It doesn’t seem like it, but “Liberation Day,” the day when President Donald Trump announced tariffs on the majority of countries in the world, was on April 2, only three weeks ago.
Since then, there’s been massive market volatility, and even softness in the bond market, which ultimately led Trump, on April 9, to declare a 90-day pause on most of the non-China tariffs. However, tariffs on Chinese goods were ultimately raised to 145 percent.
Now, Trump is making noises about reducing those China tariffs, which has some asking whether the president has given up altogether on the trade war.
Donald Trump on China Tariffs: “Will Come Down Substantially”
In remarks at the White House on Tuesday, Trump stated that the tariffs on China will “come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”
“145% is very high, and it won’t be that high,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, as reported by CNN. “It won’t be anywhere near that high.”
Per Bloomberg News, Trump positioned this as the tariffs coming down as a result of trade talks. He also promised to be “very nice” in trade talks with China.
“We’re going to be very nice and they’re going to be very nice, and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said in the Oval Office remarks. He also vowed not to bring up the subject of COVID-19, and the two countries’ disagreements over it, in the talks, although doing so brought it up.
The White House’s messaging in the comparatively quiet last week and a half had been to state that the administration was hoping to make a deal with China, or with some of the other countries. But indications are that Trump is significantly softening his negotiating position, before any formal talks even begin.
Per CNN, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at an investor conference Tuesday that the trade war with China was “unsustainable” and that he expected it to de-escalate, likely shortly. He said that the likely solution is for a rebalancing of trade between the U.S. and China.
China, Bloomberg reported, “wants the two sides to work out the contours of an agreement” before Trump and President Xi Jinping speak to one another.
Good News From Wall Street
Stocks surged on Tuesday, with the Dow rising more than 1,000 points, ending a multi-day losing streak. Some companies with close ties to China that have been battered in recent weeks, like Apple and Nvidia, rose on Tuesday.
The rally came following the comments from Trump and Bessent, as well as Trump declaring more unequivocally that he has “no intention” of removing Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.
That comment followed several days of Trump ripping Powell, demanding interest rate cuts, and at one point declaring in a Truth Social post that the Fed Chairman’s “termination cannot come fast enough.”
This threatened to set off a court fight over whether the president has the right to fire the Fed chairman, with many, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), predicting that Powell’s potential removal would cause markets to crash.
“Art of the Deal?”
If Trump is truly backing down on tariffs, it would appear that the president is pushing for economic stability at the expense of what has long been his signature economic policy.
Any dream of the tariffs forcing significant reshoring of manufacturing, at least in anything close to resembling the near term, appears to have disappeared.
There was a lot of mockery of Trump, who has long boasted of his negotiation skills, seeming to have been thoroughly outfoxed on tariffs and trade, which is the issue that he appears to care the most about.
“It is a truly remarkable and dystopian thing to see Trump literally say plainly that he blinked, and then see all his sycophants on here insist he just executed The Art of the Deal. Orwellian and scary, genuinely,” journalist Isaac Saul pointed out on X.
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
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