Andrew Ross Sorkin predicted on Thursday that there would be “a lot of volatility” in the stock market over the next 90 days despite President Donald Trump’s tariff pause.
Sorkin, co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box, joined MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday to discuss the president’s pause on most of the tariffs he imposed this month against numerous countries. Trump announced a 90 day pause to most tariffs, but some are still in place. He also raised tariffs against China to 125%.
Sorkin acknowledged a rebound in the market since Trump’s announcement, but argued there is still uncertainty around how trade negotiations will play out. This, he said, will make investors hesitant and likely lead to more “volatility” in the markets.
“This whole period of paralysis is going to impact inflation, I think is going to probably shift. This may be, as my colleague Steve Liesman said, the quiet before the storm,” Sorkin said after noting that inflation fell in the month of March.
He argued that it’s difficult for investors to definitively say the United States is in a better negotiating position after the tariff pause.
Sorkin said:
The truth is it’s not that something magically changed overnight. The one thing that did happen is we now know that this president and this administration, to some extent, are willing to blink and are not willing to let the economy
go into an absolute free fall. So there’s a put, if you will, there’s some flaw. And that is the good news. And that’s why the stock market in the US moved as much as it did yesterday. But we now have 90 days and what’s going to happen over those 90 days, first of all, is going to be a lot of volatility. There’s going to be a continued sense of paralysis around investment. What what do CEOs do? Do they hire more people? Do they not? What’s going to happen with the tariffs? So all of that is still going to be a big question mark.
He added that the administration’s overall tariff strategy remains unclear.
“I think there’s just going to be a lot more question marks, frankly, over our economy and the direction of all of this than there were in some ways than there was yesterday,” Sorkin said.
Watch above via MSNBC.