Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer attempted to speak for all of Planet Earth yesterday as he reacted with withering exasperation to Trump’s inevitable rowback in the face of intensifying market pressure.
The president’s economic advisers Peter Navarro and Howard Lutnick, two of the key faces of the tariff debacle, were meanwhile forced to face the music, insisting that the “golden age” Liberation Day was supposed to welcome is still happening, just not right now.
“You can feel it,” Lutnick insisted.
Perhaps only U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer – who was being grilled by Congress when Trump announced the pause on Truth Social and did not appear to have been briefed – had a worse day.
Joe Sommerlad10 April 2025 09:55
The U.S. benchmark S&P 500 index closed 9.5 per cent higher on Wednesday in response to Trump’s U-turn and the relief continued into Asian trading on Thursday with Japan’s Nikkei index surging more than 8 per cent, while even Chinese markets like the CSI 300 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index showed gains.
The UK’s FTSE 100 has since soared by more than 6 percent when stock markets opened in London.
You can follow all the latest market reaction with Tara Cobham below.
Joe Sommerlad10 April 2025 09:35
Social media erupted last night with accusations that the president had played a reverse “pump and dump” scheme with the American economy: driving stock prices down only to buy them up before prices rise again.
Democratic Senator Adam Schiff is calling for an investigation into insider trading, with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warning members of Congress to declare any recent stock purchases they might have made.
Joe Sommerlad10 April 2025 09:15
President Donald Trump changed course again on Wednesday and announced a 90-day pause of his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs while hiking other duties on China to 125 percent.
The president’s decision followed several days of sharp losses on the stock market.
In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed that his reversal was a result of what White House officials have claimed are dozens of foreign nations reaching out with the intention of re-negotiating trade policy with the United States, rather than implementing tariffs of their own.
He said yesterday afternoon that his decision was made in response to days of market panic and rippling effects across various economic sectors, which Trump and other White House officials spent days unsuccessfully trying to quell.
“I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,” Trump told reporters at a White House event with NASCAR drivers Wednesday afternoon.
“I’ve reversed it. It’s for a short period of time.”
He continued to try to explain away the disaster in the Oval Office a short while afterwards.
Here’s his latest attempt to spin what surely amounted to a humiliating climbdown that badly undermined his “Liberation Day” rhetoric, not to mention his political credibility.
Here’s a full report from John Bowden and Andrew Feinberg on a monumental day.
Joe Sommerlad10 April 2025 08:55
Mike Johnson backed down on Wednesday and canceled plans to vote on a Republican budget resolution acting as the vessel for major parts of Donald Trump’s agenda.
The Republican speaker of the House set up votes Wednesday on a budget resolution authored by his peers in the Senate as the GOP moves on to the next step of the reconciliation process. But Johnson, who can suffer just three defections among his caucus for the vote to succeed, is still facing (according to various reports) more than a dozen likely or potential “no” votes from Republicans if the vote goes ahead.
John Bowden has the latest from Washington, D.C.
Oliver O’Connell10 April 2025 07:45
The Trump administration has abruptly replaced FBI Director Kash Patel as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll has been named interim head of ATF while continuing to lead the Army, a person familiar with the matter told The Independent.
Ariana Baio has the details.
Oliver O’Connell10 April 2025 06:45
U.S. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard has reportedly set up her own DOGE-like group to cut costs and investigate “weaponization” in the 18 agencies under her authority, according to a new report.
Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group was established in adherence to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to “bring about transparency and accountability” in the U.S.’s intelligence agencies, according to a press release from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was released on Tuesday.
Oliver O’Connell10 April 2025 05:45
Oliver O’Connell10 April 2025 05:00
Oliver O’Connell10 April 2025 04:43
The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to overturn a rule that would have limited bank overdraft fees to $5, following the Senate in moving to dismantle the regulation that the Biden administration estimated would save consumers billions of dollars.
The resolution killing the rule, which passed the House 217-211, will now head to the White House for President Donald Trump’s signature.
Republicans argued that the “disastrous” regulation issued in the final days of President Joe Biden’s term would have forced banks to stop offering overdraft protection altogether and made it harder for Americans to access credit.
Democrats strongly opposed the effort and said the rule would help consumers who can’t afford the fees.
