President Donald Trump was forced to try to explain to reporters on Wednesday why he suddenly offered a 90-day partial reprieve from his "reciprocal tariffs" for every country except China — and how he could be trusted to keep his word in diplomatic and economic negotiations going forward.
"What is your credibility like?" CNN's Jeff Zeleny asked Trump, in a moment captured by the pro-Trump Right Side Broadcasting Network. "Because you said these tariffs would go in effect on Monday. You said no pause, today, there is a pause. So how can people believe you?"
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Trump dodged the question, offered an opaque metaphor about a "wall," and bragged about how much his decision managed to recover stock prices after a week of the worst market performances since the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Yeah, it's not a question of that," Trump replied. "You have to have flexibility. I could say, here's a wall, and I'm going to go through that wall, I'm going to go through it no matter what. Keep going, and you can't go through the wall. Sometimes, you have to be able to go under the wall, around the wall, or over the wall. These guys know that better than anybody, right? You got to go around them sometimes, you're not going to go through them."
"So I consider, I think in financial markets, because they've changed, look how much it changed today," he added. "We went from, you know, pretty moderate today, but over the last few days it looked pretty glum, to, I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history. That's a pretty big change."
Trump's decision, which echoes a series of walkbacks he made while implementing previous tariffs earlier this year, did soothe markets somewhat but came after waves of discontent within his own party. Even now, some analysts warn that Trump has not accomplished anything meaningful on trade.
