President Trump announces 90-day pause on tariffs for some countries except China
(NBC, KYMA/KECY) - President Donald Trump has made a major announcement regarding tariffs.
In a Truth Social post, the president said he is increasing the tariff against China to 125% to go into effect immediately after the country announced a retaliatory tariff against the U.S. earlier Wednesday.
At the same time, the Trump announced a 90-day pause on all other announced tariffs, opting instead on a 10% across-the-board tariff.
The stock market reacted quickly to the news, causing a spike in gains on Wall Street in the aftermath.
Trump says he based his decision on the fact that his administration has heard from "more than 75 countries" that want to negotiate new trade deals with the United States.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke about the president's decision:
"And as you all know, the President just put out a statement announcing an additional tariff on China. The tariff on China will now go up to 125% because China imprudently decided to retaliate against the United States. And as I said at the podium yesterday, when you punch with the United States of America, President Trump is going to punch back harder. In that same vein, we have had more than 75 countries from around the world reach out to President Trump and his team here at the White House to negotiate better trade deals for the American worker. We have been overwhelmed with the amount of requests from countries around the world. I'll let the Secretary speak to that. We will continue with the tailor made negotiations that I spoke about yesterday. In the meantime, there will be a 90 day pause on the reciprocal tariffs as these negotiations are ongoing, and the tariff level will be brought down to a universal 10% tariff."
Karoline Levitt, White House Press Secretary
"And we saw the successful negotiating strategy that President Trump implemented a week ago today. It has brought more than 75 countries forward to negotiate. It took great courage, great courage for him to stay the course until this moment and what we have ended up with here, as I told everyone a week ago, they're in this very spot, do not retaliate, and you will be rewarded. So every country in the world who wants to come and negotiate, we are willing to hear you. We're going to go down to a 10% baseline tariff for them and China will be raised to 125 due to their insistence on escalation.
It signals that President Trump cares about trade and that we want to negotiate in good faith. And as I said, each one of these is going to be a separate, bespoke negotiation. So we are confident that, having seen the other side of where this could go, and it was like I said last week, the market didn't understand those were maximum levels. The countries can think about those levels, as they come to us to bring down their tariffs, their non tariff trade barriers, we're going to discuss currency manipulation, subsidy of Labor, and Industry."
Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary
