President Donald Trump is once again ramping up his tough talk on trade — and investors need to remember the lessons of just a few weeks ago, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday. “You have to take pain with this guy. He is an administrator of pain,” Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street” before the market opened. Wall Street is headed for a sharply lower open Friday after Trump threatened 50% tariffs on the European Union, claiming that trade talks with the bloc are “going nowhere,” and said a 25% duty on iPhones not made in the U.S. “must be paid by Apple .” Trump’s sharper rhetoric follows a strong multiweek stretch for U.S. stocks as investors took comfort in what seemed to be easing trade tensions between Washington and its trading partners, especially China. The S & P 500 entered Friday’s session up roughly 17% since its April 8 close, the day before Trump announced a pause on most of the steep “reciprocal” tariffs he announced a week prior, which had sent the market on a brutal four-day plunge. The S & P 500 ended April 8 just below the 5,000 level. Its all-time high is 6,144, set on Feb. 19 of this year. “It just seems like this was not only out of nowhere, but he had been saying that things are going OK, making progress, making progress,” Cramer said. Nevertheless, Cramer said investors need to keep a level head and remember that Trump loves to cut deals, echoing the advice he gave during the early April sell-off. “It’s a game. It’s a deal game. And that those who panic are going to be like the people who sold the S & P at 5,000” during the initial reciprocal tariff sell-off, Cramer said Friday. “I don’t want to be that person.”
