President Donald Trump signaled that he was open to sharply reducing his tariffs against China ahead of trade talks this weekend.
American and Chinese negotiators will meet over the weekend in Switzerland, and Trump posted Friday morning on Truth Social that 80 percent tariffs – a 65 percent reduction in the current 145 percent tariffs against Chinese imports – just "seems right," and Republican strategist Doug Heye said the president was reacting to political fallout from his trade war.
"Well, I think it's part of it is a reaction to what we've been seeing as either fewer container ships have been coming in or ships with fewer containers, and that a lot of those containers that have come from ports in China to ports in the U.S. have less product in them," Heye said, "and so there's a very real concern of what people are going to pay, or are there going to be shelves that are empty."
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"These are bad visuals for Donald Trump," Heye added. "I think he knows that it may be too late to save the immediate problem, but clearly he realizes that there's an ongoing issue here that could hurt him politically pretty severely. I think it's smart to get ahead of this, but let's ultimately see where we end up. That's obviously much more important."
Kendra Barkoff, who served as press secretary to Joe Biden when he was vice president, said Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs were unnerving business owners and investors alike, and she said any blame for a recession would fall squarely on his shoulders.
"We've seen his tariff policies to be erratic time and time again," Barkoff said, "and what we're seeing is a potential coming towards a recession. Trump owns this economy, and what we're seeing with the up and downs is really going to start to affect workers. It's affecting prices and, you know, I think he, from what it seems like, he doesn't actually care about it. He was asked yesterday in the Oval Office whether or not, you know, he cares about the workers in Seattle that, you know, are concerned that there aren't things being unloaded onto the port, that they are concerned about their jobs, and he sort of brushed by the question."
"So he actually does own this economy," Barkoff added. "He is the president, the buck stops with him, and I just think these erratic tariff policies are a problem."