The Dow Jones industrial average fell early Tuesday in response to President Trump’s remarks that a trade deal with China may not be reached until after the 2020 election.
The Dow dropped 426 points, or 1.4 percent, after the president’s remarks in London before rising slightly.
Responding to a question about the drop, Trump later said he is focused on making “the right deal.”
“We’re having ongoing discussions and we’ll see what happens,” he said at the NATO summit.
“But if the stock market goes up or down, I don’t watch the stock market. I watch jobs,” said Trump, who frequently tweets about market gains.
The president added that an even deal between the two countries is “no good.”
“Other presidents and leaders of our country have really let us down because they let China get away with something that should’ve never been allowed to happen,” he said.
Trump’s earlier comments remarks that he didn’t have a deadline for the deal marked a turn from his previous comments that negotiations with China were going well.
“We have seen this movie many times before … where the president throws out remarks during trade talks that in retrospect have just been a negotiating tactic, especially when he starts off by saying China wants a deal more than he does,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG, told CNN Business.
China and the U.S. verbally agreed to a preliminary deal in October and have been working out the aspects of the first phase of the deal, which officials say could stretch into next year.
The S&P 500 also fell 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq dropped 1.2 percent. The three indexes experienced their highest one-day percentage drop in two months, CNN Business noted.
The U.S. late Monday also announced plans to enforce tariffs on French goods after Paris implemented a digital tax on American technology companies.
Brett Samuels contributed to this report.