Michael Whatley (right), chair of the Republican National Committee, speaks to reporters as North Carolina GOP chairman Jason Simmons looks on at the NC GOP headquarters in Raleigh on Sept. 14, 2024. (Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)
The chair of the Republican National Committee said Monday evening he believes recent chaos in global stock markets was an “overreaction” to President Donald Trump’s new tariffs.
“I think there’s a lot of false equivocation that the market equals the economy,” argued Michael Whatley, who was elevated to the national post by Trump after previously serving as head of the North Carolina GOP. “It doesn’t.”
Whatley’s comments Monday came during an event at NC State University, held by the conservative campus group Turning Point USA — which grew contentious at times as he defended the administration’s policies in front of a student crowd that included multiple vocal protesters.
Stock futures bounced Tuesday morning after news of Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs caused days of steep losses and volatility across global markets. Multiple questions from students addressed costs and the economy; one was spotted looking at the S&P 500’s daily chart on his laptop as the state GOP chairman, Jason Simmons, addressed the room.
“I am not panicking” about the markets, Whatley told the crowd of around 50 at Talley Student Union. He said he believed they “will rebound” as the world adjusts to the new policy (multiple prominent trade partners, including the E.U. and China, have vowed to retaliate with additional tariffs of their own). And he urged students to take a longer, and wider, view of the administration’s trade policies.
“You probably want to look at that not just in a vacuum,” Whatley said, but rather as an “overall strategy to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.”
Students’ questions of RNC chair: Immigration, housing and free speech
Attendees at Monday’s Turning Point event, most of whom were students, quizzed Whatley on a range of topics — including the GOP’s approach to housing, the administration’s mass deportation policy and concerns about free speech.
And throughout the event, a group of students there to protest the event frequently set off noisemakers and ended the event shouting at Whatley.
One student, who said he led a campus group focused on real estate, asked how the party could focus on making housing affordable. (Whatley said reducing the cost of materials and taking down building regulations were key.) Another asked about potential shortages of people on visas, concerned about the impact on agricultural workforce. (Whatley said people should view the current phase of immigration enforcement as “phase one.”)
Multiple protesters urged Whatley to answer for reports of migrants who are in the U.S. legally and do not have criminal charges also being caught up in deportation operations. And they asked him to comment on two NC State students’ visas being revoked last week.
“I don’t know anything about the students here,” Whatley said. But he defended the administration’s immigration enforcement broadly, and said that “folks who are over here on visas are not citizens.”
The Q&A ended on a tense note, as protesters grew increasingly agitated with Whatley’s answers and shouted criticisms of the administration and GOP’s actions toward pro-Palestinian protesters. Those protesters, many of whom are students, have reportedly been under scrutiny by immigration authorities and private groups for possible deportation.
“You don’t care, and that’s the problem,” one shouted, as another held up a sign reading “free speech unless it’s free Palestine.”
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