President Donald Trump shared on Truth Social that he has “ authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%.” Trump also raised the tax rate on Chinese imports to 125%.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters that the pause was not a result of the brutal selloffs in the financial markets but rather because other countries are seeking negotiations. About an hour later, Trump told reporters that he pulled back on many tariffs because people were getting “yippy” and “afraid.”
Here’s the latest:
Trump told reporters at the White House that he “can’t imagine” he would need to increase tariffs on China again to get them to the negotiating table.
“We calculated it very carefully,” the president said.
The Homeland Security official who authored an anonymous op-ed and book critical of Trump before unmasking himself said the president has proven his point by directing the Justice Department to investigate him.
“Dissent isn’t unlawful,” Miles Taylor said in a post on the social platform X. “It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path.”
President Donald Trump has signed another executive order targeting a law firm whose work he opposes.
The latest one applies to Susman Godfrey, whose lawyers represented Dominion Voting Systems in a lawsuit that accused Fox News of falsely claiming that the company rigged the 2020 presidential election. Fox News ultimately agreed to pay nearly $800 million to avoid trial.
White House staff secretary Will Scharf said the order will mean that the firm cannot use government resources or buildings.
Trump has issued a series of orders meant to punish firms, including by ordering the suspension of lawyers’ security clearances and revoking federal contracts. He has succeeded in extracting concessions from some that have settled, but others have successfully challenged the orders in court.
The president called Whitmer a “very good person” who has done an “excellent job.”
The remark came with the governor in the Oval Office as Trump signed executive orders and attacked political opponents.
The remarks marked a sharp departure from his tone in his first presidency toward Whitmer, once one of his fiercest critics.
Since his reelection Whitmer has signaled a willingness to find common ground. Hours before the meeting, she delivered a speech voicing partial support for tariffs — though she criticized how Trump had carried them out.
Trump signed an executive order that aims to roll back water efficiency standards on appliances, according to the White House.
That prompted the president to muse about how he likes to let the water run in the shower and how new faucets are disappointing.
“In my case, I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair,” Trump said.
Anytime you see a new faucet, he said, “you know it’s going to be a long wash of the hands.”
The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Trump administration to oust two board members who oversee independent agencies, for now.
Chief Justice John Roberts signed an order pausing a ruling from the federal appeals court in Washington that had temporarily restored the two women to their jobs. They were separately fired from agencies that deal with labor issues, including one with a key role for federal workers as President Donald Trump aims to drastically downsize the workforce.
Roberts handles emergency appeals from the nation’s capital.
▶ Read more about the judge’s ruling
Despite President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause limiting tariffs, imports from Mexico and Canada will still get taxed by as much as 25%.
That’s according to a White House backgrounder. Unlike the tariffs that Trump temporarily took down to 10% to give time for negotiations, the taxes on the United States’ two largest trading partners are a separate matter. Mexico and Canada are being tariffed ostensibly to stop fentanyl smuggling and illegal immigration.
The backgrounder contradicted an earlier statement by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said Mexico and Canada would also be tariffed at 10%.
The Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office was opened under Trump’s first term and then closed under former President Joe Biden’s administration.
The office helps victims receive automated custody status information about immigrants and helps them make victim impact statements in court cases, among other things.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the office’s reopening during a news conference with families of people who had been killed by people in the country illegally.
Trump said he was watching the markets the past few days and said that “it looked pretty glum,” and that he saw on Tuesday that on the bond market, “people were getting a little queasy.”
“The bond market right now is beautiful,” the president told reporters at the White House.
Trump defended his decision to launch the tariffs, sending shocks into the market, because the situation with the U.S.’s trading partners “wasn’t sustainable.”
“Somebody had to pull the trigger. I was willing to pull the trigger,” he said.
The president said he would consider exempting some companies hit particularly hard by the tariffs, but when asked how he would make those determinations, he said, “Just instinctively.”
“You almost can’t take a pencil to paper. It’s really more of an instinct,” he said.
Trump hosted champions from NASCAR, IndyCar and IMSA in the Oval Office, then chatted with them outside, near race cars parked on the White House driveway.
Trump asked how fast NASCAR champions Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney could go in cars like the one parked by the South Portico. When told it was 190 mph (306 kph), “One ninety? You can have it,” Trump said.
Informed that other vehicles for IndyCar and international motorsports were even faster, the president said he wouldn’t ride in those “if you paid me.”
Trump said he was a racing fan, adding that many people “don’t realize what great athletes they are.”
The whipsaw-like nature of Wednesday could be seen in the social media posts of Bill Ackman, a hedge fund billionaire and Trump supporter.
“Our stock market is down,” Ackman posted on the social platform X. “Bond yields are up and the dollar is declining. These are not the markers of successful policy.”
Ackman repeated in the post his call for a 90-day pause. When Trump embraced that idea several hours later, an ebullient Ackman posted that Trump had “brilliantly executed” his plan and it was “Textbook, Art of the Deal,” a reference to Trump’s bestselling 1987 book.
Trump was asked about volatile markets and his decision to back off on many tariffs after previously suggesting he wouldn’t do so.
His comments came as he was chatting with reporters during an event with racing champions on the White House driveway.
“He keeps changing things from day to day. His advisors are fighting among themselves, calling each other names, and you cannot run a country with such chaos,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer at a news conference that had originally been scheduled to call attention to the stock market plunge.
Schumer added that the danger from Trump’s tariffs had not passed and attributed his backing down to the reaction from across the country.
“Donald Trump is feeling the heat from Democrats and across America about how bad these tariffs are,” Schumer said. “He is reeling, he is retreating, and that is a good thing.”
About 7 in 10 voters believed that Trump imposing tariffs on dozens of countries was going to hurt the U.S. economy in the short-term, according to a Quinnipiac Poll conducted before the president announced a 90-day pause on most of those tariffs.
But there was less consensus that the long-term impact would be negative.
About half of voters believed the tariffs would hurt the U.S. economy in the long term.
Republican voters were about evenly divided on whether the tariffs would help or hurt the U.S. economy in the short term: 46% said they would help, and 44% said they would cause short-term pain.
Almost all Democrats and about three-quarters of independents believed the tariffs would harm the economy in the short term.
In a written statement, the first lady called the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s 49-1 vote a “significant step in our bipartisan efforts to safeguard our children from online threats.”
She urged the full House to “swiftly pass” the “Take It Down Act.” In March, Trump made a rare appearance on Capitol Hill by a first lady to personally lobby for the bill.
The Senate passed the measure in February.
The bill would make it a federal crime to knowingly publish or threaten to publish intimate imagery online without an individual’s consent. Social media platforms would have 48 hours to remove such images and take steps to delete duplicate content after a victim’s request.
GOP senators were attending a luncheon when Sen. Roger Marshall stood up and announced that Trump was backing down on most tariffs.
The room responded with applause, some cheers and relief, said senators who were in the meeting.
“It really lightened up the lunch discussion,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican, adding that there were “a lot of smiles.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., said he was relieved by the announcement and “we all would rather see the market rise than fall.”
Republicans in recent days have become louder with their concerns that Trump’s sweeping tariffs would harm the economy.
In the Senate, they have pushed the White House to negotiate trade deals rather than double down on the tariffs.
“Many of you in the media clearly missed the ‘Art of the Deal,’” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, in a nod to the Trump’s 1987 memoir and advice book.
“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,” she added.
The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency order to oust board members who oversee independent agencies, as a constitutional fight about presidential power plays out.
The quick appeal to the high court follows a ruling two days earlier in which a divided appeals court in Washington restored two board members to their jobs for now. They were separately fired from agencies that deal with labor issues, including one with a key role for federal workers as Trump aims to drastically downsize the workforce.
The immediate issue confronting the justices is whether the board members can stay in their jobs while the larger fight continues over what to do with a 90-year-old Supreme Court decision known as Humphrey’s Executor.
In that case from 1935, the court unanimously held that presidents cannot fire independent board members without cause.
The ruling has long rankled conservative legal theorists, who argue it wrongly curtails the president’s power. The current conservative majority on the Supreme Court already has narrowed its reach in a 2020 decision.
The Trump administration says it will appeal a federal court decision in a case brought against it by The Associated Press. That’s the ruling Tuesday that ordered it to readmit AP journalists to White House events on First Amendment grounds.
The government filed a notice of appeal early Wednesday afternoon on behalf of the three White House officials sued by the AP. The one-page notice of appeal gave no other details.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled in favor of the AP, whose reporters and photographers had been excluded from White House events since February because the news agency had decided not to follow the president’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
“The market didn’t understand, those were maximum levels. The countries can think about those levels as they come to us to bring down
their tariffs, their non-trade barriers,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters at the White House.
He said Trump “created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” and the Chinese have “shown themselves to the world as the bad actors.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells reporters that Trump is pausing his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on most of the country’s biggest trading partners but maintaining his 10% tariff on nearly all global imports.
The move comes after Jeremy Lewin, an Elon Musk associate helping lead the Trump administration’s dismantling of much of the United States’ foreign assistance program, expressed regret for killing those and other lifesaving aid programs over the weekend.
Lewin ordered funding restored on Tuesday for World Food Program emergency programs helping keep alive millions of refugees and others in Syria, Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Ecuador. That was after The Associated Press reported the cuts in emergency food support, and after appeals from the U.N. and some lawmakers.
However, the State Department said the cutoff of U.S. support for food aid would stand for Yemen and for Afghanistan, two conflict-ridden countries where millions are dependent on aid. The State Department said aid programs benefited the Taliban in Afghanistan and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appealed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio to reverse the other humanitarian cuts, as well, saying they would have devastating consequences.
A federal appeals court ruling on Wednesday halted a judge’s order requiring them to be reinstated.
A split panel for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the workers let go in mass firings must appeal the dismissals through a separate employment process.
The decision in a case filed by nearly two dozen states in Maryland comes a day after the Supreme Court blocked a similar order from a judge in California.
Trump announced that he is pausing his hiked-up tariffs on most countries for 90 days because of their interest in negotiating trade deals with the U.S. but is slapping another high tariff on China, citing a “lack of respect.”
The president made the announcement in a post on his Truth Social media network on Wednesday, causing stocks to quickly surge and the Dow Jones Industrial Average to shoot up 1,800 points.
Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. Agency for International Development has historically provided critical necessities, food, water and medicine to nations in the region that particularly help poor areas. Such assistance, he said, enables the U.S. to compete against China in the region.
While rescue teams from China and other nations have been prominent in the Myanmar earthquake responses, the U.S. has had no known presence on the ground beyond a three-member assessment team. America’s six-decade-old USAID has largely been dismantled by Trump through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams.
Asked about the lack of USAID assistance to the crisis, Paparo said, “The People’s Republic of China sees these opportunities, and they seize them.”
House Democrats pressed military and defense leaders on Wednesday about the national security impact of Trump’s new tariffs, saying the increased costs are pushing allies in the Pacific away from the U.S. and closer to China.
Speaking during a House Armed Services Committee hearing, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., said the recent economic meeting between Japan, Korea and China underscores that concern. He added, “This is driving our allies in the wrong direction.”
Democrats on the panel questioned John Noh, who is currently working as the assistant defense secretary for Indo-Pacific affairs, about whether the tariffs are hurting longtime military allies such as Australia, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.
“We have launched a trade war against every single one of our partners in the Asia region,” said the panel’s ranking democrat, Rep. Adam Smith, of Washington.
Noh repeatedly avoided answering, saying at one point, “I’m not here to talk about tariffs.”
The Trump administration calls China the key national security challenge and has vowed to focus more on the region.
Business executives are warning of a potential recession caused by Trump’s policies, some of the top U.S. trading partners are retaliating with their own import taxes and the stock market is quivering after days of decline.
Trump’s tariffs kicked in shortly after midnight on Wednesday, including 104% on products from China, 20% on the European Union, 24% on Japan and 25% on South Korea.
Administration officials have tried to reassure voters, Republican lawmakers and CEOs that the rates are negotiable — but by their own admission, that process could take months.
When a downturn appears on the horizon, investors typically crowd into U.S. Treasury notes as a safe haven, viewing the federal government as a source of stability. Not this time. Government bond prices are down, pushing up the interest rate on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note to 4.39%, a sign that the world is increasingly leery of Trump’s moves.
▶ Read more about how Trump is now facing off with global markets
Federal judges in New York and Texas on Wednesday took legal action to block the government from moving five Venezuelans out of the country until they can fight the government’s attempt to remove them under a rarely-invoked law that gives the president the power to imprison and deport noncitizens in times of war.
The men were identified as belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang, a claim their lawyers dispute.
Three men are being detained in a facility in Texas, while two more are being held in an Orange County, New York, facility. One man in Texas is HIV positive and fears lacking access to medical care if deported.
The actions came after civil liberties lawyers in Texas and New York sued in defense of the Venezuelans who are at risk of removal from the U.S. under a rarely-invoked law that gives the president the power to imprison and deport noncitizens in times of war.
All five men were identified by the government as belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says in a press release that it will begin screening the social media activity of immigrants who request benefits, including those who apply for lawful permanent resident status, foreign students and people affiliated with educational institutions “linked to antisemitic activity.”
The guidance is “effective immediately,” USCIS says.
The administration is focusing on “antisemitic activity” on social media and “physical harassment of Jewish individuals” as grounds for denying immigration benefits requests.
The announcement does not say what it is considered as “antisemitism” or identify any educational institutions. USCIS did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for information.
USCIS says it will consider social media content that indicates “endorsing, espousing, promoting, or supporting antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organizations, or other antisemitic activity as a negative factor.”
This afternoon, at 2 p.m. ET, Trump will participate in a photo opportunity with NASCAR racing champions.
At 2:30 p.m. ET, he will sign more executive orders.
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This entry has been corrected to show that Trump will participate in a NASCAR photo opportunity on Wednesday, not attend a future Daytona 500 race.
China has issued a travel advisory asking its citizens to evaluate the risks of visiting the U.S. as tourists and to exercise caution.
The advisory, issued by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism, cited the deterioration of the China-U. S. economic and trade relations as well as the “safety situation” in the U.S.
The advisory came shortly after China raised its tariffs on the U.S. to 84% as the trade war between the two countries escalated.
As the White House grapples with the economic fallout of Trump’s new tariffs, the president is shifting his focus to loosening regulations.
He is expected to sign a slew of executive orders later Wednesday that are centered around deregulation, according to a White House official. That person was granted anonymity to preview Trump’s plans.
— Associated Press reporter Seung Min Kim contributed to this report from Washington.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth again put China at the center of U.S. priorities in the Western Hemisphere on Wednesday, one day after calling the world power a threat to the Panama Canal.
Speaking at a regional security conference in Panama City, Hegseth said that China-based companies were controlling land and critical infrastructure in strategic sectors.
“China’s military has too large of a presence in the Western Hemisphere,” Hegseth said. “Make no mistake, Beijing is investing and operating in this region for military advantage and unfair economic gain.”
He called on the region’s governments to work together to deter China and address threats posed by transnational drug cartels and mass immigration.
European Union member states voted to approve the retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump’s 25% tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.
The tariffs will go into effect in stages, with some on April 15 and others on May 15 and Dec. 1. The EU executive commission didn’t immediately provide a list of the goods on Wednesday.
Members of the 27-country bloc repeated their preference for a negotiated deal to settle trade issues: “The EU considers U.S. tariffs unjustified and damaging, causing economic harm to both sides, as well as the global economy. The EU has stated its clear preference to find negotiated outcomes with the U.S., which would be balanced and mutually beneficial.”
The head of the EU’s executive commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has offered a zero-for-zero tariffs deal on industrial goods, including cars.
But Trump has said that’s not enough to satisfy U.S. concerns.
A Chinese envoy at a World Trade Organization council meeting on Wednesday said the U.S. tariffs infringed on the right of countries to develop, and noted that earthquake-hit Myanmar was facing an “exorbitant” 44% tariff and even an “uninhabited island, home only to penguins and seals” faced a 10% tariff.
The official said Trump’s tariffs contravened U.S. commitments under WTO rules, and the “so-called ‘reciprocal tariff’ has set the very architecture of the multilateral trading system ablaze.”
The Chinese diplomatic mission in Geneva provided a copy of the statement in the closed-door session to The Associated Press but declined to identify the speaker by name.
Contacted by the AP, the U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva declined to comment.
Trump says tariffs will be “ZERO” for companies that come back to America.
“This is a GREAT time to move your COMPANY into the United States of America,” the Republican president wrote on his social media site as he continues defending the sweeping global tariffs he announced last week that have since roiled the stock market.
U.S. stock futures were sinking again in premarket trading on Wednesday after massive U.S. tariffs against China kicked in overnight, followed by China retaliating with a huge tariff increase on U.S. imports.
Whitmer is in Washington to give a speech Wednesday on the economy and will meet with Trump at the White House in the afternoon, according to the governor’s spokesperson.
Whitmer is among a handful of Democratic governors who have spoken about finding ways to work with a Republican president who pushes policies they disagree with.
Whitmer and Trump also met at the White House last month.
