Updated April 09, 2025 at 17:52 PM ET
President Trump abruptly announced on Wednesday that he would pause big hikes on tariffs for most countries for 90 days, except for China.
Most countries will be left with 10% tariffs on their exports to the United States, while China — which had retaliated against Trump's moves — will now face tariffs of 125%.
The whipsawing of Trump's tariff policies has weighed heavily on financial markets, and Trump told reporters that those moves — especially in the bond market — had factored into his decision.
"Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know. They're getting a little bit … afraid," Trump told reporters at an unrelated event at the White House with race car drivers and team owners.
His decision, announced on social media in the middle of the trading day, caused stock prices to soar.
Earlier, in a hastily arranged gaggle with reporters outside the White House, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted that the market chaos caused by Trump's hefty tariffs was not the reason for the policy shift.
"This was driven by the president's strategy. He and I had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along," Bessent told reporters.
"It took great courage — great courage — for him [Trump] to stay the course until this moment," Bessent said.
Trump defended his about-face on tariffs as a sign of his flexibility. "You have to have flexibility. I could say, 'Here's a wall, and I'm going to go through that wall. I'm going to go through it no matter what,'" Trump said. "Sometimes you have to be able to go under the wall, around the wall or over the wall."
Bessent said Trump's steep "reciprocal tariffs" had brought more than 75 countries to seek deals with the United States, and he said that the White House would pursue "bespoke" arrangements with each of them in the coming weeks.
"It is going to take some time, and President Trump wants to be personally involved. So that's why we're getting the 90-day pause," he said.
Bessent said that a range of issues would be on the table during talks with other countries, including liquefied natural gas deals, nontariff trade barriers, currency policies and subsidies. He said he has a meeting with Vietnamese officials on Wednesday.
Bessent said China was the "biggest source" of trade issues for the United States and the rest of the world.
"I'm not calling it a trade war, but I'm saying that China has escalated, and President Trump responded very courageously to that, and we are going to work on a solution with our trading partners," he said.
When asked why White House aides insisted the tariffs weren't about negotiations prior to the pause, Trump told reporters Wednesday afternoon, "A lot of time it's not a negotiation until it is." He said he had been thinking about pausing the tariffs "over the last few days," but that "I think it probably came together early this morning, fairly early this morning."
Trump said he expects Chinese President Xi will eventually call to make a deal and doesn't expect to have to further escalate the tariffs that remain in place against China. He would not elaborate on what specifically he expects China to do before the U.S. rolls back the tariffs.
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