President Donald Trump has announced a pause to much of his severe tariff program, a stark reversal of his days-old policy that has rattled global financial markets.
“I think the word would be flexible, you have to be flexible,” he told reporters outside the White House after making the announcement on Wednesday.
While the treasury secretary suggested this was the plan all along, Trump told reporters he made the decision after he saw increased tumult in the markets.
“I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippee,” Trump said, defending his actions at the White House. The president said he had been watching market indicators, like the bond market, as well as high-profile investors like Jamie Dimon.
“No other president would have done what I did,” he said. “No other president. I know the presidents, they wouldn’t have done it, and it had to be done.”
Trump’s announcement, though, includes an increase of tariffs on China to 125% tariffs.
“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately. At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” he posted on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon.
“Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” he wrote.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised the pivot to reporters outside the White House soon after Trump’s post. “Many of you in the media clearly missed the art of the deal. You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here,” Leavitt said.
Bessent said the change was unrelated to the bond market cratering on Wednesday morning.
“This was driven by the president’s strategy. He and I had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along,” Bessent said.
But soon after, Trump contradicted Bessent and told reporters he had watched the market Tuesday night.
“Oh, I was watching the bond market. The bond market is very tricky. I was watching it. But if you look at it now, it’s beautiful. The bond market right now is beautiful,” he said. “Yeah, I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.”
The announcement sent not only the global markets into a frenzy, but also the White House itself. Dozens of reporters raced to lower press once the president posted his announcement to talk to press aides and were quickly redirected to gather outside to hear Bessent explain this sudden shift. After the nearly 15 minute gaggle, aides quickly returned to the West Wing and then disappeared altogether — abandoning their usual offices where reporters can reach them and leaving reporters with more questions and few answers.
Aides, once reached, had some difficulty explaining which countries would retain what rate of tariffs — a symptom of the fast pace of this policy change.
A White House official confirmed to NOTUS that the European Union’s tariff rate would revert back to the 10% rate all countries would be assigned, despite an earlier retaliation from the EU on steel and aluminum. How much Canada would be tariffed, in part because their tariffs were not a part of last week’s announced tranche but were previously in place on automobiles and as punishment for fentanyl tracking over the border, were unclear.
The pause is a reversal that Trump said repeatedly this week would not happen. After a Monday headline suggesting Trump was considering a 90-day tariff pause on all countries except China, the market moved sharply up. When the comments, attributed to director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett, were traced to a likely misinterpretation of an interview on Fox, the market dropped again.
At a press conference later that day, Trump said, “We’re not looking at that” in response to a question on a pause in tariffs.
The tariffs were initially sold by administration officials as “not a negotiation.” In a call with reporters laying out the program, officials said “any country that thinks that they can simply make an announcement promising to lower some tariffs is ignoring the big, central problem of their massive nontariff barriers and the institutionalization in their trade model to cheat America.”
But in the days after the tariffs were announced, the White House’s language shifted. Leavitt said Tuesday that “the president’s message has been simple and consistent from the beginning to countries around the world: Bring us your best offers, and he will listen.”
The market, which has been taking the tariffs poorly and has had mass volatility over the past few days, swung sharply upwards with the announcement of the pause. That came after being down in the morning, following the announcement of retaliatory tariffs from China to the U.S.
Appearing to acknowledge the stock market tumult Wednesday morning, Trump posted on his social media site, “BE COOL” and “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.”
Asked why Trump would tell investors to buy the dip Wednesday morning, just hours before he announced the pause, a White House official said Trump was “just issuing confidence into the market,” as a president should.
The official declined to comment further on when the decision to pause the market was made.
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick — who has been one of the most public boosters for the tariff plan and insisted there would be no postponing it — posted on X, with a screengrab of Trump’s Truth Social, that “Scott Bessent and I sat with the President while he wrote one of the most extraordinary Truth posts of his Presidency. The world is ready to work with President Trump to fix global trade, and China has chosen the opposite direction.”
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS.