Nonstop tariff threats and postponements are causing whiplash across world markets and apparently in the White House as President Donald Trump's appointees struggle to nail down the president’s strategy.
Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters that Trump’s sudden announcement to delay worldwide tariffs and instead focus them on China was a product of many days of planning.
“President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself on which tariffs went into effect 15 hours ago,” Bessent told CNN reporter Alayna Treene. “The [tariffs] we have lowered went into effect a week ago … and we’ve been overwhelmed by the response from mostly our allies who want to come in and negotiate with good faith. … [but] China kept escalating and escalating and now they have a 125% tariff effective immediately.”
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But Trump, himself, did not agree.
“I thought people were jumping a little bit out of line. … They were getting a little bit yippy. They were getting a little bit afraid,” Trump told reporters within 30 minutes of Bessent’s statement. “No other president would’ve done what I did. No other president. They wouldn’t have done it.”
Getting “yippy” could be the description for US markets tumbling almost 3,000 points over 72 hours, only to skyrocket after the president announced worldwide tariff delays to increase more pointed tariffs on China, raising rate from 104% to 125%.
New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush noticed the distance between Bessent's comments and Trump's remarks, sarcastically tweeting that the president was "Immediately contradicting his Treasury Secretary who not 30 minutes earlier on the same patch of asphalt cited his steely strategic genius."
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Democrats in DC were staggered by the seeming impulsiveness of the decision today as news of the change arrived during a committee meetings.
“He announced it on a tweet. Wtf? Who's in charge?” demanded Rep Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) of Trump's U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer. “… It looks like your boss just pulled the rug out from under you. Is this market manipulation?”
“It's not market manipulation, sir,” Greer assured.
“Well, then what is it? Because it sure is not a strategy,” Horsford said.
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