President Donald Trump’s social media post from 2014 went viral as Trump took a U-turn and paused his reciprocal tariffs on all countries for 90 days except China. While this was seen as a climbdown from his stern stance that there would be no going back on tariffs, Trump’s aides asserted that this is part of the plan and an example of how Trump makes deals. The US president would now make China withdraw its tariffs as he has politically isolated China — his aides explained.
“Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully or write poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks,” Trump wrote in 2014.
Was 90-day pause except for China in the plan all along?
Donald Trump’s aide and the director of National Economic Council Kevin Hassett claimed that it was the plan all along and not a panic move as is being seen by Trump critics. “And I think you know, the fact that the bond market was telling us, ‘Hey, it’s probably time to move,’ certainly would have contributed at least a little bit to that thinking, but it wasn’t the bond market that made a panic move,” Hassett told CNBC.
“There was a very systematic, well-planned move that was just about to happen,” Hassett said.
‘People were getting yippy’
As Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs, he said he did this because the people were getting yippy. “I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,” the president said
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the media did not understand the ‘art of the deal’ in pausing the tariffs for all countries except China. ‘You 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.’
