Trump Puts 90-Day Pause on ‘Reciprocal’ Tariffs as Trade Rep Visits Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he would pause his “reciprocal” tariffs on most countries for 90 days, but he also raised tariffs on imports from China to 125% after Beijing imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-made goods a day earlier.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he decided to authorize the three-month pause in tariffs after more than 75 countries responded to his hard line on trade policy by asking to negotiate “solutions” to a number of trade barriers.

These included tariffs, but also currency manipulation and non-monetary means employed to give them an unfair advantage over the United States.

In place of the reciprocal tariffs, the president said the U.S. would bring its tariff rate down to a universal 10% — a marked reduction from the levies he imposed on many of the nation’s trading partners just last week.

The White House calculated its reciprocal tariff by dividing a country’s trade deficit with the U.S. by its exports to the country, and then multiplying the result by half.

Based on that calculation, China was hit with a new tariff of 34%; South Korea, 25%; Japan, 24%; and the European Union, 20%, to cite a few examples.

Overall, the tariffs imposed by Trump on April 2 — celebrated as “Liberation Day” at the White House — ranged from a low of 11% to a high of 50%.

In regard to China, which imposed retaliatory tariffs of 34% on U.S. goods on Tuesday, Trump said it would be punished for the “lack of respect” it has “shown to world markets.”

“At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the USA and other countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” his Truth Social post said.

Later, during a press event at the White House, Trump said he decided on the pause because he felt “people were jumping a little bit out of line.”

“They were getting yippy,” he said. “They were getting a little bit afraid.”

Elsewhere on the White House grounds, administration’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters that what they were characterizing as a shift in policy was actually part of a premeditated strategy to “negotiate better trade deals for the American worker.”

“And it took great courage for him to stay the course until this moment,” Bessent said. “As I told everyone a week ago in this very spot [outside the West Wing]. If you do not retaliate, you will be rewarded.

“So every country in the world wants to come and negotiate, and our message to them is, ‘We are willing to hear you,’” he continued.

When it comes to China, Bessent said, the country is continuing to act like a “bad actor.”

“As I’ve repeatedly said, and President Trump has been saying for four years, China is the most imbalanced economy in the history of the world, and they are the biggest source of U.S. trade problems, as they are for the rest of the world.”

Though he refrained from calling the dispute between the U.S. and China a “trade war,” Bessent said clearly, “China has escalated and President Trump has responded very courageously to that.”

Adding to what the secretary said, Leavitt suggested the media has “clearly missed the art of the deal,” a reference to Trump’s best-selling “The Art of the Deal,” the memoir he co-wrote with the writer Tony Schwartz.

“You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here,” she continued. “You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moving closer to China, when, in fact, we’ve seen the opposite effect. 

“The entire world is calling the United States of America, not China, because they need our markets,” they need our consumers, and they need this president in the Oval Office to talk to them,” Leavitt said.

“That’s because the United States is the best place in the world to do business,” she added.

Stocks surged after Trump’s tariff announcement, the S&P 500 climbing over 7% in a matter of minutes.

By the time markets in the U.S. closed on Wednesday, the S&P 500 was up 9.5%, marking the index’s best day since October 2008.

That said, Trump’s decision on tariffs did make at least one person uncomfortable on Wednesday — his own trade representative, Jamieson Greer.

Greer had traveled to Capitol Hill Wednesday morning to discuss the president’s trade policy with the House Ways and Means Committee.

As was expected, over the first hour or so of his testimony, Greer received a generally warm welcome from Republicans on the powerful committee, and a much nastier reception from Democrats.

During his testimony, Greer justified Trump’s imposition of tariffs as a necessary step in moving the country away from an economy “based solely on the financial sector and government spending” to one based “on producing real goods and services by American workers and our communities here.” 

Later, Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., asked Greer to describe what success would ultimately look like in the aftermath of the tariffs.

“What, exactly, is the end game here?” he said.

“I think we’ll find that American businesses are much more competitive when they have open markets overseas,” Greer said. 

“People talk about the high cost of doing business in America and manufacturing in America and growing in America, but when we cannot access foreign markets, or we face barriers overseas — and not just tariffs, but also all the non-tariff barriers that we’ve outlined in this 400-page book,” he said, lifting a bound document about the size of an old-fashioned phone book, “that increases costs, and it makes it difficult to be competitive globally and even domestically.

Minutes later, Greer and the committee learned of the 90-day pause.

At that point, Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., went on the attack.

“How long is the pause? How many days? How many weeks?” Horsford asked Greer.

“I understand it’s 90 days, I haven’t spoken to the president … ” Greer said.

Horsford cut him off.

“So, the Trade representative hasn’t spoken to the president of the United States about a global reordering of trade and yet he announced it in a tweet? WTF, who’s in charge?” Horsford said in a mocking tone.

“It looks like your boss just pulled the rug out from under you and paused the tariffs, the taxes on the American people,” he said.

Greer tried to offer a response that sounded just like what Bessent was saying at the White House.

Again Horsford interrupted the Trade representative, wanting to know why, if the pause was part of a thought-out strategy, Greer hadn’t mentioned it sooner.

“There is no strategy,” Horsford said. 

“You just found out three seconds ago, sitting here, we saw you,” he said.

“I don’t disclose my conversations with the president,” Greer said.

“My understanding is that because so many countries have decided not to retaliate, we’re going to have about 90 days. I understand that it’s 90 days. I haven’t spoken to the president since I’ve been here,” he added.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue