Trump’s Team Has No Idea What to Say About His Sudden Tariffs Reversal

Donald Trump’s reversal on tariffs Wednesday afternoon seems to have caught his administration off guard.

The president announced on Truth Social that tariffs would return to a baseline 10 percent level in most countries, while staggering 125 percent duties would be imposed on China. But his own officials couldn’t explain why. When a reporter asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent if he could, he replied, “No.”

“Again, President Trump created maximum leverage for himself,” Bessent said, adding, “We have just been overwhelmed, overwhelmed by the response mostly from our allies who want to come and negotiate in good faith.”

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, as usual, took a combative approach, telling reporters, “Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal, you clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.”

It’s obvious at this point that Trump has never had a plan for his tariff scheme, and is making it up as he goes along. Wednesday’s reversal was likely prompted by growing criticism from his own supporters and normally fawning right-wing media and by a government debt sell-off, showing weakening confidence in the American economy. But Trump’s own sycophants aren’t going to admit that the president would ever back off.

As Donald Trump’s tariff plan slams the stock market, investors are beginning to wonder if the president doesn’t have some broader economic agenda—but rather if he’s just mentally ill.

“In the last few days, we have had many conversations with macro fund managers,” wrote Tom Lee, the head of research at the financial analysis firm FSInsights.

“And their concern is that the White House is not acting rationally, but rather on ideology. And some even fear that this may not even be ideology,” Lee continued. “A few have quietly wondered if the President might be insane.”

Lee placed the blame for any economic fallout squarely in Trump’s lap, arguing that Trump’s decisions behind the Resolute Desk lead to a “binary outcome,” though they don’t always make sense.

“Multiple officials have stated they do not want nor expect a recession. And there are enough economy-savvy advisors that they are aware of this. Moreover, the two-to-three percent fiscal stimulus needed to reverse a recession would negate any promised cuts to government spending,” Lee wrote, underscoring that “this is a rational view.

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs and unexpected tariff reversals gave the market whiplash on Wednesday. China and the U.S. volleyed for most of the day, with Trump eventually claiming that he would spike levies on the nation, one of America’s biggest trading partners, to 125 percent after China revealed its own reciprocal tariff rate at 84 percent on U.S. goods.

Then, in the afternoon, the White House announced that it would be instituting a pause on the majority of its tariffs (except on China), lowering the tariffs to a universal baseline rate of 10 percent.

That sent the market into a frenzy, with the S&P 500 spiking by 7 percent in a matter of minutes.

Lee’s assessment—which was published early Wednesday, before the swing—argued that prolonged stock fluctuations would lead to “tightening financial conditions.”

“Thus, the longer this volatility lasts, the greater the risk the US and the world are getting pushed into a needless recession,” he warned.

Other financial experts, including JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Diamond, have similarly assessed that Trump’s plan has pushed the U.S. to the brink of a recession.

Donald Trump has placed a 90-day pause on most of his reciprocal tariffs, despite repeatedly insisting that no such pause would take place. 

“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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.

Trump refused to stop his trade war with China, however, declaring in the same announcement that tariffs on the country would rise even more, to 125 percent. 

“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 wrote in the same Truth Social post.

While the 10 percent tariffs on remaining countries is a significant reduction, by the measure of just a few months ago, it’s still quite extreme.

Trump’s decision to renege on his aggressive “Liberation Day” tariffs was almost immediately met with allegations of caving at best and market manipulation at worst.  

“Wow. Trump just caved on the sweeping across-the-board tariffs, issuing a 90-day pause,” wrote Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett. “All of that chaos, trillions of dollars evaporated—for nothing at all.”

“[Trump] has put our economy in disarray and near collapse. We have small businesses and Americans who are concerned about their well-being…. We have people that are planning to send their kids to college this fall, people who are retiring whose benefits have declined,” Representative Steven Horsford asked Trump Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at a hearing mere minutes after Trump tweeted out the news. “Is this market manipulation?”

“No,” said Greer.

“Why not? If it was always the plan, how is this not market manipulation? 

“It’s not market manipulation,” Greer insisted again. 

“So if it’s not market manipulation, what is it? Who’s benefiting? What billionaire just got richer? And all the while, there aren’t even any Republicans left in this hearing.” 

This story has been updated.

Lawyers for a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador slammed the Department of Justice for trying to claim that the foreign country could have its own reasons for keeping him in prison.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was one of many alleged gang members that the Trump administration deported to El Salvador in mid-March, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act and denying detainees’ due process. The government later admitted that Abrego Garcia, who has no criminal record, was included on the flight manifest due to an “administrative error,” and had been subject to a protective order shielding him from deportation to El Salvador because he faced a legitimate threat of persecution there.

The Supreme Court on Monday halted a judge’s order to immediately retrieve Abrego Garcia. The government has continued to claim it cannot retrieve Abrego Garcia, who is among those incarcerated in El Slavador’s notorious mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, for a plethora of reasons. In a filing Monday, the DOJ claimed one more, alleging that El Salvador’s government “may have its own compelling reasons to detain” Abrego Garcia, and “has its own legal rationales for detaining members of … foreign terrorist groups like MS-13”—which the U.S. government has yet to actually demonstrate that Abrego Garcia is.

But, in an eight-page filing Wednesday, lawyers for Abrego Garcia shot down the DOJ’s attempt to “ominously” introduce a flimsy excuse for leaving him there.

“These vague speculations are forfeited because they were never previously asserted and, in any event, devoid of factual support,” the lawyers wrote.

“There is no actual evidence that any nation has a criminal charge against Abrego Garcia. The only evidence is that he has never been charged or convicted of a crime in any country. And, of course, Abrego Garcia has not even lived in El Salvador since 2011—some 14 years ago—when he was 16 years old, rendering the Government’s claim implausible,” the lawyers wrote. “If the Government has evidence as to Abrego Garcia, it should say so. It refuses.

“The Government’s retreat to innuendo cannot bear the weight of the extraordinary relief it seeks: to perpetuate an unlawful incarceration that the United States itself engineered,” the lawyers added.

The U.S. economy is cratering, the White House has fractured some of the country’s longest-standing global alliances, and foreign nations are marking the end of American economic dominance. But speaking at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner on Tuesday night, Donald Trump was apparently more interested in using the intraparty platform to slander and roast his first-term enemies than address or assuage concerns over America’s debilitating problems.

The end result was a hodgepodge of some of Trump’s greatest hits, begging the question if Trump is attempting to redirect conservative attention toward the rhetoric that got his base jazzed to support him in the first place. The subjects of his insults included President Joe Biden, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and several liberal lawmakers who’ve dared to speak out against the president’s agenda.

Imploring Republicans to recenter their focus on winning their respective midterm elections, Trump warned that Democrats would “try to reverse all of the progress that we’ve made” should they retake the House in 2026.

“The House will be run by the same band of radicals and lunatics,” Trump said, shouting out House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Pelosi, and “weird” Al Green, the last of whom offered the only disruptive protest during Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last month.

“He’s a weird dude,” the president continued. “He should have been treated very badly for the way he behaved that night.”

Six months after he won the election, Trump also took time away from his speech to ask the crowd if they’d rather he refer to Biden as “Crooked Joe” or “Sleepy Joe.” After equally muted applause for both options, Trump laughed.

“That’s my problem, it’s like the same—they both work, they both work beautifully,” Trump said.

Trump also devoted some of the night to speaking about California Senator Adam Schiff, whom Trump has previously referred to as the “enemy from within” for serving as the lead prosecutor in the first impeachment trial against him.

“Adam Schifty Schiff—can you believe this guy? He’s got the smallest neck I’ve ever seen,” the president said. “And the biggest head. We call him Watermelon Head.”

“I’d say how can that big fat face stand on a neck that looked like this finger? How can it? It’s the weirdest thing. It’s a mystery, nobody can understand it,” Trump continued, deriding Schiff as one of the “most dishonest human beings” he’d ever seen.

“How we can allow people like that to run in office is a shame,” the orange-coded convicted felon added. “He was in charge of the witch hunt. He was in charge of the fake witch hunt with Russia, Russia, Russia.”