Retreat or negotiating strategy? Trump steps back from all-out trade war

For days, Donald Trump and his White House team had insisted they were fully committed to their decision to impose sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries. They even derided a report on Tuesday that said the president was considering a 90-day pause – news that triggered a brief stock market surge.
But now that pause on higher tariff rates, with a few notable exceptions, is a reality. The reordering of the global economic order is on hold, and Trump’s promise of a golden age of American manufacturing will have to wait.
The White House has said that going big on tariffs and then hitting the pause button, before entering negotiations with individual countries, was the plan all along.
“We’ve had more than 75 countries contact us, and I imagine, after today, there will be more,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters shortly after the announcement.
That framing from the White House is not surprising, of course. And it is difficult to ignore the investor panic, tumbling bond market and growing chorus of Republican criticism and public disapproval that preceded the announcement.

Source: BBC