‘We’re in very good shape’: Trump dismisses tariff turmoil as ‘transition problems’
Donald Trump defended his tariff policies at a cabinet meeting on Thursday, while warning that there may be a “transition cost”. The president said:
We think we’re in very good shape. We think we’re doing very well. Again there will be a transition cost, transition problems, but in the end it’s going to be a beautiful thing.
We’re doing, again, what we should have done many years ago. We let it get out of control, and we allowed some countries to get very big and very rich at our expense. And I’m not going to let that happen.
His comments come as former US treasury secretary Janet Yellen called Trump’s economic policy the “worst self-inflicted wound” an administration has imposed on an otherwise well-functioning economy.
Key events
US stocks fall again after rally following Trump’s shock retreat on tariffs
Anna Betts and Lauren Aratani in New York
US stocks fell again on Thursday morning after a historic rally following Donald Trump’s shock retreat Wednesday on the hefty tariffs he had just imposed on dozens of countries.
The falls came as the president blamed “transition problems” for the market reaction and the sell-off deepened after a White House clarification noted that total tariffs on China had been raised by 145% since Trump took office.
Speaking at the White House, Trump said:
We think we’re in very good shape. We think we’re doing very well. Again there will be a transition cost, transition problems, but in the end it’s going to be a beautiful thing.
The sell-off comes as Democrats continue to react with anger over the sudden retreat that rattled markets, while Republicans praised Trump’s “art of the deal” in action, referencing Trump’s 1987 book.
The Dow was down 5% on Thursday morning after soaring on Wednesday afternoon. The Nasdaq Composite was down over 4% and the S&P 500 down over 3.5% after jumping over 8% and 5% on Wednesday, respectively.
The market seems to be in a state of fatigue after a rollercoaster week. Stocks were even unresponsive to news on Thursday morning that the European Union announced it will suspend 25% retaliatory tariffs against US imports and new data showed inflation in the US cooled to 2.4% in March – both would typically be cause for optimism on Wall Street.
On CNN, former US treasury secretary Janet Yellen called Trump’s economic policies the “worst self-inflicted wound” an administration had ever imposed on a “well-functioning economy”.
The day so far
Donald Trump defended his tariff policies at a cabinet meeting, saying, “We’re in great shapes,” while warning that there may be a “transition cost”. He said: “We think we’re in very good shape. We think we’re doing very well. Again there will be a transition cost, transition problems, but in the end it’s going to be a beautiful thing.” Meanwhile, former US treasury secretary Janet Yellen called Trump’s economic policy the “worst self-inflicted wound” an administration has imposed on an otherwise well-functioning economy. More on our business live blog.
Meanwhile, the president’s abrupt global tariff U-turn has sparked accusations of market manipulation and insider trading. Shortly after US markets opened on Wednesday morning, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.” His post – and its timing – is referenced in a letter from Democratic senators demanding on investigation into whether anyone in the Trump family or administration has profited from the recent tariff chaos through insider trading. As an example of concern, the senators highlight that Elon Musks’s Tesla gained 18% in value immediately following Trump’s announcement of a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries.
In better news for the Trump administration, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, was finally successful in muscling through a multitrillion-dollar budget framework that paves the way for Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, just a day after a rightwing rebellion threatened to sink it. Despite the rocky road to passing the blueprint, that was the easy part. Now Republicans in both chambers need to come together to actually write the legislation and lay out the spending cuts they have promised to pay for the plan. Johnson has insisted that it’s possible to achieve the savings without major cuts to “essential programs” such as Medicaid. But budget experts and Democrats say the scale of the GOP’s cost-cutting goals makes it nearly impossible to achieve without significant reductions to critical programs and services.
Elsewhere:
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The US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, is stepping down from her role, a state department spokesperson has told Reuters, in a move that injects new uncertainty into the relationship between Washington and Kyiv.
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The Trump administration said it will no longer require environmental impact statements for oil and gas leases across the US west, in a step toward lifting green hurdles to drilling that environmental groups will probably challenge in court.
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The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, floated the idea of US troops returning to Panama to “secure” its strategically vital canal, a suggestion quickly shot down by the Panamanian government.
Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr claims US will know cause of autism epidemic by September
The government will identify the cause of autism by September this year, the US secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Thursday.
“At your direction, we are going to know by September. We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world,” Kennedy said at a meeting of Donald Trump’s cabinet earlier.
“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
Trump in February ordered the creation of a “Make America healthy again” commission made up of Kennedy and other secretaries to look at everything from the rates of autism and asthma in children to how much medicine is being prescribed to them for ADHD or other conditions.
Autism diagnoses in the United States have increased significantly since 2000, intensifying public concern. Scientists have been researching for decades what genetic or environmental factors might contribute to autism, but the causes of most cases remain unclear.
They say that the major drivers of the increase in US autism rates are an expanded definition that includes more types of behaviors and more widespread awareness and diagnosis.
Kennedy has long promoted a debunked link between vaccines and autism despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says many studies have looked at whether there is a connection between vaccines and autism and “to date, the studies continue to show that vaccines are not associated with” autism.
As we’ve been reporting, Donald Trump is facing accusations of market manipulation after his global tariffs U-turn. Shortly after US markets opened on Wednesday morning, Trump had written on his social media platform Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”. His post – and its timing – is referenced in the letter from Democratic senators demanding on investigation into whether anyone in the Trump family or administration has profited from the recent tariff chaos through insider trading.
In my colleague Lauren Almeida’s story, she notes: “Trump does not usually sign off his post with his initials. Those letters happen to be the same as the ticker for Trump Media & Technology Group, the business that controls Truth Social, whose stock shot up by 22% on Wednesday.”
US ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink steps down from post
US ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink is stepping down from her role, a State Department spokesperson has told Reuters, in a move that injects new uncertainty into the relationship between Washington and Kyiv.
Reuters reported earlier that Brink was considering stepping down and leaving the foreign service, according to a US official and two other people familiar with the matter.
“Ambassador Brink is stepping down. She’s been the ambassador there for three years – that’s a long time in a war zone,” a State Department spokesperson said in an emailed response.
Brink was nominated for the post by former president Joe Biden and has served as ambassador in Kyiv since May 2022. She is leaving on her own accord, the sources said.
Brink is one of the highest-ranking career diplomats to leave the State Department since Donald Trump took office on 20 January 20. She joins other departing veteran officials with decades of experience, such as the agency’s No. 3 official John Bass, who stepped aside in January.
Her departure comes as the Trump administration tries to broker a deal between Ukraine and Russia to end the war that started with Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Washington has tried to implement two limited ceasefire agreements in recent weeks – one for energy infrastructure and one in the Black Sea – but both have fallen through.
Speaking at the cabinet meeting, Donald Trump praised the “fantastic job” that Elon Musk is doing with Doge and added: “I don’t need Elon for anything other than that I like him”.
He also suggested he has bought a Tesla.
They said ‘oh did you get a bargain?’ and I said no, give me the top price, I paid a lot of money for that car. But honestly, he [Musk] makes a great car.
Trump went on to say he lets people in his office drive around in the car. “They’re all driving around in the most beautiful car,” he said. “It’s gorgeous.”
He said he bought the car “just to show support”, adding that Musk “hasn’t been treated properly”.
Democratic senators call for investigation into possible insider trading on Trump’s abrupt tariff pause
Democratic senators Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego are demanding that the Office of Government Ethics investigate what they say are potential conflicts of interest of White House and executive branch officials who may have made financial transactions with insider knowledge of President Trump’s 90-day pause on steep tariffs.
BREAKING: I’m demanding answers from the White House and Office of Government Ethics about whether anyone in the Trump family or administration profited off of this tariff chaos through insider trading: pic.twitter.com/GkGl4XZ7NO
— Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) April 10, 2025
The full letter is here.
The stock market surged in response to Trump’s shock announcement. In America the S&P 500 blue chip index closed up by more than 9%, while the technology-focused Nasdaq index shut more than 12% up. Stocks continued to rise in Asia and Europe on Thursday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index up by 9%, and London’s FTSE 100 index rising by as much as 4% in early trading.
Schiff and Gallego note that Trump posted on Truth Social at 9:33am ET: “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well.” They add that Trump then posted a few minutes later: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”
Their letter reads:
Mere hours after his post, President Trump announced at 1:18pm via Truth Social that he would be pausing most of the sweeping tariffs he had announced just days prior, causing stocks to soar.
This sequence of events raises grave legal and ethics concerns. The president, his family and his advisors are uniquely positioned to be privy to and take advantage of non-public information to inform their investment decisions.
They highlight that Elon Musks’s Tesla gained 18% in value immediately following Trump’s announcement.
When asked about the Democrats’ claims that Trump potentially manipulated the market, White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Fox:
It is the responsibility of the President of the United States to reassure the markets and Americans about their economic security in the face of nonstop media fearmongering. Democrats railed against China’s cheating for decades, and now they’re playing partisan games instead of celebrating President Trump’s decisive action yesterday to finally corner China.
So, House speaker Mike Johnson finally muscled through a multitrillion-dollar budget framework that paves the way for Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, just a day after a rightwing rebellion threatened to sink it.
But, as my colleague Lauren Gambino writes, that was the easy part. Now Republicans in both chambers need to come together to actually write the legislation and lay out the spending cuts they have promised to pay for the plan. Nonpartisan analysts have found that the Republican plan could add up to $5.8tn to the federal deficit over the next decade.
Democrats have accused Republicans of laying the groundwork to make major cuts to popular safety net programs in order to pay to offset the cost of extending Trump’s signature tax cuts that they say disproportionately benefit the rich.
Johnson has insisted that it’s possible to achieve the savings without major cuts to “essential programs” such as Medicaid. But budget experts and Democrats say the scale of the GOP’s cost-cutting goals makes it nearly impossible to achieve without significant reductions to critical programs and services.
Speaking ahead of the vote, Hakeem Jeffries warned of the “catastrophic consequences” of the Republican blueprint to slash federal spending, as Trump’s trade war rattles the global economy and his administration continued its dramatic downsize of the federal workforce. The House Democratic leader said:
President Trump and House Republicans told us that you were going to deliver the ‘Golden Age of America’. But over the last several months, we haven’t witnessed the golden age of America. We witnessed a rotten age. You are crashing the economy in real time, driving us toward a Republican recession that’s going to hurt children, hurt families, hurt seniors, hurt everyday Americans, hurt veterans and hurt people across the land.
Donald Trump’s declaration comes as US stocks tumbled at the open this morning, a day after surging on relief over his pause on most of the new tariffs announced last week.
The Guardian understands that the overall US tariff rate on Chinese imports has risen to 145%. The increase follows a new executive order from Donald Trump raising the “reciprocal” tariff to 125%, up from 84%.
‘We’re in very good shape’: Trump dismisses tariff turmoil as ‘transition problems’
Donald Trump defended his tariff policies at a cabinet meeting on Thursday, while warning that there may be a “transition cost”. The president said:
We think we’re in very good shape. We think we’re doing very well. Again there will be a transition cost, transition problems, but in the end it’s going to be a beautiful thing.
We’re doing, again, what we should have done many years ago. We let it get out of control, and we allowed some countries to get very big and very rich at our expense. And I’m not going to let that happen.
His comments come as former US treasury secretary Janet Yellen called Trump’s economic policy the “worst self-inflicted wound” an administration has imposed on an otherwise well-functioning economy.
Trump administration urges states to limit what can be bought with food stamps, targeting soda and other processed foods
The Trump administration is calling on states to request waivers that would bar food stamp recipients from buying soda and other processed foods with their benefits, according to a Thursday op-ed by US health and agriculture secretaries, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Brooke Rollins.
The secretaries, in the USA Today op-ed, promised more shared initiatives to further the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda promoted by Kennedy and backed by Donald Trump.
Kennedy and Rollins said the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture were pursuing reforms to the nation’s largest food aid program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and called on all governors to submit waivers to restrict what SNAP recipients can buy.
“We will encourage taxpayer dollars to go toward wholesome foods, such as whole milk, fruits, vegetables and meats,” the secretaries wrote.
More than 41 million people on low incomes receive SNAP benefits, which are administered by the USDA.
The call for waivers is the latest chapter in a years-long debate over whether SNAP recipients should be able to use their benefits to buy soda or other processed foods. Critics of restrictions, including some Democrats, see them as stigmatizing.
Nebraska governor Jim Pillen on 7 April sent a letter to Rollins indicating the state would request a waiver to prohibit SNAP recipients from buying soda and energy drinks with their benefits, according to a state press release.
And West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey in late March signed a similar letter of intent at an event with Kennedy, according to a state press release.
Reuters reports that there is little evidence that SNAP recipients consume significantly more soda than non-SNAP households. A 2016 USDA study found that soda was the top commodity category purchased by SNAP households and the second most common commodity for non-SNAP households, with the difference accounting for less than 1 cent per dollar.
Kathleen Sgamma, Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Land Management abruptly withdrew her name from consideration this morning.
The decision was announced by Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, during what was meant to be her confirmation hearing on Thursday. Lee did not detail why she had withdrawn her nomination but said that he had been informed of the news by the White House.
According to Politico, her official withdrawal statement submitted to the committee stated that: “It was an honor to be nominated by President Trump as Director of the Bureau of Land Management, but unfortunately at this time I need to withdraw my nomination.”
“I will continue to support President Trump and fight for his agenda to Unleash American Energy in the private sector” she added.
Her withdrawal comes juts days after private comments from 2021 surfaced, including one where Sgamma said that she was “disgusted by the violence witnessed” on 6 January 2021, and by Trump’s “role in spreading misinformation that incited it.”
A judge in Philadelphia ruled today that the defamation lawsuit brought against president Donald trump by members of the Central Park five can go forward.
According to Reuters, Philadelphia-based District Judge Wendy Beetlestone ruled on Thursday that the five men had presented enough evidence for now to pursue their lawsuit accusing Trump of defaming them in comments he made during the 2024 presidential campaign.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in October after Trump falsely said during the presidential debate in September that the men had killed someone and pleaded guilty.
Attorneys for the five men, who all pleaded not guilty to the crime and were cleared in 2002 based on new DNA evidence and another person’s confession, allege in the lawsuit that the former president acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth and with intent to cause “severe emotional distress”.
Trump’s lawyers had sought to dismiss the case and Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
Read more about the lawsuit here:
