President Donald Trump played down the stock market's losses on Tuesday as "peanuts" when compared with the importance of striking a good deal with China and the gains since his election.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average "was about 16,000 or 15,000 and now it's almost at 30,000," Trump said at the NATO summit in London. "It's going to be at 30,000."

"If the stock market goes up or down — I don't watch the stock market. I watch jobs. Jobs are what I watch," he added. Today's move is "peanuts compared to — we have picked up record numbers so that's OK. That's the way I feel."