On Tuesday night, Donald Trump spent roughly an hour on a call with several Republican senators, all of whom urged him to pause his eye-watering global tariffs.
It came as cracks in support for the plan mounted. Billionaires had spoken out, financial leaders said a recession was on the horizon and the market was tanking. Trump had begun to reconsider the levies after spending several days watching bond markets and value of the dollar crash.
According to The Washington Post, the president was watching Sean Hannity’s Fox News Tuesday evening, where several Republican lawmakers on the show expressed concerns about the incoming tariffs. The president called them during the ad breaks.
Following the show’s conclusion, Trump reportedly had a further, hour-long group conversation with the Senators – which included John Neely Kennedy, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, John Thune, Tim Scott, Katie Boyd Britt, Tom Cotton and Markwayne Mullin – in which they urged him to reconsider his plan.
“I’ll leave it up to you what’s enough, what’s not enough,” Graham said he told Trump on Tuesday night, per The Post. Tuesday night. Cruz said he also told the president that retaliation over the tariffs from other countries would be “very harmful to the country.”
Hours later, Trump bucked from his public statements and released a post on Truth Social, pausing his tariff plan.
It caught the world - and most of his White House - by surprise.
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump tried to explain his 90-day delay. His initial announcement, what he dubbed “Liberation Day” sent the markets reeling. His change caused them to soar.
Trump told reporters that he was acting “instinctively, more than anything else” and that the plan “came together early this morning, fairly early this morning.”
“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,” the president said, later adding that the move had come “from his heart.”
Trump’s allies, including Trade Secretary Scott Bessent, somewhat in contradiction to the remarks insisted that the president had planned to pause the levies “all along,” with senior adviser Stephen Miller branding the move “the greatest economic master strategy from an American President in history.”
Now, recent reports detail how the president faced pressure from several avenues as many begged for him to reverse his tariff plan.
As well as Senators within his own party, Trump reportedly was receiving a barrage of pressure from other foreign and business leaders. In the days prior, executives and lobbyists had bombarded White House chief of staff Susie Wiles with messages, a person close to her told The Wall Street Journal.
On Wednesday morning, Trump spoke with Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, whose country – home to Rolex watches and world-famous chocolate – had been hit with a 31 percent tariff.
According to The Post, who cited a spokesman for the Swiss Finance Ministry, during the 25-minute call, the Swiss highlighted the role that Swiss businesses play in generating U.S. jobs. She also noted that Switzerland had previously abolished tariffs on imports of U.S. industrial goods.
That morning, Trump also saw JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon speaking on Fox Business Network around 8 a.m. During the interview, Dimon, a previous champion of the tariffs, warned that a recession was a “likely outcome.” He added he was hearing “recessionary talk… from everybody now” and that corporations were “going to hold back a little” for the foreseeable future.
Sources familiar to the matter told the Journal that Dimon had not had a significant conversation with Trump for years, but knew that the president and his inner circle often watched Fox. His intention was to get the message through that way, one of the sources said.
At 9.33 a.m. Trump wrote on Truth Social: “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!,” following up four minutes later with: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.”
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Meanwhile, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, spoke to Maros Sefcovic, a top European Union trade official – to discuss countermeasures to the U.S. tariffs due to come into effect on steel and aluminium, according to the Post.
Shortly after, both Lutnick and Bessent were back with the president in the Oval Office, while Trump wrote “one of the most extraordinary Truth posts of his Presidency,” according to Lutnick. “The world is ready to work with President Trump to fix global trade, and China has chosen the opposite direction,” Lutnick posted on X, 12 minutes after the post was sent.
Others in the inner circle, were not so ready.
At the moment the post dropped, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was testifying about the tariffs before Congress, and was immediately asked if he was aware of the pause. “I am, yes,” said Greer. “I understand the decision was made a few minutes ago. It’s been under discussion.”
Democratic Rep Steven Horsford, who asked the question, responded angrily. “This is amateur hour,” he said. “It needs to stop. How are you in charge of negotiations.”
Similarly, Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro – a vocal advocate of the tariffs – appeared to have not been involved in the conversations, having received no mention by Bessent or Lutnick. Speaking during a Fox Business interview outside the White House on Wednesday however, he described the matter as a “beautiful negotiation.”
“We work together beautifully,” Navarro said, referring to Bessent. “Scotty’s one of my best friends, we’ve worked together for years now … We’re all doing our job for the president, and this is the result.”
In the same round of interviews the president, surrounded by a selection of advisors and a collection of former racecar drivers, declared that “nothing’s over yet, but we have a tremendous amount of spirit from other countries.”
Leavitt and Bessent went next. “This was his strategy all along,” Bessent said, before Leavitt went full throttle on spinning the move as a genius negotiation strategy.
“Many of you in the media clearly missed the ‘Art of the Deal,’ you clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here,” she said.
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