Listening to no one else, Trump is ‘at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore,’ says White House official
After deliberations [on determining tariff rates] that went late into Tuesday, Trump didn’t decide on the final plan until about 1 p.m. Wednesday — less than three hours ahead of his Rose Garden announcement.
Inside and outside the White House, advisers say Trump is unbowed even as the world reels from the biggest increase in trade hostilities in a century. They say Trump is unperturbed by negative headlines or criticism from foreign leaders. He is determined to listen to a single voice — his own — to secure what he views as his political legacy.
“He’s at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore,” said a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f—. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”
In Trump’s first term, top aides including Gary Cohn, then the director of the National Economic Council, and Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, successfully constrained Trump’s tariff agenda.
Aides frequently sought to steer Trump in particular directions during heated Oval Office conversations, according to current and former officials. Trump’s White House then was beset by internal quarrels that spilled into public view, his team of advisers not just clashing on matters of personality but over deep ideological differences.
“In the first term,” a senior White House official said, “everyone thought they were president.”
This time, there was far less internal fighting. The president’s team mounted remarkably little dissent to a sweeping overhaul of trade policy, according to interviews with more than a dozen people inside and outside the administration, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private talks.
Among those involved in crafting options for country-specific tariff formulas were officials from the White House National Economic Council, the Commerce Department, the Council of Economic Advisers and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, people familiar with the matter said.
Early on, staff from the trade office spent weeks calling U.S. firms operating abroad to learn the precise challenges they faced in foreign countries. Numerous more sophisticated approaches were developed than the one Trump selected, people familiar with the matter said.
Ultimately, however, they treated Trump as the final decider of the merits of each policy.
In the room with Trump as he deliberated the tariff plan was a group of top White House advisers on economic issues: Navarro, Trump’s senior trade counselor; Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary; Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary; Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative; Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy; Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council; and Vice President JD Vance. Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was also in meetings. Hassett was not present for the final meeting Wednesday.
Navarro, consistent with his longtime position on tariffs, was the loudest champion of taking aggressive measures. Miller and Vance in particular, said a person with knowledge of the discussions, continually expressed deference to Trump’s preferences — reiterating that they were in favor of whatever the president wanted to do. Bessent, a hedge fund manager who some on Wall Street had hoped would serve as a potential ally in restraining the president’s tariffs, had made clear even before he was nominated that he would support Trump’s trade agenda, The Washington Post and other outlets have previously reported. [Continue reading…]
On Friday morning, the president shared a link on Truth Social to what appears to be a video claiming that he was “Purposely CRASHING The Market.”
The one-minute video — originally shared March 15 on TikTok — predates the president’s tariff announcement on Wednesday. It claims that “Trump is crashing the stock market by 20 percent this month, but he’s doing it on purpose. […] Here’s the secret game he’s playing, and it could make you rich.”
The video proposes that Trump is attempting to “push cash into treasuries, which forces the Fed to slash interest rates in May, and those lower rates give the Fed the ability to refinance trillions of debt very inexpensively. It also weakens the dollar and drops mortgage rates. Now it’s a wild chess move, but it’s working.”
“What about his tariffs? I’ll tell you, it’s a genius play,” the video adds. “It actually forces companies to build here to dodge them. It also forces farmers to sell more of their products here in the U.S., to bring grocery prices way down. We’ve already seen this with eggs. Now, remember, 94 percent of all stocks are owned only by 8 percent of Americans. So Trump, he’s taking from the rich short term and handing it to the middle class through lower prices.”
Sound dodgy and completely made up? Don’t stress, the video makes sure to point out that super rich guy Warren Buffett “just said [that] Trump is making the best economic moves he’s seen in over 50 years.” Only Warren Buffett never said that. He actually called Trump’s proposed tariff regime an “act of war.” [Continue reading…]