President Donald Trump blinked. Sort of.
At 1:18 p.m. on Wednesday, after almost a week of economic free fall, Trump announced a 90-day pause on most of the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs that had sent global markets spiraling. At the same time, he announced a surge in punitive tariffs on China, his biggest trade foe and the largest source of U.S. imports, to 125%. And he still kept in place his new blanket 10% tariff on most goods to the rest of the world, including Mexico and Canada.
At 1:18 p.m. on Wednesday, after almost a week of economic free fall, Trump announced a 90-day pause on most of the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs that had sent global markets spiraling. At the same time, he announced a surge in punitive tariffs on China, his biggest trade foe and the largest source of U.S. imports, to 125%. And he still kept in place his new blanket 10% tariff on most goods to the rest of the world, including Mexico and Canada.
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NewsTranscript
00:00There was a pause put in on the tariffs.
00:02Can you walk us through what you're thinking about
00:04why you decided to put a 90-day pause?
00:08Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line.
00:12They were getting yippy, you know?
00:14They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,
00:17unlike these champions, because we have a big job to do.
00:21No other president would have done what I did.
00:23No other president. I know the presidents.
00:24They wouldn't have done it. And it had to be done.
00:27And what was happening to us on trade, not only with, you know,
00:31if you look at it, not only with China,
00:33but China was by far the biggest abuser in history and others also.
00:38But somebody had to do it.
00:41They had to stop because it was not sustainable.
00:43Last year, China made $1 trillion off trade with the United States.
00:48That's not right. And now I've reversed it.
00:52It's for a short period of time. But we made $2 billion.
00:55We're making now $2 billion a day.
00:59And somebody had to do it.
01:02Roger actually said it.
01:03Charles Schwab was here a little while ago,
01:05one of the great financial people.
01:07And he said he's been waiting for 40 years for somebody to do what I did
01:12over the last month.
01:14And if you didn't do it, you wouldn't have a country.
01:17It wouldn't be sustainable.
01:18So I'm honored to have done it.
01:20And, you know, look, nothing's over yet.
01:22But we have a tremendous amount of spirit from other countries, including China.
01:27China wants to make a deal.
01:28They just don't know how quite to go about it.
01:30You know, it's one of those things.
01:31They don't know how quite.
01:33They're proud people.
01:34And President Xi is a proud man.
01:37I know him very well.
01:38And they don't know quite how to go about it.
01:40But they'll figure it out.
01:41They're in the process of figuring it out.
01:43But they want to make a deal.