Trump Cabinet Officials ‘Rushed’ to Oval Office To Convince Trump To Scale Back Tariffs While Trade Adviser Was Away

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

Two of President Donald Trump’s cabinet officials conspired to confront him on scaling back tariffs while trade adviser Peter Navarro was away from the Oval Office, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The paper reported Friday that on the morning of April 9, amid market turmoil, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saw a small window to convince Trump to scale back his tariff plan and took it.

The two reportedly acted quickly while Navarro, one of Trump’s most vocal advocates for tariffs, was occupied in a separate meeting with economic adviser Kevin Hassett.

Writing for the Journal, Josh Dawsey and Alexander Saeedy wrote:

Navarro isn’t one to back down during policy debates and had stridently urged Trump to keep tariffs in place, even as corporate chieftains and other advisers urged him to relent. And Navarro had been regularly around the Oval Office since Trump’s “Liberation Day” event.

So that morning, when Navarro was scheduled to meet with economic adviser Kevin Hassett in a different part of the White House, Bessent and Lutnick made their move, according to multiple people familiar with the intervention.

They rushed to the Oval Office to see Trump and propose a pause on some of the tariffs — without Navarro there to argue or push back. They knew they had a tight window. The meeting with Bessent and Lutnick wasn’t on Trump’s schedule.

Trump agreed with Bessent and Lutnick and later announced a partial rollback on social media, which was said to have caught Navarro off guard.

Via text message, Navarro denied the report. He told the paper its report was “more mischief from anonymous sources seeking to divide and conquer the trade team.”

The White House did not deny the report via a statement from spokesman Kush Desai:

President Trump has assembled an all-star trade and economic team to implement his America First agenda and finally address our country’s national emergency of persistent trade deficits. Every member of the Trump administration is playing from one playbook, President Trump’s playbook, to level the playing field for our workers and industries and restore American Greatness.

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