Trump Wants to Spin His Tariff Pause as a Win. It's Not.

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.

While markets acted with giddiness and the White House took a victory lap, it was an obvious climb-down but not a full-on retreat. And, like so much else in Trump’s hour-by-hour zigzag, both global leaders and millions of businesses have no confidence that the latest rules will still be in place by the time I finish typing this sentence.

“It took great courage for him to stay the course until this moment,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters in the White House driveway. “This was his strategy all along,” he later added, just one day after press secretary Karoline Leavitt had boasted of Trump’s “spine of steel” as reporters asked if he was considering a tariff pause.

“Look, nothing is over yet,” Trump told reporters on the White House’s South Lawn. “We’ll see how it all works out.”

It was the head-spinning embodiment of a chaos that has colored Washington—and much of the globe—over the last week, in which a mercurial President set into motion a global panic that disappeared $11 trillion from Wall Street, elevated the average U.S. tariff rate to its highest level since 1909, and launched, in some estimates, the largest effective tax hike on American families in over 70 years.

Since Trump announced a so-called “tariff wall” around the U.S., nations have been phoning Washington with profers to write new trade deals, or at least understand what in the world Trump was looking to gain in this standoff. It was like Trump had been made the new king of the sandbox after throwing a tantrum that traumatized his bullied rivals. 

White House officials say Trump will involve himself directly in the new nation-by-nation trade talks that will now dominate the next three months. It stands to be a fun hustle for a man who fancies himself a master dealmaker. It also stands to leave tremendous uncertainty heading into the summer and leave Congress watching, as disoriented as ever. 

That frustration from the other end of Capitol Hill has been palpable since Trump returned to power in January and became urgently undeniable in the last week. Take Sen. Mark Warner’s indignation Tuesday during a remarkable exchange with Jamieson Greer, Trump’s top trade representative.

The Virginia Democrat used his turn grilling Greer during a Senate Finance Committee hearing to register his utter contempt for the new tariffs that were set to go into effect hours later, not knowing they would partly evaporate just a few hours after that. At one point rising to what some would describe as shouted incredulity, Warner noted that many of the tariffs made, to his eye, zero sense—especially those levied on nations that already buy more from the U.S. than the U.S. does them.

“We have a trade surplus with Australia. We have a free-trade agreement. They are an incredibly important national security partner. Why were they whacked with a tariff?” Warner roared.

Greer kept his cool and noted the 10% tariff is on the low end. “We should be running up the score,” he told the Senators, saying the proceeds could help reduce the national pile of red ink.

It was the kind of head-scratching argument that Trump officials and allies have offered in recent days to defend a trade strategy in search of a clear objective. Warner gave perhaps the kindest answer he could muster: “Sir, you are a much smarter person than that answer.”

Most of Washington shares Warner’s reaction over tariffs that seem guided solely by Trump’s grievance and gut. The tit-for-tat escalation led to immediate retaliation, including China levying a massive new charge on its imports from the U.S. Europe responded with 25% tariffs on many American-made products heading into those markets. And Wall Street was on track for another day of decline before Trump shocked investors again by pushing pause for three months on much of the carnage he had inflicted.

While Trump was still spinning the tariffs as here-to-stay pieces of policy on Wednesday, it was clear his support was flaking. Even his most reliable defenders and apologists were growing weary of the talk about these tariffs, which are only just now starting to be felt. 

“I love President Trump,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said on his podcast. “I am his strongest supporter in the Senate. I think he’s doing incredible things as President. But here’s one thing to understand: A tariff is a tax, and it is a tax principally on American consumers.”

It was a similar warning from podcaster Ben Shapiro, another Trump booster. “The President’s vision of international trade is, I’m sorry to say, mistaken,” he said.

Before the news shocked markets, I chatted with Brad Setser, who served in the Obama-era Treasury Department and Biden-era trade office. He rightly predicted Wednesday’s answer to a tee, down to the precise baseline tariff. But he noted trade deals take time and a mutual understanding of the outcomes. 

“The problem is that it isn’t yet clear to anyone—most importantly, the countries trying to negotiate off ramps—what an acceptable deal would look like,” he told me.

Although Trump repeatedly said the tariffs were not a starting point for negotiations, the White House had been bragging that dozens of countries have approached the administration about side deals to get around the sting of these taxes. It was a hint that maybe Trump was just playing yet another one of his reality show-style games. 

Before the latest retreat, Scott Lincicome, a trade expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, outlined for me three ways this could end: Trump could find sufficient blowback and walk away from his aggressive moves; the courts could step in and say this has been an over-broad reach of emergency powers; or Congress could step in.

“They’re all terrible,” Lincicome said. “The courts are a coin toss. Congress is feckless.” 

Indeed, which is why Trump’s sudden lurch—even a temporary one—came out of nowhere and jolted markets and sent Washington shouting into the void.

“It sucks, but it’s not Armageddon,” Lincicome said. “I’m not an optimist, I promise. You do have to be careful about being too hysterical.”

Maybe that’s the answer for weathering this second Trump era. That, or just waiting until the President changes his mind.