Fox’s Gasparino Argues Trump Didn’t ‘Outsmart’ the World and Tariff Drop Was ‘Forced’ by Bond Selloff: ‘Those Markets Were Imploding Last Night’

Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino made the case that President Donald Trump’s tariff pause was largely motivated by alarming activity in the bond market.

Trump on Wednesday afternoon announced a 90-day pause on steep reciprocal tariffs for the 75 countries he said have been willing to negotiate with the United States. While the reciprocal tariffs were removed, the baseline tariff rate of 10% — as well as the 25% tariff on cars — remained. What’s more, Trump announced that he would be raising the tariff on China to 125%.

While Trump officials hailed the reversal as a savvy maneuver, Gasparino wasn’t as convinced. Appearing on Fox News program America Reports, he said:

I want to tell you right now that Donald Trump outsmarted the world. Trust me, I’m an American. I support my president, but that’s not really what happened here. From what I understand — and I know I’ll get pushback — but here’s what it is. First off, we should point out that one of the good things about this is that Scott Bessent is finally in the White House. He’s finally leading this. I mean, up until a couple of days ago, it was [Howard Lutnick], it was Peter Navarro, the commerce secretary, the trade adviser — very much hawks. Now it’s Scott Bessent, who believes in cutting deals as opposed to, you know, just putting these tariffs out there and let’s be a mercantilistic economy. That’s number one.

But number two, let’s recall what happened overnight; and from what I understand — and I’m getting this from people that are talking to the White House — what happened in the bond market overnight, the spike in yields on the 30-year and the 10-year bond, which showed that people were dumping our bonds. And who are those people dumping our bonds? Japan, the biggest holder of bonds, was selling bonds. That’s what I’m getting from some very big money managers. China, maybe to some extent, but it was largely Japan and others.

If you have a mass sale of bonds, that means people are losing confidence in the US economy, on the ability to do deals with us; and from what I understand, this is what forced the hand of this 90-day reprieve. Now, is it a good thing? Are people coming to the table? Yeah, but if, you know, if you read between the lines and not even what what Scott Bessent said, we have no deals, right? There’s nobody that is really there saying, “This is what we’re gonna do,” and they paused it anyway.

So, my thing is, well, I’ll give you this: there is some “Art of the Deal” here. And, by the way, brilliant move by putting China in the corner, but that’s a whole separate thing because remember, that’s a very difficult negotiation. Everybody else is a lot easier. They do want to deal with us — whether they want to be, you know, forced into really bad trade deals on their end is a whole other negotiating story.

But make no mistake about it, you cannot divorce this decision right here from what happened last night, which was, you know — people focus on the stock market all the time. It’s the bond market and the sort of lending markets that’s the plumbing of the economy; and those markets were imploding last night. And that’s why we have a 90-day freeze.

Watch above via Fox News