Fox News hosts heaped praise on President Donald Trump for his abrupt tariffs U-turn, calling his decision “genius” and claiming that the president—and America—“won.”
Just hours after urging the public to “be cool” in the face of his sweeping levies as Wall Street reeled, the president announced his decision Wednesday to pause reciprocal tariffs on most nations for 90 days while increasing duties on Chinese imports to 125 percent.
“What a day, but more great days coming!!!,” the president wrote on TruthSocial Thursday morning.
As markets rebounded around the globe Wednesday afternoon, Fox News hosts were quick to rally behind the president and unashamedly promote the idea that this was the “plan all along.”
“Trump announced a brilliant move to pause the higher tariffs on countries negotiating with us, but meanwhile to raise China’s tariffs to 125 percent, to wall off China by boxing them out, further weakening their economic power. It’s genius,” Laura Ingraham said on The Ingraham Angle.
Meanwhile, The Five co-host Jeanine Pirro claimed that “China was always the endgame.”
“Trump won. He’s doing exactly what he said he would do. He said there would be short-term pain for long-term pain,” she continued. “His timing was right to the edge. And it was a business decision to get everyone to the table so everyone can win. If there’s a standoff, nobody wins.”
“But now, this is the biggest win for America because we’ve got a level playing field. We are no longer a doormat for other countries,” Pirro added.
MAGA favorite Jesse Watters recalled the Cold War, drawing comparisons between Trump and former President Ronald Reagan, who attempted to intimidate the Soviets into concession.
“Remember how Reagan crushed the Soviet Union? He used economic force and military spending to break them into pieces,” he said on the Jesse Watters Primetime. “Trump has an opportunity to do the exact same thing here in China. It's what everybody has always wanted.”
Hannity host Sean Hannity – who hosted a town hall for Trump in September – took aim at “stupid people” who thought the president wasn’t in the driver’s seat all along.
“I’m just loving the reaction of stupid people. All of these people that have been trying to create in other people’s minds that Donald Trump does not know what he’s doing,” he said on his podcast, The Sean Hannity Show.
“The Treasury Secretary Bessent just confirmed what I had pretty much understood because I know the guy so well. This was the plan all along. I’ve been saying this… He’s lining up all these nations, one after another after another, to the point where they’re begging to do a deal with us.”
However, Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino conceded that he wanted to tell viewers that Trump “outsmarted the world,” but he conceded, “That's not really what happened here.”
“You know, I don’t want to say this because I am a patriot, I am an American, but it is the White House who capitulated based on everything I hear and all of my sources,” he added.
Gasparino argued that it was an “imploding” bond market that spurred Trump to freeze tariffs for 90 days. “Let’s see if those markets improve,” he added.
A day prior to the announcement, former Fox News contributor Erick Erickson lambasted his fellow conservative media pundits for defending Trump’s tariff agenda.
“I am so unbelievably frustrated with the level of intellectual dishonesty of so many people on the right,” he said on his YouTube channel Tuesday. “I just find that level of mendacity, and lying, and dishonesty to be utterly appalling, particularly among people you would think would show a modicum of intellectual honesty.”
On Tuesday, a day before his tariff reversal, the president said that world leaders were lining up to kiss “my a**” in a bid to reduce the levies.
“Please, Sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, Sir,” he mocked in a simpering voice at the National Republican Congressional Committee's annual fundraising gala.
Trump officials – who just one day earlier said the president would never back down – claimed “this was his strategy all along” and “the art of the deal” at work.
When probed about his 90-day freeze, Trump told reporters that Americans “were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”
Amid the relief, the president ratcheted up the pressure on China, immediately hiking the tariff on Chinese imports to 125 percent from the 104 percent level that had already kicked in earlier on Wednesday.
Beijing retaliated on Wednesday by imposing 84 percent tariffs on U.S. imports, escalating the trade war between the world's top two economies.
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