Trump’s Manly Tariffs
The manufactured pause: Yesterday, news spread that the Trump administration was considering a 90-day pause to its implementation of the most massive round of tariffs, currently set to go into effect tomorrow. The market started climbing back up as the news made the rounds and was relayed by CNBC and Reuters. The only trouble was that this was made up and amplified on X, with no bearing in reality.
It looks like the posts came from an actual Fox News interview with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett in which he was asked whether the president would “consider a 90-day pause in tariffs.” Hassett replied: “The president is going to decide what the president is going to decide.” (“I would urge everyone, especially Bill [Ackman], to ease off the rhetoric a little bit,” he added. “It’s the idea that it’s going to be a ‘nuclear winter’ or something like that is completely irresponsible rhetoric.”)
An X post from “Hammer Capital” (handle: “yourfavorito”) with about 1,000 followers appears to have originated the 90-day pause rumor circa 10:11 a.m. ET.
“At about 10:12 a.m., CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich, who was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, said that cheers had broken out, as stock indices—which were already recovering from early-morning lows—suddenly surged,” reports CNN. “‘Walter Bloomberg,’ an account with a much larger following … copy-and-pasted the original rumor along with a siren emoji at 10:13 a.m.” The recovery continued. CNBC and Reuters started circulating the news, having failed to corroborate.
Meanwhile, Trump lackeys continued to make the rounds saying extraordinarily dumb things. Peter Navarro, senior White House trade adviser, guarantees no recession. Don’t you feel so much better?
Meanwhile, the Fox folks are having a blast with the chyrons and touting our return to manufacturing as the thing that will callus up the soft hands of American men, or whatever. Good thing the urban-core men stocked up on Carhartt; they’ll need it on the assembly line.
I give up. pic.twitter.com/F6TcH2ys0N
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) April 7, 2025
Those inclined to give the administration the most possible credit, and to see 4D chess moves everywhere they look, have theorized that the Trump administration could be imposing such intense tariffs as a bargaining chip to actually bring about more free trade by persuading other countries to come to the negotiating table. This theory appears to be getting less believable by the day. Yesterday, the European Union said it would fully drop its tariffs on American cars and industrial goods if the U.S. would do the same; Navarro turned around and criticized the bloc for its value-added taxes and restrictions on American meat exports, saying “You steal from the American people every which way is possible.”
Then he turned to Vietnam, which he accused of intellectual property theft and killing the American shrimp industry. “When they come to us and say, we’ll go to zero tariffs, that means nothing to us, because it’s the non-tariff cheating that matters,” he added. So the
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