Gov. Tom Wolf said he believes it should be left to state governments — not the president — to decide when and how to loosen restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

“We had the responsibility for addressing the needs that we all had, and that involved closing schools, sheltering at home — we had responsibility for closing the state down, essentially,” Wolf said during a Tuesday conference call with reporters. “We have the responsibility … to figure out how we’re going to reopen.”

President Donald Trump on Monday said the federal government had complete control of those decisions.

“When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total,” Trump said at Monday’s White House coronavirus briefing. “The governors know that.”

“Broadly speaking, I think the federal government has chosen to take the role where … they believe that the states need to take action and they will be very supportive of what we do,” Wolf said. “To be fair, they have been as responsive as they possibly can given the scarcity of resources.”

Other governors were less diplomatic in their disagreement with the president.

“We don’t have a king in this country,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday during his daily coronavirus briefing. “We didn’t want a king, so we have a Constitution and we elect a president.”

Wolf said no decisions can be made in isolation, however, and Cuomo is among the six governors with whom Wolf has joined in coordinating efforts to reopen the state’s economy.

Wolf announced Monday he will collaborate with Cuomo and governors in New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island in reopening businesses and the economy as a whole. Massachusetts joined later.

It will be a slow process, Wolf said.

“You’re not going to have a healthy economy if you have an unhealthy population,” he said.

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