President Donald Trump has revealed he put a 90-day pause on his global tariffs because people were ‘getting yippie’ about it.
Stock markets tanked after Trump started his trade war and the president admitted he had been watching the collapse.
‘I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippie, you know, getting a little bit yippie, a little bit afraid,’ he said at the White House during an event honoring car racing champions.
Trump appeared to be referring to the ‘yips’ – when golfers start twitching and missing putts.
He added: ‘The bond market is very tricky. I was watching it. But if you look at it now, it’s it’s beautiful. The bond market right now is beautiful. But yeah, I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.’
The president called the time period the ‘transition to greatness.’
Additionally, he might consider exempting some US companies from the tariffs over the 90-day pause period, he noted, adding his thinking on that would be made ‘instinctively.’
While there is a pause at the moment, there may be more turmoil to come.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk reacted to the move with a cryptic post on X of the internet meme Pepe the Frog holding a game console and launching a rocket.
The president warned his announcement on Wednesday could be ‘temporary.’
‘Nothing’s over yet, but we have tremendous amount of spirit from other countries, including China. China wants to make a deal,’ Trump said.
‘They just don’t know how quick to go about it. It’s one of those things – they are quite proud people, and President Xi is a proud man. I know very well. They don’t know quite how to go about it, but they’ll figure it out, the process of figuring out. But they want to make a deal.’
Trump slapped Beijing with another round of import taxes after China had retaliated with tariffs on American goods.
The president said: ‘I did a 90 day pause for the people that didn’t retaliate, because they told them, if you retaliate, we’re going to double it. And that’s what I did with China, because they did retaliate. So we’ll see how it all works out. I think it’s going to work out amazing.’
Trump and his allies said this was the plan all along.
‘Many of you in the media clearly missed the ‘art of the deal,’ – you clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters outside the White House.
‘President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,’ she noted, adding that the news media ‘clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here. You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved 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.’
Trump dropped a bomb on the markets Wednesday when he announced a 90-day pause on his tariffs with an original baseline tariff level of 10 percent in place for all countries.
China, however, was hit with 125 percent tariff after retaliating against the president’s retaliatory tariffs.
Trump’s reciprocal tariffs on nearly 100 nations took effect overnight, including a 104% tariff on Chinese imports. On Wednesday, Beijing said it would raise levies on U.S. imports to 84%, from 34%.
Trump then hit back.
‘Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately. At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,’ the president wrote on Truth Social.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (left) and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (right) speak to the media outside the White House
The markets rallied on the news of the pause. The Nasdaq climbed nearly 9 percent, the S&P 500 was up nearly 8 percent, and the Dow Industrials rose 6 percent.
‘Buy’ had been Trump’s advice to investors earlier Wednesday before he announced the tariff pause.
It’s been a week since Trump announced his tariff plans on Liberation Day. In that time period, the global markets went insane, economists predicted a recession, allies and foes alike threatened a trade war, and investors tore their hair out.
The administration said week unfolded just like Trump planned.
‘This was his strategy all along,’ Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. ‘And you might even say that he goated China into a bad position. They responded. They have shown themselves to the world to be the bad actor.’
Bessent told reporters outside the White House that the pause would give the administration a chance to negotiate with the more than 75 countries that reached out after the president announced his new import taxes.
‘It took great courage, great courage for him to stay the course until this moment, and it ended up here. As I told everyone a week ago in this very spot, ‘Do not retaliate, and you will be rewarded.’ So every country in the world wants to come and negotiate,’ he said.
He said the 90 days would give the administration a chance to make individual, specific deals with various nations.
‘Each one of these solutions is going to be bespoke, it is going to take some time and President Trump wants to be personally involved. That’s why we’re getting the 90-day pause,’ he said.
‘It’s all the president’s decision.’
He noted ‘everything’s on the table’ in the negotiations.
‘These are trade negotiations, but if countries want to come and offer other things,’ he said. ‘everything’s on the table.’
Bessent also said sectoral tariffs like those on automobiles and pharmaceuticals ]would be unchanged.
