‘The trade war hurts them, it doesn’t hurt us’

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President Donald Trump speaks during a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in the East Room of the White House March 6, 2018 in Washington, DC.

“When we’re behind on every single country, trade wars aren’t so bad,” Trump said, apparently referring to the U.S. as being “behind” due to trade deficits. Yet the United States does not have a trade deficit with “every single country,” as Trump frequently claims.

“In some cases, we lose on trade plus we give them military, where we’re subsidizing them tremendously,” Trump said of certain countries, without naming them. “So not only do we lose on trade, we lose on military.”

Any U.S. trade protections will be done “in a loving, loving way,” Trump said. And the end result will be that countries “like us better, and they will respect us much more.”

Trump’s unexpected announcement of planned tariffs last week put him at odds with both his fellow Republicans in Congress and with the corporate CEOs who have long been some of the president’s most consistent supporters.

“There is a lot of concern among Republican senators that this could sort of metastasize into a larger trade war,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters on Capitol Hill earlier Tuesday. He added, “there’s a high level of concern about interfering with what appears to be an economy that’s taking off in every respect.”

Later in the week, Trump is reportedly scheduled to meet with representatives of major U.S. companies opposed to the tariffs the president has proposed.