Washington – The “Day of Liberation” has just given the day of capitulation.
President Donald Trump retired on Wednesday about a series of hard tariffs aimed at friends and enemies equally in a bold attempt to rebuild the global economic order.
Trump’s afternoon announcement followed a heartbreaking week in which republican legislators and confidants warned him in private that tariffs could destroy the economy. His own assistants had silenced alarms about the financial markets before him He suspended a tariff regime that he had presented with a flowering only one week before at a Rosas Garden ceremony.
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The stock market increased immediately after the face, ending the days of losses that have forced major Americans who have been sinking their savings in 401 (k) s to rethink their retirement plans.
Before Trump’s announcement, some of his advisors had been panic almost on bond markets, according to a senior administration official. Interest rates in 10 -year Treasury bonds had increased, contrary to what normally happens when sharing prices fall and investors seek security in treasure bonds. The unusual dynamic meant that at the same time tariffs could increase prices, people would pay more to buy houses or pay the credit card debt due to higher interest rates. Companies that seek to expand would pay more for new loans.
Two of Trump’s most important advisors, Treasury Secretary Scott Besent, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, presented a united front on Wednesday, urging him to suspend tariffs in the bond market light, said the administration official.
In a publication on social networks, Trump announced a 90 -day break that said he will use to negotiate agreements with dozens of countries that have expressed the opening to review the commercial terms that he argues that US companies and workers will exploit. An exception is China. Trump increased the rate of the largest geopolitical rival of the country to 125%, part of an eye -by climbing in an evolving commercial war.
Trump reversed the course a week after he appeared at Rose Garden and released his plan to return the works to the United States. Showing a table that shows the new high tariffs that countries would face, Trump proclaimed: “My fellow citizens, this is the day of liberation.”
It proved to be short duration.
The markets immersed themselves in anticipation of the main commercial wars, eliminating billions of dollars in wealth. The Democrats confiscated the issue, seeking to undermine a source of Trump’s popular attraction: the opinion that can be trusted to direct the economy of the nation.
“The Donald Trump market accident has vaporized a whopping $ 104,000 of the average retirement account,” said Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., Wednesday on the Senate’s floor, hours before Trump’s reversion.
The episode exposed the outbreaks within the Trump Main Advisors team while the White House struggled to offer a clear and consistent argument on the duration of the rates. While Besent seemed open to negotiations, Peter Navarro, a senior commercial advisor, seemed to take a tougher line stance.
Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire CEO that has advised Trump about the government’s workforce, called Navarro “darker than a sack of bricks”, while Navarro described Musk as someone who is simply “a car assembler, in many cases.”
But the one -week drama also underlined the danger of a policy formulation process that is often linked to the desires and whims of a man: Trump.
When asked about the dust between Musk and Navarro, Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., a Trump golf partner, said: “I don’t think matters. The only one that matters is Trump.”
Markets tend to favor predictability, as are business leaders who decide where to build new plants. However, when Trump establishes a course, there will surely be deviations.
A friend of his who spoke to him in recent days said Trump did not give signs that he was about to “go back in these things.”
Trump believes that other countries unjustly trade and see tariffs as a tool for the United States to be more competitive, said the person.
“He is very sure that he will work for him,” added the person, speaking on condition of anonymity.
And yet, in the period prior to Wednesday’s announcement, Trump and his assistants also listened to the legislators of the Republican party and external allies to urge an alternative path.
One was Larry Kudlow, who organizes a program at Fox Business Network and was a senior economic advisor in Trump’s first mandate.
Kudlow told NBC News that he has had “continuous” conversations with friends in West Wing about the need to negotiate with other countries before the United States slapped them with tariffs that have perpetuity.
When describing Trump’s movement on Wednesday as “fabulous,” Kudlow added: “The offer is the best thing you can do. In the last 48 hours, Trump has gone not to negotiate to negotiate. It is very clear that Besent is now the man in commerce. Very clear.”
The anxious legislators of the Republican party also intervened.
Graham said he spoke with Trump in detail on Tuesday night and told him that he had been listening to car manufacturers who are worried about how tariffs would affect their businesses. BMW operates a plant in Graham’s native state and is one of the companies he said he has spoken.
Senator John Kennedy, Republican of the L-La, a legislator who was also in contact with the administration, said Tuesday that he planned to have lunch with Besent. On Wednesday, he told NBC News that he was also talking to the White House. Kennedy compared Trump with the “Pit Bull who caught the car.” Now, he said, the question is: “What are you going to do with the car?”
After more market losses this week, and with the pressure of the Republicans in Capitol Hill, Trump began to have doubts. In his first mandate, he often saw the ups and downs of the stock market as a kind of qualifications in his presidency, celebrating his increase. The recession had caught his attention.
“People were getting a little dizzy,” he acknowledged Wednesday at an event with the Nascar racing champions.
“In recent days,” He began to consider the additional tariffs more seriously, he told the journalists later a day in an appearance of the Oval office. A perspective that intrigued him was personally negotiating new commercial agreements with the countries that sought to get out of tariffs, said the senior administration official.
He had decided. Sitting with Besent and Lutnick, he developed the note announcing the postponement and the end of the 90 days, for the moment, the biggest economic crisis of his young presidency.
“We write it from our hearts, right?” Trump said. “It was written as something that I think was very positive for the world and for us, and we do not want to hurt countries that do not need to be injured, and everyone wants to negotiate.”
The day closed with the industrial average Dow Jones rose almost 8%, erasing some – But not all – of the losses after the “day of liberation”.
As disorderly that everything has seemed, his administration insisted that everything is developing as planned.
“You have been observing the best economic strategy of an American president in history,” the White House Cabinet Deputy Director Stephen Miller published on Wednesday.
