Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has revealed how President Donald Trump changed his mind on sweeping tariffs against dozens of countries that had rocked the stock market.
In an interview on Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier, Lutnick was probed on how the tariff pause came to fruition. The 63-year-old said it all snowballed after global trade partners responded to the president’s call to make a deal. He added that he and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were the only people in a room with Trump as he posted news of the pause on Truth Social.
“Two days ago the president Truthed out that he was willing to negotiate with all of these different countries that were interested,” Lutnick began. “Yesterday, he said he would do it in a bespoke fashion—one by one, individually—and the calls were unbelievable.”
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“They started calling and making real offers, finally, finally really digging in and understanding how they treat the U.S. unfairly and really offering us a clear path to where we could do really good deals with these countries,” he continued.
The commerce secretary then recalled how he and Bessent met up with the president to discern what to do next, and landed on making deals with all countries except China who were “going in the other direction.”
“Let’s take on China because they are going another direction,” Lutnick said. “But, with all these other countries, let’s give them a chance to negotiate these deals. And that’s what happened today.”
When Baier asked if the tariff pause was a “walk-back” due to a struggling market, Lutnick countered by focusing on Trump’s negotiation skills again.
“Donald Trump is the best negotiator that there is. He understands how to do these things. He gave these—these were crystal-clear instructions—no negotiating until two days ago,” Lutnick said, adding that doing it “bespoke is what launched it.”
“The president made a decision. He Truthed it out with Scott and I in the room, just the three of us together. And this is where we are,” Lutnick continued. “We’ve got to make fair deals for America. And Donald Trump said the big countries, the lead negotiator of those transactions is going to be Donald Trump. He wants to do it. He wants to drive it. And what could be more fun for Scott and I?”
In a separate interview with CNBC, Lutnick sidestepped a question from anchor Melissa Lee on potential market manipulation having taken place Wednesday by boiling it down to Trump’s pointed intuition instead.
“He also seems to be a great stock pundit. Earlier this morning before the pause he put out a message saying it’s a great time to buy and here we are, here we are, much higher,” Lee said, prompting Lutnick to quip while laughing: “I’d always bet on Donald Trump.”
“But that was a great time to buy the market right, uncanny,” Lee retorted.
“Donald Trump understands that America is the greatest country, all right. We are the greatest country and we have the capacity for incredible greatness but someone needs to take the shackles off,” Lutnick said. “It’s not right. It’s time for fair trade, fair to America. It’s been fair to the rest of the world, it just hasn’t been fair to us.”
The president announced a 90-day pause on his reciprocal tariffs on global trade partners Wednesday, save for China which instead saw a tariff increase of 125 percent. The stock market has since seen a resuscitation with several indexes seeing their highest one-day jump in decades.
Trump said that he had been thinking of the tariff pause “over the last few days” and that the plan came to fruition early on Wednesday.
“Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it,” Trump said. “I’ve been dealing with Scott, with Howard, with some other people that are very professional. And I think it probably came together early this morning, fairly early this morning, just wrote it up,” Trump continued, claiming his post came ”from the heart.”
“I didn’t, we didn’t have the use—we didn’t have access to lawyers, or—it was just wrote up. We wrote it up from our hearts, right? It was written from the heart, and I think it was well written, too, but it was written from the heart. It was written as something that I think was very positive for the world and for us."
In a conference from the Oval Office, he added that “we don’t want to hurt countries that don’t need to be hurt.”
Not everyone is convinced, however, and see the backtrack as part of an effort to rescue the economy. “Other countries will welcome the 90-day stay of execution—if it lasts—but the whiplash from constant zig-zags creates more of the uncertainty that businesses and governments hate,” Daniel Russel, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told ABC News. “The administration’s blunt-force tactics have rattled allies, who see the sudden reversal as damage control following the market meltdown, rather than a pivot to respectful, balanced negotiations.‘’
