For days, Donald Trump and his White House team stood firm on their decision to roll out sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs targeting dozens of countries.
They even dismissed a report suggesting the president was contemplating a 90-day pause—a story that briefly buoyed the stock market.
But now, that very pause, aside from a few exceptions, is official. The reshaping of global trade that Trump promised is temporarily shelved, and his vision of a manufacturing boom in America is once again delayed.
According to the White House, this move was always part of the plan: go big with tariffs, then ease off and open the door to one-on-one negotiations.
“We’ve had more than 75 countries reach out to us already, and I expect even more after today,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters shortly after the news broke.
This explanation isn’t unexpected from the administration. Still, it’s hard to ignore the timing—coming after a bout of market volatility, plummeting bond yields, growing dissent within the Republican Party, and a general wave of public unease.
So the question remains: was this a tactical retreat forced by pressure, or a calculated play from Trump’s famed “art of the deal” playbook?
Not long after the reversal, Trump’s advisors—many of whom had insisted he wouldn’t budge—rushed to praise the move. Trade adviser Peter Navarro even claimed that the tariff rollout “unfolded exactly the way it should.”
What remained unclear, however, were the specifics. Trump announced the suspension via a Truth Social post, but didn’t clarify if it applied to the European Union, or whether countries like Mexico and Canada—initially exempt from the 10% tariffs—were still in the clear. There were also questions about whether tariffs on certain industries would be affected.
Eventually, the White House offered more details, but for several hours, global trade partners were left to decipher a social media post and chase down answers shouted at press scrums.
By Wednesday afternoon, Trump admitted that the markets had looked “pretty glum” and that people were “getting a little queasy”—comments that softened the defiant tone he’d taken days earlier and perhaps hinted at the true motivations behind the policy shift.
Earlier that morning, he had used Truth Social to tell people to “BE COOL!” and promised that “everything is going to work out.” Just a day before, he’d attacked critics he dubbed “panicans”—a group he described as “weak and stupid” for lacking faith in his approach.
In the end, it was Trump himself who reversed course.
Still, he framed the move as a necessary step. He argued that any short-term disruptions were simply symptoms of deeper problems that had long plagued the U.S. economy.
