> Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky

There's also a more basic answer to why US debt got more expensive. There is no such thing as a "trade deficit". You cannot import something without exporting something else. That something else, in almost 100% of the situations, is dollars. What do you do with dollars, if there's nothing you want to buy? You buy debt. So, every trade deficit ultimately tends to export debt. We have long known that government debt is proportional to trade deficits.

The problem with tariffs, in this context, is that they are being used as a signal that we don't want to sell people dollars anymore, explicitly saying "no more trade deficits". In doing so we are choking off the supply of dollars used to buy debt (rather abruptly), so that US debt is chasing fewer dollars and has to give a bigger yield as a result.

What's worse, is that because we are signalling that the tariffs are meant to be permanent, and we're seeing reciprocal tariffs as a result. When that happens, it means that using dollars in the future will purchase fewer US goods, so the time discount of money has gone up too. Further driving up yields to make bonds attractive enough to sell.

Incompetence is way more dangerous than people realize.

These tariffs are China's Four Pests campaign. Mao, a very trump like figure, decided to protect Chinese crops by destroying sparrows that were picking at them. Killing sparrows killed a predator of insects which did more damage to crops. This coupled with reality denying policies and ignoring experts led to one of the most devastating famines the world has ever experienced.

Hand waiving away this policy that denies reality and hurts America as a rational plan that went wrong is absolutely dangerous. Killing sparrows was "rational" in the same way these tariffs are. Authoritarians believe in power over reason. They do not like submitting to the authority of those who have studied problems because it is an attack on their own supremacy, so they fail to predict second order effects, which were likely obvious.

The damage this administration is doing to trust will be felt for generations. An agreement with America will have no value. No world leader will care what we say, they will only look at what we do. They will see power we have not as potentially being used for their own defense, but as a potential attack on their own sovereignty and they will wish to see us weakened so that they can spend less resources trying to determine our intentions.

That doesn't pass muster. If they had much interest in balancing the books, they wouldn't be ripping huge holes in revenue collection.

Donald is weak. He was always going to fold. Once China and the EU called his bluff and retaliated, he was done. Lasted less than 24 hours.

James Carville in the 90s: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

The T-Bill auction today went off without issue and that was before this announcement.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/treasury-bond-auction-today...

This makes some sense... but they didn't pause the tariffs. There's still a 10% tariff on everybody (including on top of Mexico and Canada, who were previously exempted from the tariffs announced last week) and the tariff on China continues to rise to preposterous proportions.

Sounds like a sage take (where do I study economics?), but why do people doubt the meaning is as straightforward as the messaging: during campaigning trump said he would rectify the unfair tariffs, and in the lead-up and since election he has talked lovingly about tariffs, with the goal being (as almost everything trump) domestic fortification through jobs, industry, and generating revenue from those who have abused the US largesse to enrich themselves - and now balk at a just correction.

I think there is a backdrop/larger picture (probably nuanced and multifaceted levers against all other parties negotiating), but the main I think is to shake up the global economic landscape to make it easier to improve it. Reset.

I see a lot of complex takes on here that require quite a lot of sophisticated theories...and while I enjoy the complexity and the perspectives (and - wish I had studied economics to really grok them), I think it's really just as simple as they say. And what they say they're doing makes sense.

Maybe the truth is no one really knows what will happen, and so it's a bold move but we'll see. But I believe they're doing what they think is right for America to strengthen the country, just as they say - not some 3 degree removed chess strategy, just simple.

Genuinely wondering why so many people are still giving the Trump administration this much benefit of the doubt that their moves are strategically sound? We're really still doing the whole "3D chess" thing with this guy after he has shown over and over again that he mostly just acts on impulse and the primary qualification for his advisors is loyalty over any type of intelligence or expertise?

that assumes a massive amount of economic understanding and intelligence on the part of the President that has simply been completely unobserved for his entire career.

occam's razor provides much better explanations here. He's an idiot obsessed with dominance games and thinks a tariff on a country means that country pays a tax to the US. He thinks trade deficits are bad, just like if I buy a toaster from Target, now I have a "trade deficit" with Target and I need to find something they'll buy from me.

He's a total dangerous moron and these attempts to come up with 11-dimensional chess rationalizations are misguided.

Being boring is profitable.

You want to do tariffs for national security reasons? Okay. I get it. Now get congress to pass a bill levying the tariff, have that bill be smart, encourage not just on-shoring, but also near-shoring (Mexico, Canada) of key manufacturing and minerals, apply the tariffs more strongly against the key geopolitical rivals (China), implemented in a graded, predictable manner. Do not piss of every ally in the world, in general pursuing this hierarchy U.S. > Mexico, Canada > European, African, and Pacific Allies > China, Russia. Finally, for key , and highly specific strategic industries, provide subsidies.

>Because when your national budget depends on cheap debt, you can't afford a crisis of confidence in your bonds.

Well the US is still having a dick measuring contest with its largest importer, so no worries. We'll still get plenty of crisis from that alone.

I'd believe you if he hadn't already flipflopped on tariffs recently. I think it's much simpler than that: he's pulling whatever levers he has to squeeze everyone and then letting up the pressure on people who do what he wants. He already did this with Canada and Mexico, using tariffs to get them to make a show of border secy=urity.

> Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky.

Owning US debt is also simply less relevant to countries that are going to be trading less with the US. Countries which are ratcheting up tariffs with the US, for example.

What about the insider trading that this facilitated? A few parties made HUGE profits with last-minute option trades today.

This makes too much sense to be the real reason, if you ask me.

I think it’s being reversed because it cratered global oil prices and that would be a terrible horrible very bad thing _for Russia_.

im not an economist, I have no valid opinion on if this is right or not.

BUT, I actually started looking at moving more of the stable bond/treasury holding bit of my portfolio to foreign funds recently (in addition to moving more of the stock/mutual fund balance to international stuff).

If I'm thinking about that as an individual private citizen of the US, I can't imagine what actual professionals are thinking about.

This again sees more logic in this than there exists.

America doesn’t have ANY issue refinancing that debt. US treasury is the risk free rate. It’s the basis of an infinite number of financial models as the baseline level of risk people will tolerate. Every single analyst from here to China works on that basis.

This idea that you can’t refinance debt is nonsense. American firms are wildly profitable, and America used to be the safest bet to set up a new firm, or do ground breaking research.

If you wanted to make more money, increase taxes, and you can refinance debt even faster than this. Shifting the yields is … how does that apply to new bonds which would be auctioned??? The face value and rate are set anyway.

I don’t think this checks out. They didn’t walk any tariffs back until after the auction saw strong demand. It went opposite the way one would think setting the fall in bond prices the previous night.

I think this would be expected though, no? Sure, there's flight to safety, but you're also reducing exports to the US, reducing the number of dollars flowing to foreign nationals, which reduces the demand for treasury bills, which an excess of dollars would often be used to buy to have an inflation-"proof" store for your dollars without currency risk. You would also expect devaluation of the dollar from tariffs / trade-war, which I would also expect to cause selling of t-bills in favor of local currencies

Trump's obsession with tariffs dates back to 1988 when he lost an auction for the piano from the movie Casablanca to a Japanese buyer. Afterwards, he started complaining about how all these other countries are ripping America off, and here we are.

"From the beginning, I’ve believed the executive branch's real goal was to push down the yield on the 10-year Treasury. Why?"

None of leaked conversations or prior discussions indicate anything like this. Peter Navarro has no even slightly nuanced agenda. He's been on record for years about this. I think their position was much more that they'd drive foreign tariffs down and would be able to make other demands against other countries, and they underestimated the tolerance even their base would have.

I find the most consistent explanation for Donald Trump is he does whatever is going to keep himself the top news story in the media. I don't think there's any deeply held belief other than if he doesn't think people are talking about him that's bad

>From the beginning, I’ve believed the executive branch's real goal was to push down the yield on the 10-year Treasury

You're making it seem that there's a plan ... but what if this is just regular incompetence coupled with capricious behavior from a chaos agent?

I'm watching various officials give interviews and all of them are non-committal as it pertains to expectations. Why? Because none of them actually know!!! Trump has arbitrarily and capriciously changed "the plan" many times.

> But then something flipped.

The bond market is always the adult in the room. The UK PM lasted like 44 days when the bond market pushed her out [1]. In this case, the flip was that all the chaos led to people leaving behind the USD completely. Trumps view of the US/World is ~30+ years out of date. There are other stable places to put money now where it used to only be USD.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/20/uk-prime-minister-liz-truss-...

>something flipped.

China dumped 500B in treasuries and the basis trade blew up is what happened

Tariff deals were still going to happen regardless. The pause is a stop gap for the basis trade (20+x levered), of which an uncontrolled unwinding threatens the entire financial system. Fed already had a bailout facility ready as a plan B. Too big to fail and all that

It's scary to think he's just not got a clue and doing whatever he thinks of in the moment isn't it?

I mean the guy who doesn't understand tariffs, at all, but has publicly loved tariffs for 40 years in charge of tariff policy. That's disturbing to contemplate head on.

Much better to invent some comforting fantasy of secret plots being carried out semi-competently to achieve nebulous but vaguely noble goals.

The refinance is a real issue, but it doesn't matter too much cause the Fed can (and will) always intervene. They can soak up any supply to push the 10 year down.

Same reason why it doesn't matter if China etc.. wants our treasuries. Fed is always there to buy them.

Uncertainty is a massive problem and may itself bring on a recession more than any tariffs. It's a huge factor in the oil market crash that's currently going on. I've seen one oil expert say that Obama was the best president for the oil industry because he did... nothing. There were no kneejerk policy changes on a weekly basis. And anything requiring large capital investments thrives on certainty.

As for Treasury yields spiking, that was no accident. As part of China's (justified) retaliation to the tariffs, they started selling off 10 year Treasuries intentaionlly to spike the rates because that's one thing the Trump administration seemed to care about.

I still don't know what the endgame is/was here. Some seem to think devaluing the dollar was the goal to boost exports but also to effectively devalue US soverieng debt. There's precedent for this eg FDR's sovereign devaluation of the dollar and Reagan's Plaza Accord.

This makes a lot of sense, although I wouldn't give them the credit of being so coherent in their understanding/targeting of what they were doing.

In my opinion the reason it backfired, what they proposed wouldn't merely cause a confidence in crisis, but also implied a fundamental shift in the market and the way it worked, this would also have to be priced in, hence the drop. There was no longer necessarily a "buy the dip, the market will go up at some point".

It remains to be seen to what extent this restores confidence.

The T-bill strategy wasn't a secret. Why they walked it back could also be attributed to bringing trade partners to heel at a point of maximum leverage. Or a lack of resolve in leadership. Or messaging and opportunism.

Will it pay off? Who knows. If it does, it will go down as one of the greatest gambits in modern history. If not, perhaps the end of dollar hegemony? End of the Global American Empire? Or nothing at all?

No. This isn't an economic policy.

It’s time to stop bending over backwards pretending that Trump’s tariff threats are part of a coherent economic strategy. They’re not.

When you drop the economic lens and view tariffs as a political tool for consolidating power, everything suddenly makes sense.

Here’s how it works: - Tariffs hurt corporations. They jack up costs, raise costs. Executives know this. The markets know this. - But there’s a loophole: carve-outs. Trump has the power to exempt individual companies or industries from these tariffs. That means if you’re a CEO and your business is on the line, your only option is to go to Trump and ask for mercy. - That’s not policy. It’s leverage. It creates a system where corporate leaders must show loyalty to get relief. Not because it’s good for the economy, but because it’s good for Trump. Maybe it's public support for his initiatives, attacks on his enemies. Whatever it is, it gives him political power.

This mirrors the playbook used by authoritarian leaders throughout history. Look at Putin. His use of tariffs wasn’t about growing Russia’s economy—it was about punishing enemies, rewarding loyalty, and projecting control. Tariffs became a way to rewire power dynamics.

You are assigning too much rationality to this group of people. The cruelty is the point, not some hare-brained scheme to push down yield or whatever.

I'm not saying you're wrong. But 10-year yields are up for the day, so if he was trying to calm the bond markets, it didn't work.

The only aggregate alternative to holding T-bills is to hold dollar bank accounts. At which point the bank holds the T-bills instead or the Fed does as balancing assets to the account liability.

It could all be refinanced to three month bills without any issue at all.

Ultimately balance sheets have to balance. In a floating exchange rate system there is no aggregate out.

Trump has been on Team Tariff for 40 years. “There is no 3D chess, he’s just eating the pieces.”

Or maybe investors didn't buy treasuries because they were in on the scam all along. They wanted to stay liquid because the plan was always to crash the markets and spook foreign investors while US investors are informed to wait for the tweet about the 90 day delay and buy cheap stocks.

    > you can't afford a crisis of confidence in your bonds

In the last 75 years (post WW2), has there every been a crisis of confidence for US gov't debt? I cannot think of any instances.

Yeah but the damage is done.

A safe haven isn’t much of a safe haven if that’s where the fire has started.

Trump floating the idea of defaulting on debt on purpose certainly did not helped.

Generally the president acting like an insane maniac about to become dictatoe makes bonds look less trustworthy.

> Because when your national budget depends on cheap debt, you can't afford a crisis of confidence in your bonds.

True. The odd thing is that the previous tariffs announcements on supposed allies, plus all the other sabre-rattling that Trump has been doing, NATO-bashing, flipping on Ukraine, etc., had already triggered a crisis of confidence. So what did they expect? That unexpectedly unleashing of wildly unreasonable and poorly-calculated tariffs would inspire _more_ confidence? If getting investors to flock to T-bills was the goal, it was always bound to fail. (It only worked in the short term because T-bills are the default in a time of market uncertainty; but when it became clear that the uncertainty was caused not by the market, but by the government's behavior, well then T-bills don't look so good anymore).

> Maybe it was the deficit outlook, maybe the global response to tariffs

Maybe it was the idea of 4 more years of shenanigans like this that freaked everyone out.

Yeah, the bond market started saying firmly "stop fucking around" and an adult seemingly appeared in the room

Interesting theory. China might have seen through this ploy and that's why they dumped treasuries.

I am extremely skeptical that a president and a party that massively increase the national debt every time they hold unified control, and whose single legislative goal this year is to do exactly that once again, is engaging in a sophisticated conspiracy to lower interest payments. If Trump and the GOP actually cared about the debt payments they wouldn't be arguing about how many trillions of dollars to add to it this year.

The much more likely scenario is that this is exactly what it looks like: an incompetent and corrupt president flailing around. Tariffs are an excellent tool for soliciting bribes since there are any number of ways various groups can be exempted, and this type of abuse has often happened historically. The ham-fisted way they have been implemented has done a great job of getting Trump attention. I've never seen anything to make me think that Trump cares more about the long term health of the country over getting bribes and attention for himself.

> Maybe it was the deficit outlook, maybe the global response to tariffs

Or, maybe, and hear me out on this, maybe it was Donald Trump literally saying he might default on US debt.

Maybe.

>Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky. Maybe it was the deficit outlook, maybe the global response to tariffs — but whatever it was, yields started climbing. Fast.

Seems pretty simple to me - bond yields moved up sharply because they follow inflation expectations. Bond holders take on inflation risk, so when future inflation is expected to increase, yields go up to compensate. Out of control tariffs equals out of control inflation, which equals rocketing bond yields. The fact that Trump's team didn't realize this would happen is both hilarious and frightening. This is Econ 101 stuff.

Just four hours before the U.S. administration announcement, posts here were already calling the surge in U.S. bond yields a "non-event." ( and being flagged..)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43630672

It was indeed about T-bills. Something Trump probably doesn't even know what it is. There’s no strategy, no objective, just sheer, unfiltered incompetence.

The stock market’s reprieve will be short-lived. In just eight days, this administration erased $5 trillion in market value, insulted its primary trading partner using language deeply offensive in Asian cultures, and made it clear to investors that it has zero credibility.

Futures are already negative, which is exactly what you'd expect. The market is responding. And let’s be honest: the claim about 75 countries eager to negotiate is a pure lie. The EU has publicly stated the U.S. administration was not even returning their calls.

Correct. It seems to me the increased bond yields payments will significantly exceed revenue raised from tariffs. This is imho a bad long-term signal. I very much doubt the markets will just return to normal after the extreme volatility of the last few days - the huge tariffs on China will cause a lot of economic pain within weeks, and the administration's bellicosity toward Canada and NATO do not project stability and rational decision-making.

Besides the financial uncertainty, I doubt businesses want to make huge capital investments within the US to re/build factories in such a febrile environment. Will they be 'encouraged' to make 'donations' or purchase Trump golf club memberships? Will their foreign management staff be abruptly deported if someone in the administration sours on their country of origin? Will they wake up one day to find they've been denounced by conservative influencers?

Yeah... if that was their reasoning then they are as dumb as a sack of rocks. The rates went up further after the tariffs pause today.

> Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky.

No shit. Having an inconsistent policy because of clear incompetence (xx Dimensional chess) is a very bad sign for the world largest economy. At some point this will hit the bonds which is the foundation of this economy.

That seems to be confirmed by el presidente:

Bessent said the decision had nothing to do with the markets.

“This was driven by the president’s strategy,” he told reporters outside the West Wing. “He and I had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along."

Trump later contradicted Bessent.

“I was watching the bond market," he said. “That bond market is very tricky.”

(https://www.yahoo.com/news/week-trump-pushed-global-economy-...)

The idea that Trump had a goal as sophisticated as that is just hilarious.

This sounds sensible but that's not what happened. The government debt is not an issue. Trump is more concerned about the stock market, and the market sent him a clear message.

> From the beginning, I’ve believed the executive branch's real goal was to push down the yield on the 10-year Treasury.

The "executive branch" is Trump. Everyone else is just running around making up excuses for whatever his last decision was.

The "goal" is whether Trump feels like (not) having tariffs and whatever value he feels they should be.

There is no "they": it's just Trump (or maybe whomever he last spoke to that could change mind).

this seems like an awfully convoluted and self defeating way to drive down bond yields....

I honestly don't think this was their overall goal (it doesn't logically make sense, given tax receipts dip during recessions and governments often take on even more debt,) but I do think that is why they blinked.

> But then something flipped. > Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky. Maybe it was the deficit outlook, maybe the global response to tariffs — but whatever it was, yields started climbing. Fast.

So, it's not this unstable president, his insult-spewing vice-president and his buddy the hyperactive billionaire manipulating a social network for Russia and China that makes the rest world want to avoid the USA for the next few years?

These complex 4D chess strategies never really pan out. Maybe someone in the administration thinks that was the goal but not Trump.

During the campaign Trump said he wanted 10 percent tariffs on the world and 60 percent tariffs on China. After all the noise we are now at… 10 percent tariffs with the world and 125 percent tariffs on China (pending negotiation with China).

Trump has been in love with tariffs since at least 1988. See https://www.wita.org/trade-news/trumps-love-for-tariffs-bega....

Can someone ELI5 this?

Yeah, that seems accurate.

"Alarm inside the Treasury Department over signs of distress in the US government bond market played a key role President Donald Trump’s decision to hit pause on his “reciprocal” tariff regime, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent raised those concerns directly to Trump in their meeting that preceded the announcement, underscoring the concerns shared by White House economic officials who had briefed the president on the accelerating selloff in the US Treasury market earlier in the day.

The market turmoil has rattled administration officials and market participants because it’s the exact opposite of what historically occurs in moments of global economic crisis or volatility. US Treasuries are considered the safest corner of the market. It’s the place investors across the globe flee toward with the assurance that the dominant US role in the global financial system will ensure asset safety.

But at the same moment Trump’s tariffs were causing foreign leaders to question the durability of longstanding US security and economic alliances, the rapid selloff of safe-haven assets raised concern that financial markets have similar concerns.

Trump acknowledged he’d been watching the bond market, telling reporters after the announcement the market is “very tricky.”

A spike in yields in the 10-year benchmark was of particular concern for Treasury officials. When the yields rise, US consumers face higher costs on things like mortgage rates for homes and financing costs for businesses."

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-tariffs-cnn-tow...

The yield really isn't that big a deal. It's hundreds of billions of dollars over decades if it moves by 1 percent. Compare that to tax cuts leading to trillion dollar annual deficits.

I mean, it could well be that they are risking the stability of the US economy to save money on refinancing the debt, but that would be a stupid thing to be doing.

Trump formulated his ideas on tariffs in the 1980s. He talked about them with Oprah in another ero. He didn't do this in preparation for some realization of the bond situation in 2025.

> But then something flipped.

All those long 8 weeks that people spent complaining about soft power, and the US government spent trying to gaslight people saying that they don't even use the power... The people complaining were talking about something real.

Why is this weird conspiratorial 5d chess theory voted to the top?

You read too much into it. Trump is manipulating the market for personal enrichment, in the most mundane manner.

Most upvoted comment is AI generated slop.

I disagree. Trump has been threatening tariffs since 2016. Each step he gets closer to significant tariffs. This time he stepped back after they seemed real.

Now businesses know he really, super means it this time, so they get another reprieve. But next time it would be hard to claim Trump didn’t warn them.

I have a feeling the real reason is just that trump is a moron. I think a lot of people are reading it like poop sneered on the bathroom wall.

I think you’re projecting more advanced thinking here than you can give them credit for. The administration doesn’t have military guys keeping discipline.

You have Trump who has an instinctive affinity for tariffs, and a wack pack of various characters doing whatever. I’d guess they thought the Chinese would roll over rather that start dumping bonds.

If your goal is 'lower the rate at which you'll refinance a bit of debt by a quarter of a percentage point', blowing up your export economy, import and tourism industry, and introducing a national 40% sales tax seems like a really weird way to achieve it.

Given that all of those things would torpedo your ability to actually service debt, both new and old.

But what do I know? /s

Also china has 125% tarriff but the reason that they couldn't originally give 10% to Vietnam was trans-shipment of Chinese goods.

If it wasn't happening before, it certainly will be now.

What's actually wrong with them.

Idiots, all. This feels like the sort of mistake I'd make. As in, me, myself, without a team of people planning and reviewing who could comfortably doublecheck when they thought I was getting something a little wrong in my orders. Which suggests to me that this is being done by one or two guys who do not have such a team. Which is insane.

Seems they reversed course on that. Or, they don’t know what they’re doing.

> It's been a confusing day.

> As Verity said, it turns out Canada and Mexico are not getting a new 10 per cent tariff after all.

> The White House reversed its earlier announcement in a new statement just now. Here's the bottom line: No new developments for Canada and Mexico today.

> That means there are still worldwide 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminum, on some auto parts in North America, and on some goods traded within North America outside the rules of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade (CUSMA).

> The bottom line here: Trump is starting an economic war on China, and U.S. allies are all taking some friendly fire. But a large swath of Canadian trade is spared.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/livestory/trump-pauses-most-gl...

The U.S. ambassador to Canada has since informed the government that this is not the case, and the tariff's currently in place will remain unchanged for now[1].

However, with this administration, who really knows?

Perhaps Trump is staying quiet to avoid aiding Carney in the election. Perhaps he'll announce harsher tariff's on Canada tomorrow. Canada did retaliate and hasn't been hit with retaliation for retaliating, which gives the lie to Trump's statements that countries should refrain from retaliating if they don't want to be treated even worse.

There is not one whit of consistency or logic on display here.

[1]https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-will...

Like when an LLM does a tiny coding error that isn't too noticeable though.

This seems to have been clarified to not be the case, as of 30m ago -- no change to Canada/Mexico:

>There’s no change to Canada and Mexico tariffs, indicating that their levies aren’t going down to the 10% baseline. Recall that Trump initially threatened a 25% surtax on each of them. That morphed over time to affect non-USMCA compliant goods -- and it’s not crystal-clear exactly what proportion of Canadian and Mexican shipments that then affects. Canadian energy products also got a smaller rate.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/live-blog/2025-04-08/trump-ta...

I've seen relatively little discussion about these lawsuits, but I do think there is a pretty good chance that SCOTUS will rule these tariffs unconstitutional. (It's certainly more likely than Congress rescinding the powers they've ceded to the presidency.)

Constitutionally, the power to set tariffs resides with the Legislative branch, not the Executive branch. Congress has delegated some authority to set tariffs under certain conditions (namely, emergencies and matters related to national security). But the Court is clear that one branch cannot delegate all of its powers to another. The Court is pretty deferential to the Executive branch, especially in matters of national security. But no matter how much you squint, it's hard to see how setting broad based tariffs on all goods from every foreign countries qualifies under the Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Seems kinda crazy that so much power was ever vested in the president.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48435

I'm starting to subscribe to the idea this was blatant market manipulation.

Trump is only out to make money, the guy never had any other thought in life since money gives him status, fame, and power.

It's a grift, as any other of his grifts, but now he can manipulate the whole stock market with his power.

There's nothing else that I can rationally come up with to explain this absurdity.

I still wonder why this was not done instantly by EU.

US has an imbalance on goods that was used to calculate the tariff amount, but it has the opposite imbalance on service from what I've read

Much harder to enforce against services.

Physical goods you can hold until tariffs are paid.

Services are paid for by invoices between two corporate entities whose legal domicile may have nothing to do with the real country of origin of the services.

Lots of European SaaS providers invoice US customers from their US subsidiary - impossible to distinguish the transaction in order to put a tariff on it.

The EU is discussing it, but are currently debating if that would be seen as an escalation of the conflict.

Yes it would be a strong response, but unlike the US we are not interested in appearing like the strongest idiots, the EU would rather we all get along and trade. We'd rather work on real issues instead of this self damaging garbage.

Yes, that makes sense for Europe but it doesn't help China, because China already prevents a considerable amount of US media consumption and much of what is consumed is bootlegged anyways.

This is exactly what EU is discussing

The Brazilian Congress finished approving a law yesterday granting the president powers to retaliate by voiding intellectual property.

>software-as-a-service subscriptions

when people in other countries use that at a non-trivial scale, aren't the servers on the other end of the connection still located in their region?

I think partly the historical legacy, but also the ease of enforcement and the fact that lower tariffs and services have trended together.

Collecting taxes on goods flowing through a limited number of physical locations is much much easier than trying to audit the client list of a huge number of foreign service providers.

Agreed that other countries are considering this.

Enforcement will be the issue here.

If I order physical goods from a foreign nation it's gonna have to somehow get into my hands, and can be withheld until i pay tariffs

If a irish subsidiary invoices me subscription prices for intangible services, there's no way in the current legal world to enforce a tax on my end

I'm curious what sort of "as a service" things you would have applied this to in the past? Seems like a simple answer of "yes" as to whether how we collected taxes in the past were largely a legacy of how trade happened?

I'm also not sure why other countries aren't moving to criminalize trading crypto to try to tank him and his cronies since the US has given up on preventing presidential conflict of interest.

>I don't know how companies can do any planning.

They can't. They're saying it out loud updating their guidance.

In polite terms, on earnings calls you're going to hear "we don't know what the fuck to predict".

Follow Bloomberg and you'll hear bank CEOs saying the same thing about the markets, they have no idea what to predict or how to price anything. Right now the line is that America looks like an emerging market with unpredictable wild swings based on policy changes. That is going to drive everyone away from the US, industries, customers, and trade partners.

No, apple only has 125% tariffs on imports from China to the US. They can send them elsewhere (or parts) and send India-made devices to the US instead for example.

Its possible they will learn to live with the ebb and tide and ride along. What else can you do?

Apple is perhaps already hiring a fleet of planes and ships to transport iPhones from all over the world to the US.

This is pure manipulation. It was engineered to just that from the start. Since it's America, no investigation will be done to look into who profited here - possibly billions off regular people who had margin calls. 3rd world country.

The president told his Truth Social followers that it's a great time to buy stock just a few hours before this announcement: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1143082727259...

It's probably many things, but one part of it is for sure stock manipulation.

"...I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history,"

A finance whiz could tell you that it wasn't the biggest day in the market's history, but maybe a cause for extra celebration among a more select few.

Indeed, the 90 days delay leaked in the morning before being denied and at the end of the day there was the official announcement. So some people new before the official announcement and shared the information.

No. Honest answer.

Hanlon's Razor? /shrug

Anything world leaders do impacts the market.

Its stock manipulation all the way down, if you’re inclined to see it that way.

There isn’t a serious plan to bring manufacturing back. You can debate whether there is a plan for high-pressure negotiations, insider trading or kickbacks (e.g. Nvidia’s successful deployment of a million dollar dinner at Mar-a-Lago), etc. but you can tell that it’s not a good-faith attempt to invest in American industry because that would start with the two things you mentioned: you’d see the investment in those industries now and a commitment to raising taxes on foreign competition in 2030 or so when people have had time to actually be able to meet demand.

What we’re seeing now makes as much sense as a middle-aged laptop jockey deciding that they want to be in better shape – and then quitting their job to run in the Badwater Ultramarathon the next week.

How about facilitating a monster load of insider trading?

I'm sorry, but only in April of 2025 you are wondering if there is an actual plan? Were you paying any attention at all from 2016-2020?

It looks like the administration is filled with people more interested in making a buck for themselves, rather than do what is best for the country.

Everyone knows that getting another trump may not be possible for at-least another 10 or so years (I don't mean the dems will win, just that republicans may put forth a saner version of trump just to save the party)

Yup. The next 3.75 years are going to suck. Thank you, GOP, for completely shirking your responsibility to keep this kind of garbage in check.