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Behind the scenes of the negotiations that forced Trump to impose a 90-day pause...
It was a decision that came “from the heart,” spontaneously, Donald Trump claimed after announcing a 90-day moratorium on tariffs on 75 countries. After the announcement, which came unexpectedly in a post on his social media account, Trump admitted that he had thought long and hard, adding to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that the final decision made “very early” was made from the heart.
However, the rumors coming out of the US administration speak of a turbulent 18 hours, accompanied by the collapse of financial markets and then an unexpected comeback. Between Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon, the US president and his trade advisers spoke with numerous Republican congressmen and foreign leaders, all of whom expressed their concern about the performance of the markets and the nightmare of a global recession, asking him to do something.
The turning point would have come on Tuesday, after 9 p.m., during Sean Hannity's Fox News program. The host, who is widely listened to by Trump, had invited several Republican senators who have expressed their concerns about the tariffs and invited the president to negotiate with the countries that want to sit at the table: in the studio were Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, influential Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of South Carolina, John Neely Kennet of Louisiana Boit, Alaa. Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Cruz of Texas and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.
Senator Graham had confided to his colleagues that Trump would watch the program, and during the final commercial break, Senator Kennedy asked Hannity for “fifteen seconds to address the president directly.” Almost all expressed concern about the tariffs, urging the president to find an alternative. After the live broadcast ended, several senators in attendance spoke on the phone with Trump, who was watching the uncertain bond market. “I’ll leave it up to you to decide what’s enough and what’s not enough,” Dean Graham said, adding, “But I think you see that people need to get some results.”
Senator Cruz instead told him that the administration now faces two options: use the tariffs as leverage to persuade other countries to lower theirs, or keep the tariffs in place and push other countries to adopt reciprocal tariffs. “The latter, I told the president, would be a terrible and dangerous outcome for the country and for Texas,” Cruz told The Washington Post. “I also encouraged him, as I had done on the Hannity show, to quickly negotiate one or more trade agreements.” The president would then go to bed with those words in his head.
On Wednesday morning, Trump met with Senator Thune at the White House early and spoke with Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, whose country had seen tariffs on Rolex watches and chocolate rise to 31 percent overnight. The call lasted 25 minutes, and President Keller-Sutter urged him to ease measures that would hurt the confederation’s economy, noting the role Swiss companies play in creating jobs in America and recalling that her country last year removed tariffs on American industrial imports.
At 8 a.m., the president returned to Fox News, listening to Maria Bartiromo's interview with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who had been criticizing Trump's trade policy for days and reiterated the high probability of an imminent recession. "I have a calm outlook, but I think things could get worse if we don't make progress," Dimon said on television.
At that point, Trump began to think about changing his course - "He made a drastic decision, carefully observed the reactions it provoked, left advisers and allies in doubt and finally "relied on his instincts to change direction," summarized the Wall Street Journal, calling it typical presidential behavior. /Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "Corriere Della Sera"
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