Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said the United States would need all those products if there were problems including wars.
"We've been ripped off by every country," Trump said as he presided over a meeting of his cabinet.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, speaking at the same meeting, said that on April 2, which Trump has targeted to impose a slew of tariffs, the United States will launch what he called "the external revenue service".
The US Internal Revenue Service collects taxes from US citizens.
Trump was likely to exclude a set of sector-specific tariffs while applying reciprocal levies on April 2, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported earlier, but an administration official on Monday cautioned that the situation was fluid and no final decisions had been made.
Trump himself will ultimately determine the contents of the April 2 announcement, which he has touted as "Liberation Day" for the US economy.
The action aims to shrink a $US1.2 trillion ($A1.9 trillion) global goods trade deficit by raising US tariffs to levels charged by other countries and counteracting their non-tariff trade barriers.
Trump said in February that he intended to impose car tariffs "in the neighbourhood of 25 per cent" and similar duties on semiconductors and pharmaceutical imports but he later agreed to delay some car tariffs after a push by the three largest US car makers for a waiver.
Trump's whirlwind tariff offensive since his January inauguration has been marked by threats, reversals and delays, sometimes within hours of imposition deadlines, as his trade team formulates policy on the fly.
Thus far, he has imposed new 20 per cent duties on Chinese imports, fully restored 25 per cent duties on global steel and aluminium imports and slapped 25 per cent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico that do not comply with a North American trade agreement over the US fentanyl overdose crisis.
Two senior Trump officials - Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and top White House Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett - said last week that the administration is expected to focus the much anticipated April 2 reciprocal tariff announcement on a narrower set of countries with the biggest trade surpluses and high tariff and non-tariff barriers.
Bessent referred to these as the "Dirty 15" a reference to 15 per cent of countries while Hassett told Fox Business the focus would be on 10-15 countries.
A spokesperson for the US Trade Representative's office, which is leading the effort to determine the reciprocal tariffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A White House spokesperson also did not respond.
In a request for public comments on reciprocal tariffs, USTR said it was particularly interested in submissions for the largest US trade partners, and those with the highest goods trade surpluses.
USTR named Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Vietnam as being of particular interest, adding that they cover 88 per cent of total goods trade with the US.
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