Trump says he's backing down on most nations' tariffs for 90 days amid market meltdown. He however added that he's raising tariffs on China to 125%.
The White House confirmed Trump's announcement of a 90-day tariff "pause" saying it means that the "tariff level will be brought down to a universal 10% tariff."
Trump says pause applies to countries that 'did not retaliate'
US President Donald Trump spoke to reporters about the 90-day pause on tariffs, saying he acknowledged that people were getting "a little bit afraid" about the tariffs and were "jumping a bit out of line."
Trump said the tariffs pause was for countries that didn't retaliate, which explained why China wasn't included.
"China wants to make a deal. They just don't know how quite to go about it... President Xi (Jinping) is a proud man... They don't know quite how to go about it, but they'll figure it out," Trump said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also spoke about what's next, saying that the negotiations with individual countries would be "bespoke," meaning that the next 90 days would involve talks on a flurry of potential deals.
Bessent tried to reassure reporters that the tariff pause decision had nothing to do with negative reactions from the financial markets to the tariff policy.
The treasury secretary said he and Trump "had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along" and that the president had "goaded China into a bad position."
"The only certainty we can provide is that the US is going to negotiate in good faith, and we assume that our allies will too," Bessent said.
