Trump Caves on Tariffs After Insisting They Were Essential

Summary

Bulwark Takes: Detailed Summary of "Trump Caves on Tariffs After Insisting They Were Essential"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Bulwark Takes
• Host/Author: The Bulwark
• Description: The news cycle doesn’t slow down, and neither does The Bulwark. Bulwark Takes brings you bite-sized takes on the news of the day from the entire Bulwark team, including Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell, and Bill Kristol, and more.
• Episode: Trump Caves on Tariffs After Insisting They Were Essential
• Release Date: April 9, 2025

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Introduction

In the April 9, 2025 episode of Bulwark Takes, hosts Sam Stein, Andrew Egger, and Ben Parker delve into the tumultuous developments surrounding former President Donald Trump's tariff policies. The episode focuses on Trump's unexpected reversal of his previously announced tariffs, the immediate market reaction, and the broader implications for global trade.

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Trump’s Tariff Reversal Announcement

0:58 - 3:16

Sam Stein opens the discussion by highlighting the chaotic nature of obtaining news directly from Trump's communications. He states:

“It is very hard because we're just reading a bleep to figure out what's going on” ([00:58]).

Trump had initially imposed a 10% baseline tariff on imports globally, accompanied by much higher reciprocal tariffs, sometimes exceeding 50%, targeting specific countries like China and the EU. However, in a surprising move, Trump announced via a tweet that he would:

• Increase tariffs on China to approximately 125%.
• Pause tariff hikes for 75 countries that had either been receptive or non-adversarial towards the U.S., though maintaining a 10% universal tariff on these nations.

Andrew Egger summarizes the financial impact:

“The markets have gone absolutely berserk based on this tweet” ([00:58]).

Market Reaction

The hosts discuss the immediate market volatility triggered by Trump's tweet. The NASDAQ experienced a spike, continually rising with each refresh post-announcement.

Sam Stein remarks on the absurdity of such significant economic news emerging from a tweet:

“This bleep is all we have. We don't have a statement from the White House… and the bleed is obviously written in Trump's own voice” ([00:58]).

3:16 - 6:01

Andrew Egger refers to a Bloomberg summarization by Josh Wingrove, explaining Trump’s tariff reallocation:

“A 10% universal tariff, as Andrew said, 125% rate for China which will basically amount to something closer to a trade embargo on China” ([03:16]).

Ben Parker adds that the European Union was indirectly referenced, though not explicitly named, implying their inclusion in the higher tariff bracket. The uncertainty surrounding the exact number of affected countries (potentially 15 unmentioned nations) adds to the complexity.

7:35 - 10:51

The hosts explore the implications of Trump's erratic tariff policies on global trade and businesses. Ben Parker humorously shares an anecdote about his dentist inadvertently highlighting the tariffs during a routine cleaning, illustrating how pervasive and disruptive these policies have become.

Andrew Egger theorizes that Trump's handling of the tariffs is more about maintaining control and chaos for negotiation leverage rather than coherent economic strategy:

“He just likes the chaos. And he likes the idea that he has people calling him and begging him for deals or that he can cosplay a tough guy on the international stage” ([08:08]).

Howard Lutnick’s Commentary

Sam Stein brings in Howard Lutnick’s reaction to Trump’s tweet, emphasizing the confusion and lack of clear strategy:

“Scott Bessant and I sat with the president while he wrote one of the most extraordinary truth posts of his presidency… It’s up there” ([10:43]).

This underscores the internal disarray within Trump's circle and the unpredictable nature of his policy announcements.

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Analysis of Policy Impact

6:12 - 09:35

Sam Stein critiques the structure of Trump's tweet, highlighting its superficial correctness but underlying chaos:

“All the stuff… If the point of the White House here were to, like, make things easy for the business climate, but all the chaos and stuff, they have not shown any indication that they particularly care or that it matters to them at all” ([06:12]).

Andrew Egger reflects on the short-term versus long-term effects, noting that while the immediate market reaction was volatile, the foundational issues in trade policy remain unresolved. Ben Parker points out the contradictions in Trump's promises of economic prosperity juxtaposed with policies that destabilize the market.

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Conclusion and Final Thoughts

11:26 - 12:13

As the discussion wraps up, the hosts express a mix of frustration and cautious optimism. Sam Stein acknowledges the absurdity of the situation but recognizes that the outcome is marginally less detrimental than anticipated:

“At least, like, this is one of those stories where they're doing this insanely stupid stuff, but to an outcome that is so much less worse than the one we thought we were going to get” ([11:26]).

Andrew Egger remains skeptical, foreseeing a repetitive cycle of policy reversals:

“Except we're back in 90 days doing the same exact thing” ([11:43]).

Ben Parker humorously highlights the futility of optimism amidst ongoing instability:

“We're still worse than we were. Worse off than we were a year ago, but better off than we were a day ago” ([11:53]).

The episode closes with a light-hearted remark about Trump’s tweet ending, underscoring the superficial gratitude masking deeper issues:

“Thank you for your attention to this matter” ([12:08]).

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Key Takeaways:

1. Unpredictable Policy Shifts: Trump's sudden reversal of tariffs has introduced significant uncertainty into global trade markets, demonstrating a lack of coherent economic planning.

2. Market Volatility: The immediate reaction saw the NASDAQ surge unpredictably, reflecting investor uncertainty and the fragile nature of the current economic climate.

3. Global Trade Disruption: The reallocation of tariffs threatens to dismantle established supply chains, forcing businesses to navigate an even more convoluted trade environment.

4. Internal Chaos: The discussion reveals significant internal conflicts and confusion within Trump’s administration, particularly among key figures like Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessant.

5. Future Implications: With tariffs potentially being revisited in 90 days, the cycle of policy inconsistency is likely to continue, further destabilizing international trade relations.

6. Host Perspectives: The hosts emphasize frustration with the lack of strategic direction, while also acknowledging that, despite the chaos, the situation is marginally better than the projected outcomes.

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Notable Quotes:

• Sam Stein ([00:58]): “It is very hard because we're just reading a bleep to figure out what's going on.”
• Andrew Egger ([03:16]): “A 10% universal tariff, as Andrew said, 125% rate for China which will basically amount to something closer to a trade embargo on China.”
• Ben Parker ([05:24]): “He's going to say, this is the best thing the stock market's had in years.”
• Andrew Egger ([08:08]): “He just likes the chaos. And he likes the idea that he has people calling him and begging him for deals or that he can cosplay a tough guy on the international stage.”
• Sam Stein ([12:08]): “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Bulwark Takes provides a comprehensive and engaging analysis of the chaotic shifts in U.S. tariff policy under Trump’s administration. Through insightful commentary and notable quotes, the hosts illuminate the complexities and far-reaching consequences of these economic maneuvers, offering listeners a clear understanding of the current state of global trade and its impending challenges.

Transcript

[Sam Stein]

Hey, guys.

[Andrew Egger]

Me. Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark, joined by Andrew Egger and Ben Parker to talk about pretty much the craziest shit we've seen in a long time. We are also sitting around today waiting for the impact of the Trump tariff regime to kick in. And then at roughly, I don't know, 115 or so, that's about right. Trump puts out a tweet, post, a bleep, whatever you want to call it, announcing that he is not, in fact going forward with the tariffs that he outlined. He's going to jack up the ones on China to about 125%. And then, Andrew, correct me if I'm wrong, he's going to put a pause, an undate pause on tariff hikes for 75 countries that have approached him and been receptive or not adversarial towards him and. But he will have a 10 reciprocal tariff in place with those countries still. I don't know. It's very hard because we're just reading a bleat to figure out what's going on. Why don't you break it down for us, Andrew?

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, yeah. So bottom line, we are so back. The markets have gone absolutely berserk based on this tweet. Let's just pause for one second to dwell on how insane it is that this is how we get any news at all, let alone the news that is so world historically important that it has caused the NASDAQ to jump. Every time you refresh it, it's a little higher. Yes.

[Andrew Egger]

Hockey sticks, baby.

[Sam Stein]

This bleep is all we have. We don't have a statement from the White House. We don't have specifics yet. And the bleed is obviously written in Trump's own voice. It's a little bit unclear, but essentially what happened is Trump slapped these Liberation Day tariffs on a few days ago. Right. And it's, it was a 10% baseline tariff on basically everywhere in the world. Everywhere in the world. But the real kicker was these reciprocal tariffs that he layered on top, which were massively, massively larger than that, you know, upwards of 50% on a lot of countries and, or, you know, in the neighborhood of 50% on a lot of countries. Basically just extinction level tariffs for, for most trade between us. And a lot of different places, different countries have responded to that in different ways. So China and the EU both have responded within the last 48 hours by, by slapping new reciprocal tariffs on, on us. You know, the market markets have suffered from those. But the real reason that things have been diving down so hard is basically just that there are, there's no safe haven. Right. Everyone always kind of knew Trump was gonna go after China. There might be tariffs and stuff involved there. But, but there were ways for countries to get around, for companies to get around this sort of thing without abandoning the whole prospect of global trade at all. Right. A lot of countries moved some manufacturing from China to Vietnam in anticipation of, of new China tariffs and things like that.

[Andrew Egger]

This would have.

[Sam Stein]

So that was why things spiked down so hard. Now what Trump is announcing is the 10% baseline tariff, seemingly according to the wording of his tweet, is still going to be in place on everybody. So still a real giant disruption to global trade, but with the exception of China and the eu. And again, he doesn't mention the EU in this tweet, but you can. The implication is there is that he says these 75 countries that have not retaliated of about the 90 who he slapped the tariffs on in the first place, those 75 are going to lose the totally invented, totally catastrophic reciprocal tariffs and be only at the baseline. And again we're seeing just, just blast upward like a pork out of a bottle.

[Andrew Egger]

A quick summarization from our friend Josh Wingrove at Bloomberg. He says this is a total reallocation of his tariffs and basically amount a 10% universal tariff, as Andrew said, 125% rate for China which will basically amount to something closer to a trade embargo on China and maybe rates higher than 10% for whomever else he thinks retaliated. I believe the initial number of countries was 90 plus or 90 ish. So that leaves about 15 countries that we don't know. Which countries I don't know mostly here we.

[Ben Parker]

Yeah, but not the entire eu. There's more countries than that in the pieces of it.

[Andrew Egger]

There are 18 non mentioned countries who still might be targeted with higher reciprocal tariffs. We don't know. We're just going off of the bleep. So. Yeah. Odd way to make economic policy, Ben.

[Ben Parker]

Yeah, definitely. You know, I think Andrew wrote about this. We saw a little hint of this earlier when there was that fake headline going around that they were going to.

[Andrew Egger]

The Walter Bloomberg one.

[Ben Parker]

Yeah, the Walter Bloomberg one.

[Andrew Egger]

He was just a couple days ahead. He was just a couple days ahead of the news. Maybe like he was pretty right. He got it right. Yeah, yeah. He was just breaking it.

[Ben Parker]

And you know, they saw how the markets react. This huge spike that lasted all of what, five minutes yesterday when everyone thought the tariffs might be not even coming off right. The tariffs aren't off. They're delayed for 90 days now, you know, who knows? A lot could happen in 90 days. But the fact that yesterday the White House didn't just take the win and come out and be like, yeah, yeah, we are delaying them, doing great.

[Andrew Egger]

It's not even that. It's not even that. Because last night, I, I think. I don't know if you watched it. I know Andrew did, because it was in morning shots. But last night he was at. Trump was at the NRCC dinner, and he was talking about the tariffs in ways that suggested no pullback whatsoever. I think his quote was, this time, I'm doing what I want to do with respect to tariffs.

[Sam Stein]

This time I'm doing what I want to do with respect to the tariffs.

[Andrew Egger]

And then he then, like, within 12 hours, just completely reverses. I'm laughing because I'm relieved for the market, but this is a horrible way to produce global trade policy. It's unbelievable.

[Ben Parker]

Yeah. And, like, how are businesses supposed to make decisions when Trump can turn up tariffs to 125% on a whim and then take them off on a whim? Like, yeah, things are better than they would have been before, but they're not better than they were three months ago.

[Andrew Egger]

Well, in the most. In the most. In the most ideal situation. Right. I mean, if you were Trump, you would say, well, now you have 90 days to move all your manufacturing to the U.S. great.

[Ben Parker]

Okay. You have 90 days.

[Andrew Egger]

90 days to watch that.

[Sam Stein]

People watch this Bulwark Channel, man.

[Ben Parker]

You have 90 days to. To train people to do all your manufacturing that was done.

[Andrew Egger]

It is to build a factory, hire a bunch of workers, and train them on the process. Yes, that's going to work.

[Sam Stein]

So, yeah, we should talk a little bit more just about the structure of this tweet, because it's so good. Because, because, yeah, all the stuff.

[Andrew Egger]

You have to be technically correct, social.

[Sam Stein]

Post, all this stuff that Ben is talking about is true. Like, if the point of the White House here were to, like, make things easy for the business climate, but all the chaos and stuff, they have not shown any indication that they particularly care or that it matters to them at all. Based on the White House's rubric for how they are strategically assessing all this. This tweet is very funny because. I'm sorry, this, this, this post, this bleet is very funny.

[Andrew Egger]

Thank you.

[Sam Stein]

Because the whole question for them is, gosh, we've got these markets cratering. How the heck can we stop the bleeding here without making it appear that we are reversing course, that we're weak, that we are, you know.

[Andrew Egger]

Well, how do they do that?

[Sam Stein]

Well, the way they do it is by leading off with the China news. Right? I mean, yes, he did. He did.

[Andrew Egger]

Very.

[Sam Stein]

Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets, I am hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately. @ some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the USA and other countries is no longer sustainable or acceptable. So he leads with like the. I'm the alpha dog. You can't, you know, China can't tell the US what to do. It's the other way around. We're the, we're the bosses. And then he's like. And also, by the way, because these other countries were nice enough to reach out to us about, you know, to come to us hat in hand and, and do the sir story. Like, please, sir, what can we give you, sir? Because of that? We're gonna let. We're gonna. I mean, like, that's, that's not the reason.

[Andrew Egger]

Like, they're gonna give a.

[Sam Stein]

Whether. Whether any country came petitioning him. He's not, he's not rewarding them. He is stopping the bleeding here. And I think it was. I think it was finally impressed on him that this is the way that you could do that with that while still saving a little bit of face.

[Andrew Egger]

This is why whenever. Whenever Tim and I talk and we're, you know, we do the over unders on how long the tariffs will last or if they'll go in place at all. I always take the under because I just feel like this is ultimately just what Trump does. It's erratic. And then, and then, and then his favorite things to try to take credit for shit for fixing the problem that he.

[Sam Stein]

Right.

[Ben Parker]

He's going to say, this is the best thing the stock market's had in years.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah.

[Ben Parker]

You know, so. Okay, so just to give you an idea, my dentist made this point to me the other day when I went in for a cleaning. He like, your teeth, great. They're doing great. But really, my dentist wanted to talk about the tariffs. That's really what he wanted. He's like, you need to find. Let's talk about trade. Pulls away from the chair and he's like, he's done this before. Like, he's tried this before and every time the same thing. Like, why does he keep trying the same thing? We're going to 90 days, we're going to be back. He's all right. Tariffs are back on. Markets are going to tank. I took them off. Look at what I fixed the problem that I created. Aren't I amazing? We're just going to do this for four years, right? Back and forth and back and forth.

[Andrew Egger]

Because I think my theory, see my thing. Because obviously, I mean, not obviously, but it seems clear to me that he likes doing this. He just likes the chaos. And he likes the idea that he has people calling him and begging him for deals or that he can cosplay a tough guy on the international stage. He doesn't really care about the actual policy. It's just the ability to have somewhat controlled chaos through which you can negotiate. And that I think, gets his rocks off. So, yeah, we'll be back here in 90 days.

[Sam Stein]

The funniest thing about this, to me, one other thing is I would love to know Peter Navarro's take on this whole thing, because this is not the America first kind of vision that Navarro and even Trump himself have laid out for. You know, we're bringing it all back to America. You're gonna have to do it here. The whole reason the market is shooting up is because now there's less disruption, because people can just move out of China to Vietnam, move out of China.

[Ben Parker]

To India, buying things from overseas. Right? Exact. And if the point of this was that, as Trump just said yesterday, we have so much money coming in, billions of dollars coming in, we're going to be so rich. We're going to be so rich. But what, now he's making us poor by taking the tariffs off?

[Andrew Egger]

Well, exactly. Which is in the tariff. And the tariffs were supposed to be the revenue raiser for a bunch of different initiatives. I guess we don't get those now and then. To your point, Navarro and Stephen Miller, you know, it was all about nationalizing pipelines and supply chains and things like that. And I guess we'll have to wait for 90 days for those as well, I will note, because it's just so extraordinary and it gave me the giggles. Howard Lutnick went on Twitter to talk about the bleep that was put up by Trump. And I just want to read it because I think we should marinate on it for a bit. Scott Bessant and I sat with the president while he wrote one of the most extraordinary truth posts of his presidency. The world is ready to work with the president to fix global trade, and China has chosen the opposite direction. Does this qualify as the most extraordinary truth post of his presidency? I haven't really taken stock of all of the truth posts. It's up there.

[Ben Parker]

I guess there have been a lot in the first three months. I guess so.

[Sam Stein]

You know, maybe only one that, only one that boosted markets 10% in about five minutes.

[Ben Parker]

So I have to say that we, you know, we've talked about the, the drama between Navarro and Musk in the Trump administration.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah.

[Ben Parker]

The, the Besant Lutnick drama is so good. Like, wasn't Ludnick originally supposed to be treasury secretary, but then he lobbied too hard for it? So we got so like Scott Bessant is only there to frustrate Howard Lutnick and it's working.

[Andrew Egger]

And it's like you can't keep track of which one's arguing which point. They're either negotiating or they're not negotiating. This is a negotiation. It's like there's so many different variables coming from this White House. Any other final thoughts, Andrew and Ben?

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, we should just be, we should just be grateful for this moment because the news is always so stupid. And this is, I'm so grateful. But, but at least, like, this is one of those stories where they're doing this insanely stupid stuff, but to an outcome that is so much less worse than the one we thought we were going to get.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah. Except we're back in 90 days doing the same exact thing.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, they're backing off and the, all the funny is in how they're pretending that they're not, but they are. And it's great.

[Ben Parker]

Yeah, we're still worse than we were. Worse off than we were a year ago, but better off than we were a day ago. So there's that. I will say the funniest part of this to me was the very last sentence of Trump's post, which we didn't talk about, which is thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Andrew Egger]

I didn't read that far. Oh, my God.

[Ben Parker]

Thank you.

[Andrew Egger]

You're welcome. You're welcome that I paid attention. All right, Andrew Egger, Ben Parker, thanks so much.