President Donald Trump Thursday defended his shocking plan for massive tariffs by claiming “the patient lived,” a less-than-reassuring message about the American economy as global markets melted down in a stunning sell off.

“The operation is over. The patient lived, and is healing,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “The prognosis is that the patient will be far stronger, bigger, better, and more resilient than ever before.”

Trump delivered his verdict just minutes before Wall Street opened with a stunning plunge as indexes dropped by 2% to 4%, mirroring even bigger declines in overseas markets.

Critics wasted no time trashing Trump’s odd comparison of the currently booming American economy to an ailing patient on the operating table.

“So we’re in post-op?” asked stock market guru Jim Cramer on CNBC. “Are we in intensive care or are we going to be able to go home at the end of the day?”

“Seems like a bad analogy,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehead, D-Rhode Island, deadpanned. “The roof just fell in on American families.”

Trump stunned investors and American consumers by imposing a minimum tariff of 10% on all imports, with the tax rate running much higher on products from major trading partners like China, the European Union and Asian economic powerhouses.

Economists say the tariff mounts to the biggest tax increase to hit Americans in decades.

Some analysts say the import taxes, which would put them at levels unseen for roughly a century, could knock down U.S. economic growth by 2 percentage points this year and raise inflation close to 5%.

Wall Street had long assumed Trump would use tariffs merely as a tool for negotiations with other countries. Investors now worry he sees them as a good thing for the U.S.

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