From The New York Times:
President Trump on Wednesday abruptly reversed course on steep global tariffs that have roiled markets, upset members of his own party and raised fears of a recession. Just hours after he put punishing levies into place on nearly 60 countries, the president said he would pause them for 90 days.
But Mr. Trump did not extend that pause to China, opting instead to raise tariffs again on all Chinese imports, bringing those taxes to a whopping 125 percent. That decision came after Beijing raised its levies on American goods to 84 percent on Wednesday afternoon in an escalating tit-for-tat between the world’s largest economies.
In a post on Truth Social, the president said that he had authorized “a 90 day PAUSE” in which countries would face “a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff” of 10 percent. As a result, nearly every U.S. trading partner now faces a 10 percent blanket tariff, on top of 25 percent tariffs that Mr. Trump has imposed on cars, steel and aluminum.
A kinda sorta pause.
The Trump administration blinked.
But from CNBC, we learn that:
A wider, macro economic impact has also already unfolded, despite Trump’s move signaling that the U.S. administration is at least somewhat reactive to pressure from businesses and markets, George Saravelos, global head of FX research at Deutsche Bank said in a Wednesday note.
″Even if the tariffs are permanently suspended, damage has been done to the economy via a permanent sense of unpredictability in policy,” he said.
“More structurally, the events of the last few weeks will resonate amongst global economic partners during the upcoming negotiations on trade and indeed for many years to come. The desire to build greater strategic independence from the US across all fronts will be here to stay.”
Oopsie.
