Trump's Manly Tariffs

The manufactured pause: Yesterday, news spread that the Trump administration was considering a 90-day pause to its implementation of the most massive round of tariffs, currently set to go into effect tomorrow. The market started climbing back up as the news made the rounds and was relayed by CNBC and Reuters. The only trouble was that this was made up and amplified on X, with no bearing in reality.

It looks like the posts came from an actual Fox News interview with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett in which he was asked whether the president would “consider a 90-day pause in tariffs.” Hassett replied: “The president is going to decide what the president is going to decide.” (“I would urge everyone, especially Bill [Ackman], to ease off the rhetoric a little bit,” he added. “It’s the idea that it’s going to be a ‘nuclear winter’ or something like that is completely irresponsible rhetoric.”)

An X post from “Hammer Capital” (handle: “yourfavorito”) with about 1,000 followers appears to have originated the 90-day pause rumor circa 10:11 a.m. ET.

“At about 10:12 a.m., CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich, who was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, said that cheers had broken out, as stock indices—which were already recovering from early-morning lows—suddenly surged,” reports CNN. “‘Walter Bloomberg,’ an account with a much larger following … copy-and-pasted the original rumor along with a siren emoji at 10:13 a.m.” The recovery continued. CNBC and Reuters started circulating the news, having failed to corroborate.

Meanwhile, Trump lackeys continued to make the rounds saying extraordinarily dumb things. Peter Navarro, senior White House trade adviser, guarantees no recession. Don’t you feel so much better?

Meanwhile, the Fox folks are having a blast with the chyrons and touting our return to manufacturing as the thing that will callus up the soft hands of American men, or whatever. Good thing the urban-core men stocked up on Carhartt; they’ll need it on the assembly line.

I give up. pic.twitter.com/F6TcH2ys0N

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) April 7, 2025

Those inclined to give the administration the most possible credit, and to see 4D chess moves everywhere they look, have theorized that the Trump administration could be imposing such intense tariffs as a bargaining chip to actually bring about more free trade by persuading other countries to come to the negotiating table. This theory appears to be getting less believable by the day. Yesterday, the European Union said it would fully drop its tariffs on American cars and industrial goods if the U.S. would do the same; Navarro turned around and criticized the bloc for its value-added taxes and restrictions on American meat exports, saying “You steal from the American people every which way is possible.”

Then he turned to Vietnam, which he accused of intellectual property theft and killing the American shrimp industry. “When they come to us and say, we’ll go to zero tariffs, that means nothing to us, because it’s the non-tariff cheating that matters,” he added. So the theory that this is all a ploy to get way freer trade than before does not look likely at all.

Supreme Court says there’s a jurisdiction issue: Last night, the Supreme Court declined to rule on the constitutionality of the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to send deportees to prison in El Salvador, but did overturn a lower court’s ruling, allowing the administration to continue such deportations for now as the lawyers for the migrants “should have…filed in Texas, where the Venezuelans are being held, rather than a court in Washington,” per The New York Times. 

Make no mistake: This is a very narrow ruling. It’s likely more will come soon. “All nine justices agreed that the Venezuelan migrants detained in the United States must receive advance notice and the opportunity to challenge their deportation before they could be removed, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence,” per the Times. Trump is claiming the ruling as much more of a win than it is, loudly proclaiming that yesterday was “A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” on Truth Social.

Meanwhile, Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay, temporarily pausing a trial judge’s attempt to force the administration to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States. This too should not be interpreted as a bigger thing than it is: He appears to be buying and biding time.

BREAKING: Chief Justice Roberts has indefinitely blocked the court order requiring Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return tonight. https://t.co/yoeNMJnL8m pic.twitter.com/vx7k4IXIMV

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) April 7, 2025

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Scenes from New York: “Adrienne Adams, the New York City Council speaker who is running for mayor, proposed on Monday a guaranteed basic income program that would be the largest of its kind in the United States,” reports The New York Times. “It would aim to help more than 21,000 homeless children and young adults” giving “an initial one-time stipend of $2,500, followed by monthly payments over three years that start at $1,000 per month and then fall to $500 per month.” This proposal would cost the city about $430 million over the course of two years.

This isn’t the first time Adams has tried this approach. On city council, she’s spearheaded an effort to spend $1.5 million to support a nonprofit (the Bridge Project) that gives guaranteed income to new moms.

But New York City already has a $4 billion budget for homelessness alleviation services; the problem really isn’t lack of money.

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QUICK HITS

• “Where I’ve come down on morally is that there are probably, conservative estimate, 2 billion people on planet Earth who would give their right arm for a green card to the United States,” Batya Ungar-Sargon tells us on Just Asking Questions. “And we are depriving every single one of them of a limited resource because we’ve given it to somebody who has engaged in, if not material support, certainly symbolic support for an enemy of the United States. So to me, morally, I feel very comfortable about it. I really don’t think [the Mahmoud Khalil case] is about free speech at all. I don’t this slippery slope argument holds at all, they’re clearly not going anywhere near American citizens. Nobody really thinks that that’s happening or that’s going to happen. I think the distinction between citizen and noncitizen is fundamental to how this administration sees its domestic policy, its labor policy, and its foreign policy.” Watch here:

• Trump administration asks for a sixfold increase in spending on immigrant detentions.
• “BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said most CEOs he talks to think the US is in a recession,” reports Bloomberg. “The economy is weakening as we speak,” said Fink on Monday at the Economic Club of New York. “I would say in the long run, this is more of a buying opportunity than it is a selling opportunity,” said Fink. “That doesn’t mean we can’t fall another 20% from here, too.”
• Really good point:

Peter Navarro said something quite revealing on CNBC today about BMW’s factory in South Carolina: “That doesn’t work for America. It’s bad for our economics, it’s bad for our national security.”

This piqued my interest. I grew up very close to that BMW facility — the company’s… pic.twitter.com/bDrjSzI3TV

— John W Lettieri (@LettieriDC) April 7, 2025

• Amir Makled, an attorney from Dearborn, Michigan, was flagged by Immigration and Customs Enforcement upon reentering the country from a family trip to the Dominican Republic. He was questioned, which he theorizes may be due to the types of clients he represents. “This current administration is doing something that no administration has done,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “They are attacking attorneys. This is a different type of threat to the rule of law that I see. They are now challenging the judiciary, or lawyers, they’re putting pressure (on them) to dissuade attorneys from taking on issues that are against the government’s issues. We have an obligation as lawyers to stand up to this stuff.”
• An interesting, solid profile of Usha Vance—the second lady—which spends a fair bit of time on the impact of the treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, who Usha Vance clerked for, during the height of #MeToo.
• Always check for ulterior motives:

The guy cheering on Trump’s tariffs and telling stock investors to shut up about their losses is literally betting against Corporate America viz CDS. https://t.co/96iCUUQ5AP

— Tracy Alloway (@tracyalloway) April 7, 2025

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Source: https://reason.com/2025/04/08/trumps-manly-tariffs/