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President Donald Trump said he wants Iran to thrive, but he won’t allow Tehran to have nuclear weapons.
“We’re not going to let them have a nuclear weapon,” he said today in the Oval Office. “I want them to thrive. I want Iran to be great. The only thing they can’t have is a nuclear weapon. They understand that.”
As the US and Iran are set to hold direct nuclear talks, Trump provided no timeline for when he would like to see a favorable conclusion. However, he said the US will take military action if necessary.
“If it requires military (action), we’re going to have military (action.) Israel will obviously be very much involved in that. They’ll be the leader of that. But nobody leads us. We do what we want to do,” he added.
President Donald Trump said the decision to announce a 90-day pause on his sweeping reciprocal tariffs came together this morning after meeting with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
“I would say this morning, over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been dealing with Scott, with Howard, with some other people that are very professional. And I think it probably came together early this morning, fairly early this morning, just wrote it up,” Trump said during a media event at the White House this afternoon.
“It was written from the heart. And I think it was well written too, but it was written from the heart. It was written as something that I think was very positive for the world and for us, and we don’t want to hurt countries that don’t need to be hurt, and they all want to negotiate,” he added.
In an exchange with CNN’s Alayna Treene, however, Trump declined to say whether the state of stock markets was ultimately what prompted his reversal on tariffs.
The president made his announcement, via a post on Truth Social, at around 1:18 p.m. ET.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said that he’s still working toward a “final consensus” on the Senate budget resolution, but that his “intention is to have a vote by this evening.”
“Very, very positive, productive discussions. Everybody’s moving forward and I’m really pleased with the dialogue,” he told reporters today.
Pressed on if he has the votes, Johnson declined to say how many were for or against the bill, but said he’s “optimistic, as I always am” and that leadership was “working toward that final consensus.”
Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju if the Senate needs to detail spending cuts before the House votes, Johnson said, “I don’t think so.”
“There’s a lot of good faith dialogue and discussion going on between leaders in both chambers, and that’s been very productive. It’s a one-team approach, and I think we’re going to continue that for the next couple of hours, and we’ll see where we land tonight,” he said.
What some holdouts said today:
- GOP Rep. Tim Burchett made clear he wouldn’t vote on the Senate’s budget blueprint as written, telling CNN there are more than a dozen Republicans currently against the measure. “I don’t know why we’re bringing it up for a vote right now. It clearly doesn’t have the votes,” he said.
- Republican Rep. Ralph Norman said he was still a “no” on the blueprint. He said House Republicans were working with some senators on an off-ramp that would get holdouts on board, including more cuts. Norman said those changes would not be made in the blueprint that the speaker brings to the floor, but rather are a commitment to be incorporated in the future reconciliation bill.
CNN’s Alison Main and Casey Riddle contributed reporting to this post.
The Trump administration is preparing to send more immigrants with criminal records to El Salvador’s notorious mega prison on the heels of a Supreme Court order that for now allows sweeping wartime authority for deportations, according to two US officials.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the US would continue using the Alien Enemies Act to deport people.
“It’s one of the reasons I went to El Salvador last week was a visit with the president. Asked him to continue to take terrorists from the United States of America that no longer belong here,” she said, referring to El Salvador President Nayib Bukele.
Read more details here about the administration’s plans
President Donald Trump took aim today at former federal officials who criticized him during his first term, signing executive orders targeting former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor and former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs.
Taylor rose to prominence after he wrote a 2018 New York Times op-ed and a subsequent book critical of Trump while serving as chief of staff to then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and has drawn Trump’s ire, who’s insisted he did not remember Taylor during his time in the administration.
Krebs was fired by Trump weeks after the 2020 election after he rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.
Today’s executive orders strip Taylor and Krebs of any existing security clearance they may still hold since leaving office and orders the Justice Department to investigate both former officials in what marks the latest example of Trump targeting political rivals using the force of federal government.
“I think what he did, and he wrote a book, ‘Anonymous, ‘said all sorts of lies, bad things – and I think it’s, I think it’s like a traitor, like, it’s like spying,” Trump said of Taylor. “I think it’s a very important case, and I think he’s guilty of treason, if you want to know the truth, but we’ll find out.”
And he blasted Krebs for his comments on the 2020 election.
“I think he said this is the safest election we’ve ever had, and yet, every day you read in the papers about more and more fraud that’s discovered,” Trump said. “He’s the fraud. He’s a disgrace. So, we’ll find out whether or not it was a safe election, and if it wasn’t, he’s got a big price to pay, and he’s a bad guy.”
CNN has reached out to Taylor and Krebs for comment.
President Donald Trump is willing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping as trade tensions escalate between the two countries.
“Oh sure, he’s a friend of mine. I like him,” Trump said this afternoon when asked by a reporter if he would consider talking or meeting with the Chinese leader.
“Sure, I’d meet with him,” he said.
Trump announced earlier he was raising tariff rates on China to 125% after Beijing imposed additional retaliatory tariffs on US goods. The US president said during another White House event today that he believed “China wants to make a deal.”
Trump, who was taking questions after signing some executive orders, said Japan, South Korea and other countries “are here and we’re trying to see them,” but he didn’t elaborate on if he meant officials from those countries are in Washington or if there are meetings being scheduled. Trump did say in recent days that Japan and South Korea were sending people to the US to talk about a deal.
“Everybody wants to make a deal, actually. We want to do what’s right for our country, we also want to do what’s right for the world,” Trump said.
Some background: Trump was speaking after the close of US markets, which soared after he posted on social media that he authorized a 90-day pause on the “reciprocal” tariffs, with the exception of China.
The day started with President Donald Trump telling everyone to “BE COOL!” Just hours later, the president announced on Truth Social that he is pausing new reciprocal tariffs for 90 days, except on China.
In fact, Trump said tariffs will be increased to 125% from 104% after Beijing announced additional retaliatory tariffs earlier in the day. All other countries that were subjected to reciprocal tariff rates will see rates go back down to the universal 10% rate, he said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the pause would allow time to negotiate new trade agreements and insisted it was the president’s strategy all along.
The about-turn triggered a massive rally on Wall Street. The Dow skyrocketed 2,963 points, or 7.87%. The S&P 500 shot up 9.51%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq soared 12.16%.
Here’s what to know to get up to speed:
- Trump’s factors: Trump said he decided to institute a pause because he thought “people were jumping a little bit out of line — they were getting yippy,” following last week’s tariffs announcement. More specifically, Trump said he was watching volatility in the bond market and “saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.” Investors had been alarmed in recent days by stocks and bonds both tanking simultaneously.
- Making deals: The president said he intends to make “fair deals for everybody,” including China, which he said wants to come to an agreement. Trump touted outreach from other countries hit by tariffs, telling reporters, “We have many other countries, as you know, many more than 75, and they all want to come, they want to come here.”
- Top administration officials: Bessent praised the pause and said Trump “created maximum negotiating leverage for himself.” Asked if market volatility played into the president’s decision, Bessent suggested that it was a direct result of the countries that have come to the White House to negotiate. Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro insisted the pause was not a rejection of his economic vision but rather validation of the negotiating power of tariff threats.
- GOP lawmakers pleased: GOP senators said there was cheering and clapping and “a lot of smiles” when the pause was announced during their lunch. Many defended the president’s decision to pause the tariffs, despite publicly doubling down on them for days. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer argued said the 90-day pause showed Trump was “retreating” due to pressure from the markets and concerned Americans and the New York Democrat warned that the president’s rapid policy changes are still damaging for the economy.
- What experts are saying: Joe Brusuelas, the chief economist of consulting firm RSM US, warned the shift in tariff policy may not be enough to stave off a recession. In a note to clients this afternoon, Goldman Sachs economists projected a 45% chance of a recession over the next 12 months.
CNN’s Elise Hammond, Aditi Sangal, Betsy Klein, Kevin Liptak, David Goldman, Anna Cooban, Alicia Wallace, John Towfighi, Donald Judd, Morgan Rimmer, Allison Morrow, Matt Egan and Lauren Fox contributed reporting to this post.
@cnnCNN’s @Omar Jimenez reports on President Donald Trump’s decision to take a 90-day pause on all the “reciprocal” tariffs that went into effect at midnight, with the exception of China, which will see tariffs increased to 125%.
President Donald Trump’s decision to pause most country-specific tariffs is a near-term positive yet does not remove the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the economy and markets, according Raymond James analyst Ed Mills.
This move is “both unbelievable but also entirely predictable,” Mills wrote in a note to clients Wednesday.
Mills argued the decision by Trump is “an implicit recognition that the current strategy was not fully vetted and unsustainable.”
Although financial markets loudly cheered the decision to pause most country-specific tariffs, risks remain.
Mills said the continued 10% universal tariff, the 125% China tariff, looming sector-specific tariffs and the “elevated uncertainty generated by the reversal will ultimately compound existing uncertainty” for corporations.
The White House is appealing a federal judge’s ruling restoring the Associated Press’ access to some of President Donald Trump’s events, the Oval Office and Air Force One, the Justice Department said in a court filing today.
The preliminary injunction issued yesterday by US District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, said that the president had violated the news organization’s First Amendment rights by punishing it for using the phrase “Gulf of Mexico” after he renamed the body of water the “Gulf of America.”
But McFadden delayed his ruling for several days to give the government time to seek an appeal. It’s likely that attorneys for the Justice Department will ask the appeals court to put the ruling on hold while the intermediate court reviews McFadden’s injunction.
President Donald Trump touted market reaction to the announcement he’d paused most new tariffs for 90 days in a hot-mic moment at the White House today captured by CNN pool.
Trump was greeting lawmakers at a NASCAR event on the White House South Lawn when Republican Sen. John Barrasso approached president, telling him, “You got the markets seeing your brilliance.”
“Yeah, that’s up almost 7 (percentage) points, 2,500 points, nobody’s ever heard of it. It’s gonna be a record,” Trump said in reply.
President Donald Trump said he was watching volatility in the bond market in recent days and appeared to indicate that it was among the factors that led to his decision to institute a 90-day pause on some tariffs.
“I was watching the bond market. The bond market is very tricky. I was watching it. But if you look at it now, it’s beautiful. The bond market right now is beautiful. But yeah, I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy,” he said.
CNN reported prior to the president’s decision that US Treasury yields had risen in recent days as investors sold off bonds. The benchmark 10-year yield Wednesday morning was 4.4% – up from 3.9% before Trump unveiled his tariffs.
Trump also said he watched JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Fox Business Network this morning.
The CEO “made the statement to the effect that something had to be done with the tariffs and trade. … He understood it,” Trump said. “It wasn’t sustainable what was happening. Somebody had to pull the trigger. I was willing to pull the trigger.”
During that appearance, Dimon warned that a recession was a “likely outcome” of the escalating trade war resulting from Trump’s tariff policies.
“No one’s wishing for (a recession) but hopefully if there is one it’ll be short,” he said. “I do think fixing these tariff issues and trade issues would be a good thing to do.”
President Donald Trump told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny that he decided to institute a 90-day pause on new reciprocal tariffs because he thought “people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy,” following last week’s tariffs announcement.
“What was happening to us on trade, not only with, you know, if you look at it, not only with China, but China was by far the biggest abuser in history, and others also – but somebody had to do it. They had to stop because it was not sustainable,” Trump said on the White House South Lawn.
He touted outreach from other countries hit by tariffs. “They all want to make a deal – somebody had to do what we did, and I did a 90-day pause for the people that didn’t retaliate, because they told them, ‘If you retaliate, we double it,’” he said. “And that’s what I did with China, because they did retaliate, so we’ll see how it all works out. I think it’s going to work out amazing.”
Pressed on his about-face on a pause on tariffs, however, Trump told CNN, “You have to have flexibility,” acknowledging his team was monitoring the markets for reaction.
Some context: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had earlier sought to cast Trump’s decision as part of a longstanding master plan to encourage nations to negotiate, and not a haphazard application that shook the global economy.
“This was driven by the president’s strategy. He and I had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along,” he said. “You might even say he goaded China into a bad position. They responded. They have shown themselves to the world to be bad actors.”
President Donald Trump said he intends to make “fair deals for everybody” after he announced a complete three-month pause on all the “reciprocal” tariffs, with the exception of China.
Earlier today, the US treasury secretary said Trump’s decision to pause the tariffs will allow time to negotiate new trade agreements.
“A deal is going to be made with China. That deal is going to be made with every one of them, and they’ll be fair deals. I just want fair. They will be fair deals for everybody. But they weren’t fair to the United States,” he told reporters outside the White House.
Trump announced he is raising tariff rates on China to 125% after Beijing announced additional retaliatory tariffs against the US earlier today.
Trump claimed “people took advantage of our country” and “ripped us off” for decades, though didn’t specify what countries he was talking about.
The US is seeing “tremendous amount of spirit from other countries, including China,” President Donald Trump said this afternoon after announcing a 90-day pause on all the “reciprocal” tariffs, with the exception of China, which will see tariffs increased to 125%.
“China wants to make a deal. They just don’t know how quite to go about it. You know, it’s one of those things they don’t know quite – They’re proud people,” he told reporters during an event at the White House.
“And President Xi’s a proud man. I know him very well, and they don’t know quite how to go about it. But they’ll figure it out. They’re in the process of figuring it out, but they want to make a deal.”
He said that he granted the 90-day pause to countries that didn’t retaliate with tariffs.
“I told them, if you retaliate, we’re going to double it,” he said. “And that’s what I did with China, because they did retaliate. So we’ll see how it all works out. I think it’s going to work out amazing.”
This post was updated with more of Trump’s remarks this afternoon.
The US economy still faces a significant risk of a recession even after President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause on country-specific tariffs, Goldman Sachs warns.
In a note to clients this afternoon, Goldman Sachs economists projected the US economy will grow at a very slow pace of just 0.5% in 2025. The Wall Street bank now sees a 45% chance of a recession over the next 12 months.
Before Trump’s decision to pause most tariffs, Goldman Sachs warned that a recession was the most likely outcome due to all the new tariffs that kicked in.
In other words, Goldman Sachs is signaling the US economy is not out of the woods, not yet at least.
Hours before issuing his stunning reversal of his reciprocal tariffs, President Donald Trump urged investors to buy, posting on Truth Social, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”
He concluded the post with “DJT.” Although those are the president’s initials, it was also potentially a nod to Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, which trades under the ticker “DJT.”
At the time, the parent of Truth Social, DJT shares were down nearly 13% this month. After the announcement, shares were up over 20% for Wednesday alone.
President Donald Trump has, at least for now, narrowed his trade war to isolate China, the world’s second largest economy after the US.
Trump appears to be ratcheting up pressure in the hopes that President Xi Jinping will blink first. He may be waiting a while, according to Wendong Zhang, an assistant professor of applied economics and policy at Cornell University.
“China has vowed to ‘fight to the end,’ and there are risks of even more escalations,” Zhang said in an email. “China has already reduced its reliance on US products, such as soybeans and other agricultural products, since the 2018-19 trade war. But this time around, Chinese leaders have the backing of a more supportive general public to stand up to the US and pivot to domestic consumption.”
Stocks turned sharply higher today in response to President Donald Trump’s abrupt shift in tariff policy that had brought global investors to their knees.
But US markets remain far below where they were at the start of Trump’s term.
Since January 17, the last trading day before his inauguration, US stocks have shed $10.6 trillion, according to data from S&P Global.
Some $6 trillion of that loss came in just the past week, as investors sold stocks in response to Trump’s tariff agenda, which promised to upend global trade and potentially plunge the US and other economies into a recession.
The S&P 500 remains down 5.5% from April 2, the day Trump announced his reciprocal tariffs. However, the market is up 10.8% from its nadir reached on Monday.
GOP senators said there was cheering and clapping and “a lot of smiles” when the 90-day pause on tariffs was announced during their lunch Wednesday, and defended the president’s decision to pause the tariffs, despite publicly doubling down on them for days.
Sen. Mike Rounds told reporters, “I think it really lightened up the lunch discussion.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that tariff policy is a “work in progress, but it sounds like they are getting good results.”
Sen. John Cornyn said he thinks the pause allows people some sense of relief. When asked about the mood in the room when the news was revealed, and whether there was relief, Cornyn replied, “Jubilation was too strong a word but it was positive.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, who has expressed concern about how tariffs will affect his constituents in Wisconsin, said senators in the lunch were “happy” to see markets start going up, and that he felt relieved.
Sen. John Kennedy added that, “Most people were pleased.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer said the news didn’t surprise him. “It’s on par with how Donald Trump responds to stimulus,” he said. “He doesn’t tip his hand unless he wants to.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt, who had forcefully defended the tariffs in previous days, argued that the pause shows that the administration’s strategy is working – and is not a sign that they are caving to market pressure. “I think this is a sign that there’s an acknowledgement worldwide that America doesn’t want to be taken advantage of anymore,” he said.
Separately, Sen. Kevin Cramer separately told CNN that the pause has led to “optimism.”
“There’s all kinds of opportunity now that we weren’t sure was going to exist 12 hours ago,” he said.
CNN’s Annie Grayer and Alison Main contributed reporting to this post.
President Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro — a longtime advocate of tariffs — insisted the president’s move today to pause new reciprocal levies was not a repudiation of his economic vision but rather validation of the negotiating power of tariff threats.
“I’m the default strategy, in a way — if they don’t want to cooperate, then they get tariffs, OK, if they cooperate, we talk to them. I mean, it’s a beautiful thing,” Navarro told Fox Business in an interview. “If you went behind the scenes and actually sat in on some of these meetings, we got really smart people, each has their own comparative advantage. We all get along. We all have great ideas.”
He said that those concerned about Trump’s tariffs are underestimating his ability to make deals with other countries: “All the nervous Nellies on Wall Street who try to undermine us consistently underestimate the power of the president to negotiate.”
He said the goal in upcoming negotiations and discussions with various countries is to “dramatically reduce our trade deficit” and “level the playing field.”
Trump announced a 90-day pause on initial reciprocal tariffs for all countries except for China. For countries wanting to negotiate, Trump said a 10% tariff will be in place across the board.
Navarro previously defended Trump’s economic policies and stood behind the president’s widespread tariffs.
This post has been updated with more comments from Navarro.
