Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25

I did a 90-day pause for the people that didn't retaliate.

At the end of a year or shorter, I think we're going to have something that nobody would have dreamt possible. Trump pauses tariffs and sends the market soaring.
I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, April 10th, and this is Morning Wire.
While the market recovers, the Trump administration says it's time to focus on everyday Americans. For the last four decades, Wall Street has grown wealthier than ever before.
But for the next four years, the Trump agenda is focused on Main Street. And will China hold out in the terror for war with Trump? We talked to a supply chain expert about what Beijing will do next.
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In a stunning development Wednesday, President Trump paused tariffs on all trading partners with the exception of China. Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips is here to break down what led to the decision and how markets responded.
So Cabot, a really remarkable 24 hours. Where do things stand now? Yeah, one week ago, President Trump enacted the largest tariffs in a century.
And then yesterday with a single social media post, he put nearly all of them on pause. Trump announced in a truth social post that effective immediately, there would be a 90 day pause on nearly all tariffs.
In the meantime, a flat 10% rate will go into effect. If you walked outside yesterday afternoon and felt a strong breeze, that was actually the collective sigh of relief from world leaders making its way across the globe.
Well, and investors were also joining in that relief. Tell us about the market response.
Well, the president said Wednesday morning that it was a, quote, great time to buy. And he was not kidding.
Within five minutes of his announcement, trillions of dollars in value had been added to the markets. By the time markets closed, the Dow was up more than 2,900 points, nearly 8%.
The S&P skyrocketed nearly 10%, the largest one-day gain since 2008. And the Nasdaq saw its biggest daily gain in nearly a quarter century, surging 12%.
All told, the broad market index on Wall Street saw its third largest gain since World War II. Hopefully some of our listeners bought the dip because the market appears to be roaring back.
Right. So let's get to China.
That's the one country where Trump offered no relief. Yeah, quite the opposite.
Remember, while the vast majority of our trading partners held off on retaliatory tariffs and sought a deal, Beijing raised their rates to 34% and then 84%. That clearly outraged the president, who said, quote, based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets, I'm hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125 percent effective immediately.
We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tariffs now on the table. The White House says the Chinese have shown the world their hand and proven once and for all that they cannot be trusted to operate fairly.
As Treasury Secretary Scott Besson put it, Beijing fell into President Trump's trap. What China is doing will affect their economy much more than it will ours.
This was his strategy all along. And you might even say that he goaded China into a bad position.
They responded. They have shown themselves to the world to be the bad actors.
And according to the White House, China will be forced to blink first and make a favorable deal with the U.S. That's because they say their economy is so reliant on shipping cheap goods to other countries, mainly America.
In Trump's words, China may be projecting strength, but they are desperate for relief. China wants to make a deal.
They just don't know how quite to go about it. President Xi's a proud man.
I know him very well. And they don't know quite how to go about it, but they'll figure it out.
So what comes next? Well, the White House made clear they're going to take the next 90 days to hammer out as many trade deals as possible. And they've made clear what they're looking for.
Lower tariffs, lower value-added taxes, and the removal of import bans on certain American products. If those demands are not met, the tariffs will be back on three months from now.
We've had more than 75 countries contact us, and I imagine after today there will be more. So it is just a processing problem.
Each one of these solutions is going to be bespoke, it is going to take some time, and President Trump wants to be personally involved. So that's why we're getting the 90 day pause.
And the secretary went on to specifically note that Vietnam, India, South Korea and Japan were all at the front of the line for negotiations. Now, that's important because those are all of China's biggest competitors in Asia.
The White House clearly sending a message to Beijing,

make a deal now where the U.S. and the rest of the world will send their business elsewhere.

Here's White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt.

Many of you in the media clearly missed the art of the deal.

You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.

You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China,

when in fact we've seen the opposite effect. The entire world is calling the United States of America, not China, because they need our markets, they need our consumers, and they need this president in the Oval Office to talk to them.
And for his part, Secretary Besant went on to offer a warning to countries considering cozying up to China. Quote, you'll be cutting your own throat.
So the Trump administration using these tariffs, not just to negotiate trade deals, but also as an attempt to push the world away from China. Well, in our next segment, we're going to hear from a supply side expert on what China might do next.
Cabot, thanks for reporting. Absolutely.
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Amid the tariff fallout, the White House is working to make their economic case to Main Street Americans. Here with a look at what Trump and his team are saying is Daily Wire deputy managing editor Tim Rice.
So Tim, the White House is clearly trying to make sure the conversation doesn't get stuck on tariffs. What other plans are they highlighting? Well, Georgia, that all comes down to another of Trump's favorite phrases, tax cuts.
The president talked about them at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner on Monday. He spoke about his plan to extend his 2017 tax cuts and urged Republicans to vote for a budget bill that he's calling the Big Beautiful Bill.
It's so important that we pass the Big Beautiful Bill. I really think it actually puts pressure on those few Republicans that just can't get there.
You know what the alternative is? A Democrat bill, but just in case there are a couple of Republicans out there, you just got to get there. Close your eyes and get there.
It's a phenomenal bill. Stop grandstanding.
Just stop grandstanding. In addition to tax cuts, the bill would raise the debt ceiling and allocate more money for the Trump administration's deportation efforts.
Republicans are reportedly hoping to pass the bill by Memorial Day. The White House is clearly trying to shift the focus away from tariffs and to that bill, along with the rest of the administration's economic agenda.
In a speech to the American Bankers Association yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant gave a summary of what that agenda entails. For too long, financial policy has served large financial institutions at the expense of smaller ones.
No more. This administration aims to give all banks the chance to succeed, whether it's J.P.
Morgan or your local mortgage and loan. It aims to get capital to Americans who need it by getting

bureaucracy out of the way. It's Main Street's turn.
It's Main Street's turn to hire workers.

It's Main Street's turn to drive investment. And it's Main Street's turn to restore the American

dream. Right.
Well, this is what Trump ran on. Did Besson address concerns about a potential

recession?

He did, though he made sure to tie everything back to the broader economic agenda.

Our fiscal situation is a 350-pound, two-pack-a-day smoker on the ICU table,

and he or she is not going to get off that table and run the Ironman.

We can't do it all at once, or that will cause a recession.

What will keep us from having a recession is making sure that we're going to get off that table and run the Ironman. We can't do it all at once, or that will cause a recession.
What will keep us from having a recession is making sure that the tax bill doesn't expire, adding back 100% depreciation, and then adding some of President Trump's agenda,

no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime.

We'll continue to track the progress of this bill. Tim, thanks for reporting.
You bet. President Trump's suspension of his sweeping tariffs yesterday excluded one key country, China, which now faces some daunting economic decisions.
Joining us now is Jim Nels, an expert supply chain consultant. Jim, thanks so much for joining us.
So China retaliated against the U.S. and now Trump is turning up the pressure on them by raising tariffs even further.
You've just returned from China. What did you hear on the ground there in terms of their response to this Trump tariff battle? What people are saying off the record is that they're extremely concerned with a tariff war with the United States.
Their economy is hurting a bit. Their manufacturing sector is not where it has been in the past.
Some of the factories are running at between 40 and 60 percent capacity utilization, which is not good. That's also why a lot of my clients, before Trump announced all the reciprocal tariffs, their Chinese suppliers were saying, hey, we'll send you components to other places in Asia and you can assemble the components there to avoid the Chinese tariff.
They're doing everything they can to try to figure out how to get around these tariffs that are in place. Got it.
So when the Trump administration says they believe this is a good moment to apply a lot of pressure to China, do you agree? Do you think that they are correct in their assessment of China and its vulnerabilities at this time? Yes, I think it's a good time to do it. What I really hope that we can see is everyone get rid of all the tariffs and all of the non-tariff trade restrictions so that we can have what we all want, which is free and fair trade, where the countries that are good at manufacturing some things, manufacture those, and the countries that are good at manufacturing other things, manufacture those.
And I think Jamie Dimon said it very well this morning in an interview where he said, we really need to focus on the right industries in the United States, right? Where your tennis shoes come from is probably not as important as where your pharmaceuticals come from. And so, you know, I think we're going to see that type of a shift, but it's going to take a little bit of time.

Now, what we saw from Trump initially was this blanket application of reciprocal tariffs.

But you're saying that you're seeing this going in a more strategic, narrowed manner in the days to come.

Is that what you expect?

Well, that's what I hope.

And I think a lot of it comes down to what President Trump is actually trying to achieve because he's sending mixed messages right now.

One hand, he's saying that he wants manufacturing to return to the United States.

Thank you. down to what President Trump is actually trying to achieve, because he's sending mixed messages right now.
On one hand, he's saying that he wants manufacturing to return to the United States, but that's not going to happen. And even if it did, I'm not sure how much of an impact that has.
So, for example, U.S. manufacturing peaked in 1979, where 20 million workers were employed in manufacturing.
That was about 22 percent of the non-farm workforce. Today, it's about 13 million people who are employed in manufacturing, which is about 10% of the non-farm workforce.
So even if it doubled back to where it used to be, you're only looking at another 13 million jobs. America was never a nation that were manufacturing represented 80% of the economy or anything like that.
So to think that we're going to make everything in the United States is simply wrong. We are starting to see, though, people really thinking hard about repatriating some things into the United States.
I have clients that are looking longer term here. There's one thing to remember with these tariffs.
If you look back to the first set of Trump tariffs in 2018, President Biden did not reverse those. He left those in place.
So even when President Trump leaves office in 2028, the tariffs may not go away. So I think a lot of companies are taking a slow, let's figure this out approach, and then what is the right long-term solution? With your familiarity with the Chinese regime and the industry there, how entrenched do you think they'll become? Are they in the end pragmatist when it comes to this kind of thing, or do they care more about the sort of symbolic wins in terms of fighting back against Trump? Well, it's interesting.
There are two theories on this right now. One is that, and it's not just China, it's any Asian culture, right? Saving face is very, very important.
So they are probably having a lot of internal discussions about how they can adapt to the tariffs or come to some sort of a deal while saving face. Another theory that's been floating around is that China may actually aggressively come back and reduce all their tariffs and try to negotiate a deal with Trump, looking like they typically do to the long term and saying, we'll go through three and a half years of pain with no tariffs, we'll placate the United States, we'll placate President Trump, and then when there's a new president, we'll slowly put these restrictions back in place and they won't do anything.
That actually seems like a very likely scenario given how not just the Chinese, but again, Asians tend to look long term, not on a quarter by quarter basis, which we do typically here in the United States.

Well, as we said, the situation is rapidly developing. So we'll see how this all settles

out. Jim, thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you. Take care.

Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.