Trump Pauses Many Tariffs for 90 Days, but Not on China

In game of chicken, U.S. lifts rate on Beijing to 125%

Author

Matt Davis
April 10, 2025

This morning’s paper in the box for firewood at the bodega, where it belongs…

Hello! Today the media tries its best to pretend that Donald Trump’s epic U-Turn on a catastrophic economic self-shooting was the dextrous move of a strategic genius, because as we all know, he hates to back down on things, and if you go around yelling “loser” and “narcissistic sociopath” and worse, he’s likely to do something further to make your life miserable like take a 💩 on your breakfast table. Here’s the two local tabloids trying to make a joke of things.

But in the words of an unnamed Trump aide from some time ago: "Some people seem to think Trump's playing chess, when most of the time the staff are just trying to stop him from eating the pieces."

Still, that hasn’t stopped the press and those around the President insisting that this remarkable, genius U-Turn is his idea entirely. It wasn’t…it was this guy’s:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who seems to have been the key adviser to talk Trump off a cliff. He bears an extraordinary resemblance to the villain in the new Indiana Jones video game in this image. And that guy? Well. He worked for “aitch” as I’m sure they called him, back in the 1930s.

The press also seem to be buying the idea that all along, Trump was simply trying to get the world’s two largest economies into a trade war they can back down on in a week or two, to avoid looking weak in front of their a. voters and b. you know. Whatever form of democracy they were advocating for in Tiananmen Square:

Yes. China remains a Communist Dictatorship.

Rather than poke Trump too hard (even the Times paper edition’s headlines are much softer than those on its website yesterday), the NYT focuses on the details: Our escalating trade war with China, and the surge in markets thanks to Trump reversing course. But nobody seems keen to blow a raspberry for the reasons I’ve described.

Meanwhile your 401 (k) is back where it was last August, not the Stone Age, and we’ve got the minor issue of Taiwan to focus on:

With China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and Mr. Trump locked in a game of chicken — each unwilling to risk looking weak by making a concession — the trade fight could spiral even further out of control, inflaming tensions over other areas of competition like technology and the fate of Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by Beijing.

This “game of chicken” (or perhaps a better way of describing it might be “escalating tensions between two nuclear superpowers?”) is bad news for those of us hoping to have a functioning planet in the next decade:

Any fracture between the Chinese and American economies will be felt across the world. Business was the bedrock of the bilateral relationship for nearly five decades. Without it, their engagement on other global issues, like security, climate change and future pandemics and financial crises, would likely stall.

Not that any of those issues are terribly important, of course. Beijing’s strategy now is to push back at the United States, and hope that Mr. Trump succumbs to domestic pressure to reverse course, according to one expert quoted.

The Times’s’s’s other story quotes Mr. Trump (“I’m not even looking at the markets”) acknowledging market anxiety in his decision-making:

Mr. Trump, who for days had insisted he was not concerned about the market rout, acknowledged on Wednesday that the downturn had fed into his decision.

“Over the last few days it looked pretty glum,” Mr. Trump said. “I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line,” he said, in explaining his decision. “They were getting yippy. They were getting a little bit afraid.”

I realize the Masters golf tournament (phworrrr…) is coming up today at 3 p.m. on ESPN and I can almost hear the announcers now, purring “Scottie Schefflerrrrrrrr” as I type, over the sweet masculine noise of white supremacist birdsong at Augusta National…but to use a putting metaphor for what the stock market was doing this week is, well. It’s hilarious. I really hate it when he’s funny. Humor, from Trump, is honestly the thing that wears me out the most.

But in fact, markets were afraid for entirely rational reasons—because there was a mass shooter loose in the economic school. That’s a better metaphor. Trump was in the process of doing a Columbine on Wall Street. Traders weren’t nervous about making a putt. They were nervous about getting shot dead along with their families. Or better yet? They were nervous about getting run over by three tanks lined up in a row with another tank trailing behind to make quadruple sure they got the evident message:

You cannot trust Donald Trump with the economy.

Yes. Markets were “out of line” and “afraid” because the President was going to cause a recession. From the Wall Street Journal:

He privately acknowledged that his trade policy could trigger a recession but said he wanted to be sure it didn’t cause a depression, according to people familiar with the conversations. 

In other words? He was prepared to knock us all around a bit but wanted to be careful not to leave any bruises on our face. Is that a better metaphor than f___ing PUTTING, Don?

I’m so exasperated. I hate that to be this mad makes me look irrational. One feels one is being gaslit for living with a domestic terrorist. One is absolutely seeking the advice of a divorce lawyer. I realize my metaphors are all over the place but so are my nerves. I need a sit-down and a nap. It’s only 9:30 a.m.

Christ.

Yesterday afternoon, the president told reporters that he might consider exempting some U.S. companies from the tariffs, in addition to the 90-day pause. “He said his decision on this would be made ‘instinctively’,” the story reports.

Basic.

The reason people don’t read the newspaper is they get exhausted by this kind of nonsense, I get that. It’s exhausting to feel like the country is doing childcare for a toddler. But the thing is, when that toddler is as powerful as this one is, it’s so important that we at least acknowledge how dangerous it is to have him in charge.

When he wipes trillions of dollars off the value of U.S. stocks and deepens rifts with a global rival, based on instinct, we might consider that a less instinctive approach to being the most powerful person in the world would be better for all of us. Heck, remember that eminently competent Black lady who was running for office and promised to give first-time buyers $25k towards the price of a house? Say…what was her name again?

I think the person who has really made my list of favorite people over all this, though, is Bill Ackman, who seems to have watched “The Apprentice” and thought of it as a training film.

“This was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump,” said Bill Ackman, who had been critical of Trump in recent days. “Textbook, Art of the Deal.”

I do have a very good response indeed for that, but I’ll leave it to your imagination.

Take good care of yourself today. I mean it. And thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to!


Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.

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