1 week Ago By Matthew Medsger
President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs went live at midnight but didn’t last — except for China.By about halfway through Wednesday, the markets rocketed back to life after the president announced shortly after 1 p.m.
he would delay his “reciprocal tariff” plan for three months in favor of broad 10% levies.Only goods from China, which Trump has long blamed for taking advantage of American workers, will face a larger 125% tariff, Trump said.By the close of the day, the Dow soared 2,900 points, with the Nasdaq jumping 12%.
“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,” Trump decreed via his Truth Social media platform.Goods from other countries facing additional duties on Wednesday, more than 75 of which have apparently been in touch with the Trump’s administration, have managed to “negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs,” and unlike China had not yet retaliated against Trump’s about half-day-old tariffs, the commander-in-chief said.
The president declared that he’d “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.The stock markets were clearly paying attention, and it took less than 10 minutes for the major indexes to surge upward by 5% or more, as is to prove Trump’s early-morning, pre-market assertions that “this is a great time to buy” and everyone should “be cool” as “everything is going to work out well.
”In his April 2 Rose Garden address announcing the tariff plan, Trump said that his proposal to charge 10% on most foreign goods, and even larger tariffs on countries that sell more products to the U.S. than we purchase, would inevitably bring back jobs.
The tax was necessary, he said, after the U.S. had been “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike” for decades, impacting American farmers, steel workers, manufacturers, and skilled craftsman.
The tariffs, Trump said, would drive those jobs back to the U.S.However, Trump’s “Liberation Day” delay on Wednesday was surprise enough that his own White House apparently didn’t know he would be issuing the 90-pause proclamation.
Just minutes before he made his social media post, the White House Press Office shared a list of studies as “empirical proof” in support of the tariffs, each ostensibly showing that unfair foreign trade practices “destroyed lives” in American communities. Meanwhile, U.S.
Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was in the middle of delivering testimony to Congress on the tariff plan’s necessity, and apparently learned of the pause from a staffer after delivering his opening remarks.However, it didn’t take long for the administration to get on message with the change, and by 2 p.m.
, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested the on-and-off nature of the policy was all part of “the Art of the Deal.”“You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here. You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China, when, in fact, we’ve seen the opposite effect.
The entire world is calling the United States of America not China, because they need our markets,” she told the White House press pool.Trump would later tell reporters at the White House that he paused the tariffs because “people were jumping a little bit out of line.”“They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,” he said, before stressing that “we have a big job to do.
”“No other president would have done what I did. No other president, I know the presidents, they wouldn’t have done it. And it had to be done.
What was happening to us on trade, not only with you know, if you look at it, not only with China, but China was by far the biggest abuser in history and others, also. But somebody had to do it. They had to stop because it was not sustainable,” he said, according to pool reports.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average would go on to close up by 7.87%, or 2,962.86 points, to close at 40,608.
45. The S&P 500 rallied a whopping 9.52%, a gain of 474.
13 points, to close at 5,456.90. The Nasdaq Composite rose even further, gaining 12.
16% or 1,857.06 points to finish the trading day 17,124.97.
In all, the major indexes are down by an average of about 2.5% from where they were before Trump’s original “Liberation Day” address..
