Trump Caved: Why The White House Rollout of His Tariff Pause Is Evidence of Defeat

AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

President Donald Trump announced he was pausing his controversial reciprocal tariff policy for 90 days, and all the evidence clearly points to this as a massive caving under the pressure of cratering stocks and bond markets and the political peril that came with it.

Trump announced the controversial policy eight days ago in a Rose Garden ceremony called “Liberation Day.” Trump and his aides repeatedly insisted that nations should not call to negotiate because this policy was etched in stone. Of course, if you want to get the best deal, you insist that no deal is possible, right? Of course, roughly $5 trillion in portfolio and investment wealth vanished into thin air in the following week, but that’s the “Art of the Deal,” amirite?

The sudden reversal surprised anyone closely following Trump’s recent moves. The night before, during an address to the RNCC, Trump gave zero clue that a massive policy shift was looming and referred to his “war with the world” and how it was “our turn to do the ripping” off of our trade partners.

“And I do think that the war with the world, which is not a war at all because they’re all coming here,” Trump claimed. “They’re all coming here. Japan is coming here as we speak. They’re in a plane flying, lots of them, all tough negotiators.”

Trump then pivoted to China and bragged about the massive tariffs that are about to go into effect on the country. While doing so, Trump falsely stated that China will pay the tariff.

“Right now, China is paying a 104% tariff,” he said as the crowd applauded. “Think of it – 104%. Now, it sounds ridiculous, but they charged us for many items – 100%, 125%. Many countries have. They ripped us off left and right. But now it’s our turn to do the ripping. That’s ok. We’re gonna make our country even stronger, stronger than it ever was.”

So as of late Tuesday night, the tariff policy seemed a go. Then early Wednesday morning, Trump posted two messages on social media, the first read “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!” He then followed with “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” which some may read as a signal to investors about what was to come. If that was the intention, it was largely missed by the markets.

But at roughly 1:30 p.m. ET, Trump announced his sudden change of heart in a message that opened by blasting China for its “lack of respect” and raising its reciprocal tariff rate to a whopping $125. The 90-day pause was almost lost in the bluster of the opening insults, but the markets responded in kind, the Dow Jones Index shooting up over 2,000 points in the following minutes.

However, a better indication of the thought behind this sudden reversal was the instant public relations strategy employed by the White House. Secretary of the Treasury addressed a press gaggle assembled outside the Oval Office and immediately lauded the Commander-in-Chief, saying “We saw the successful negotiating strategy that President Trump implemented a week ago today.”

Peter Navarro appeared on Fox Business and pushed back on Charles Payne’s suggestion that Trump succumbed to a nosediving bond market and had trouble explaining how this was never about negotiations, but the negotiations that happened were a “beautiful” thing. Huh?

And Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick introduced a new level of social media brownnosing:

Two things can be true at once: Regardless of the tariff policy outcome, Trump and his legion of sycophants were ALWAYS going to claim victory no matter what. But also, as of late last night, Trump’s cocksure and hubristic rhetoric was all about staying the course. The only real negotiation he spoke about was Japan—it’s hard to imagine him not boasting of all the other “negotiations” with the 75 other nations that got the 90-day pass.

The folly of this clear White House spin of “we meant this all the time” was perfectly laid bare on X, by Chris Wade, who goes by the @saywhatagain username:

It’s certainly possible that the White House negotiated with 75 nations in the last five business days. But all the evidence suggests this was a massive PR and policy fail by the Trump administration. And while the tariffs might be on pause for the next three months? Serious damage has been done to America’s once-pristine reputation of economic stability.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.