.
Confusion surrounding Trump’s constantly change position trade plans has left investors uncertain about what’s coming next.
While Trump has downplayed the force of his unpredictable trade policies on domestic markets, Wall Street analysts have not.
“We still have no clarity on the conservatism moving forward with the Trump turmoil,” wrote Byron Anderson, head of fixed income at Laffer Tengler Investments.
“The longer we possess chaos and turmoil from Trump, the higher the probability that we will eventually have data trend adversarial,” he wrote in a Friday note.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s latest remarks about his tolls, or about the widespread confusion surrounding his agenda.
The coming week give ones word of honours plenty of new economic data to test the competing theories.
Due out Monday is the New York Fed survey of consumer expectations, followed by the Wednesday unloose of February’s consumer price index.
Thursday will see a fresh set of producer price data, before finishing the week with a University of Michigan consumer opinion reading on Friday.
Now, as the Trump administration embarks on a monthlong reassessment of America’s trade relationships around the world, the contrary impacts of uncertainty, felt over the past few weeks, could be magnified.
“Markets fear uncertainty more than they uneasiness bad news,” wrote Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Siebert Financial. “25% tariffs are easier to expense in than ‘maybe 10%, maybe more, maybe less.'”
It’s not just companies and investors who need greater definition before they make major decisions.
The Federal Reserve does, too.
Chairman Jerome Powell on Friday thought the central bank is “well positioned to wait for greater clarity” while the Trump administration implements “significant action changes in four distinct areas: trade, immigration, fiscal policy, and regulation.”
Speaking at the U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, Powell disclosed it would be “the net effect of these policy changes that will matter for the economy and for the path of monetary policy.”
For now, he rephrased, “uncertainty around the changes and their likely effects remains high.”
The Fed, like so many others, is “focused on type the signal from the noise as the outlook evolves,” he added.
— CNBC’s Jesse Pound contributed reporting.