Brushing Off Concerns, Trump Pushes Forward With His Steep Tariffs

Closings and layoffs at auto factories; U.S. signals it's open to discussing deals

Author

Matt Davis
April 09, 2025

Good morning. I went to a church vestry meeting last night. With a leaking South aisle and repair costs ballooning beyond expectations, the last thing you want is to see your endowment drop by 20 percent. I also back-to-backed it with a meeting of the New York Squash board, where you’ll be pleased to hear that we’ve kept our enormous holdings in cash.

Today’s lead story is bifurcated into two — one by Jack Ewing chronicles closings and layoffs at auto factories; the other by Ana Swanson and Alan Rappeport focuses on the U.S. signaling it’s open to discussing deals on the tariffs, a developing theme we focused on yesterday.

Carmakers are waiting to see whether Mr. Trump’s tariffs are permanent before making significant moves. In the short term, many carmakers will simply stop sending cars to the U.S. because they’ll no longer be able to make a profit or because they can make more money elsewhere. Shares in $F ( ▲ 4.07% ) , $GM ( ▲ 3.46% ) and $TSLA ( ▲ 0.02% ) have fallen in the past several days of trading, Mr. Ewing reports. Dealers and automakers have reported brisk sales in recent days as people have rushed to buy vehicles before the tariffs took effect. Sean Hogan, the vice president of Sierra Auto Group, which owns a dozen dealerships in Southern California, said the long-term impact of Mr. Trump’s trade policies is still impossible to predict:

“This administration moves pretty fast, and you really don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Mr. Hogan added. “Buckle up.”

Sean Hogan is either a natural at this, or has been superbly media-trained. He delivers a pithy, memorable quote with a pun based on his industry and amongst the several people Mr. Ewing spoke to yesterday, his quote landed in the kicker. If you’re prone to droning on and saying nothing interesting when you speak to the press, take note! (*That’s a more direct version of the advice I often give my PR clients).

The other story focuses on Mr. Trump’s plans to cut deals with countries on the tariffs, including China, on whom he imposed a 104% tariff this morning 🤦🏻‍♂️.

The president and top administration officials signaled on Tuesday that the White House was ready to negotiate deals, saying that 70 governments had approached the United States to try to roll the levies back. Mr. Trump said officials would begin talks with Japan, South Korea and other nations.

The president, whose punitive and successive tariffs on China have triggered a potentially economically damaging trade war, also said he was open to talking to Beijing about a deal.

“China also wants to make a deal, badly, but they don’t know how to get it started,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “We are waiting for their call. It will happen!”

Let’s hope so.

Analysts now consider the odds of a U.S. recession to be a “coin flip,” the reporters write. I don’t know about you but I’d rather avoid my family’s financial future coming down to heads-or-tails. “I know what the hell I’m doing,” Mr. Trump reportedly said, last night, at a dinner with congressional Republicans.

And if somebody tells you they know what the hell they’re doing? You can bet that they might not do.

News that the administration was considering reaching agreements with trading partners helped to buoy stock markets after three days of punishing losses. But by Tuesday afternoon the S&P 500 had given up any gains and closed down for the fourth consecutive trading day.

Yes. I noticed that, too $SPX ( ▲ 0.79% ) .

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned China for retaliating against the U.S. with tariffs, warning that America has more leverage in a trade war with the world’s second-largest economy. On CNBC he said: “What do we lose by the Chinese raising tariffs on us? We export one-fifth to them of what they export to us, so that is a losing hand for them.”

At the same time, Mr. Bessent has been signaling a willingness to make deals.

“I think you are going to see some very large countries with large trade deficits come forward very quickly,” Mr. Bessent said. “If they come to the table with solid proposals, I think we can end up with some good deals.”

Congressional Democrats are set to introduce legislation to roll back the state of emergency the President manufactured to introduce the tariffs, but it’s unlikely to pass. Two Republicans introduced a bill on Monday giving congress final approval on presidential tariffs, but it’s yet to draw any support.

Here’s the U.S. Trade envoy, Jamieson Greer, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee yesterday on behalf of the administration, looking every inch the communist.


Speaking of communists, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which represents major companies like $WMT ( ▲ 2.08% ) , $TGT ( ▲ 2.02% )  $SBUX ( ▲ 0.07% ) and $BBY ( ▲ 2.2% ) , released a statement ahead of Mr. Greer’s testimony. Tariffs have caused “disruption and uncertainty in the markets and with consumers,” they said. And they “could drive up prices for products like baby clothes, handbags and paper plates.”

Woah, there. Nobody mentioned the paper plate prices, so far. Not one single time. This could bring the whole thing crashing down.

“Americans elected President Trump to lower inflation and grow the economy,” the group said. “Instead, these broad-based tariffs threaten family pocketbooks and risk destabilizing confidence in the economy.”

Yes!

For Democrats, the tariffs have provided an open goal. Ron Wyden of Oregon said the U.S. economy is now a “laughingstock” and that Mr. Trump have yet to provide any “understandable explanation at all for what his tax hike on the American people is supposed to accomplish.”

“Donald Trump is single-handedly driving this economy off a cliff with no evidence to back him up,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts.

That’s how you get quoted in the press, guys.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.

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