Does anyone believe that Donald Trump brilliantly planned the abrupt reversal of his “recriprocal” tariff barrage? Leaving aside the most zombified MAGA cultists, and those who are paid or otherwise induced to pretend to believe whatever the president says, the answer is no.
But that may not be the right question to ask in the wake of his vaunted policy’s overnight collapse.
The most obvious tell was dropped by Trump himself, who often says the quiet part very loud while his minions and publicists play deaf. When a reporter asked yesterday afternoon whether the scary drop in the market for US Treasury bonds had affected his tariff policies, he replied: “I was watching the bond market. It's very tricky. If you look at it now, it's beautiful. The bond market right now is beautiful. But I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.” People, he admitted, “were getting yippy," meaning terrified.
Indeed Trump was watching the bond market as prices spiked sharply upward, a signal that traders were losing faith in what has traditionally been viewed as the world’s safest investment. The danger that would represent for the US dollar, the nation’s economic stability, and even the world economy were far too profound to ignore – even for Trump.
Telltale signs of what actually happened in the White House are not difficult to see. Several days ago, as the chaotic tariff schemes driven by Trump and his wayward adviser Peter Navarro dominated the news, a story spread on cable news that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent -- whose advice they had reportedly ignored and whose personal credibility had cratered -- was “looking for an exit.” Whether that was accurate or not, the possible resignation of the treasury secretary threatened a ruinous blow to the administration.
On Wednesday, Bessent had been scheduled to speak behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, addressing the House Republican Study Committee – an appearance he canceled. He sent his deputy instead, according to Politico, because he was “called into a meeting with Trump.”
And soon enough, instead of quitting, Bessent went before the cameras, accompanied by the ever- belligerent White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, to announce the tariff turnabout. He dutifully recited the rehearsed claim that this shift had been “the president’s strategy all along,” presumably even while stooges like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were sent forth to proclaim that trade is “a national security issue” and no way would he drop the new import duties.
Among those who expressly reject the latest MAGA fairy tale is Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino, who told viewers yesterday that market conditions had dictated Trump’s actions, not “the art of the deal.” His analysis was direct and unsparing:
“I mean, let's be clear what happened, who capitulated here, and why? And, you know, I don't want to say this, because I am a patriot, I'm an American, but it is the White House who capitulated, based on everything I hear, and all of my sources. And the reason why is because of the bond market and what happened last night.
“You know, Bessent knows this better than anybody, when you have yields on the 10-year rising to five percent, stuff starts shutting down, when you have the lending market screwed up. By the way, who's dumping the bonds? Somebody asked him if it was China, right? It wasn't, it was Japan. While he was negotiating with Japan, Japan, according to my sources, were running major money management firms that are involved in the bond market, without giving up names. Japan was dumping bonds because they believed this was not a great place to do business. That forced their hands.”
When one of the MAGA bootlickers on Fox, longtime correspondent David Asman, claimed that Trump had calculated the pullback “right up to the edge,” Gasparino corrected him with blunt certainty.
“David, he had no choice, he had no choice. Unfortunately, no choice…the gun was at his head. What happened last night was very bad.”
The real question is whether Trump or anyone acting on his behalf – or others inside the White House privy to his decisions, such as Lutnick or Bessent – made a killing in the stock market by shorting stocks -- or going long when the market was way down. Despite the sharp rise in stock values late on April 9, the recovery on Wall Street hasn't come close to erasing the losses of recent weeks, except for those who might have known what Trump was about to do and acted illicitly to exploit that information.
But we can hardly expect the compliant Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an insider trading investigation of this crooked White House. She’s too busy abusing her powers to harass Trump’s critics.
Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. He is the author of several books, including The Raw Deal: How The Bush Republicans Plan To Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.
