President Donald Trump's top aides spent weeks working behind the scenes to persuade him to back down on China tariffs that had rattled global markets before they finally spotted an opening.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other aides told the president that the blue-collar workers that he considered to be his political base would be hurt if the tariffs weren't lowered, according to two source familiar with the matter who spoke to the Washington Post.
“The key argument was that this was beginning to hurt Trump’s supporters — Trump’s people,” said one person briefed on the talks. “It gave Susie a key window.”
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That gave the president's team an opportunity to initiate negotiations with the Chinese, who dug in for a more prolonged trade war than many expected, and the two economic powerhouses reached a partial deal to reduce the tariffs last weekend in Switzerland.
“It just made sense for Trump to blink given the political or economic cost he faced,” said Myron Brilliant, a senior counselor for the Albright Stonebridge Group. “The pressure is different for Xi even with a weak economy.”
The CEOs of Walmart, major automakers and other companies repeatedly pressed Trump to back off the tariffs before they upended their businesses, and the number of adjustments – some after being in place for less than a week – reflect the tension within the White House over his efforts to reshape the global economy.
“It’s been completely insane,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the center-right American Enterprise Institute. “When I step back from the euphoria over easing tariffs with China, what I see is the tariff rate is five times as high as when Trump took office, and we seem to have gotten nothing out of it at all.”
Another center-right think tanker, American Action Forum president Douglas Holtz-Eakin, cast doubt on the president's efforts, saying that he probably didn't need tariffs to bring the United Kingdom to the table to sketch out the outline for a future trade deal that offers only minor concessions.
“All we’ve done is impose tariffs and then un-impose them — we haven’t accomplished anything, honestly,” Holtz-Eakin said. “We’re going to sell some more Boeings to the U.K. – that’s the only thing. Did we really need the tariffs on the world to get that done?”