关税退却内幕 市场灾难促使特朗普按下暂停键

特朗普关税退却内幕：对债券市场灾难的担忧如何促使特朗普按下暂停键

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/09/politics/trump-tariffs-retreat-bond-market

凯文·利普塔克、杰夫·泽莱尼、菲尔·马丁利、凯拉·陶舍和阿莱娜·特里恩，CNN

2025年4月9日

CNN——

唐纳德·特朗普总统突然决定改变其全面关税计划的方针，宣布暂停三个月，这暴露了他承受政治痛苦的极限：一周。

“他们开始变得喧闹，”特朗普在解释过去一周白宫遭受的越来越多的批评时说道。“他们有点喧闹，有点害怕。”

即使对于一位以政策反复无常而闻名的总统来说，周三宣布暂停其长期鼓吹的互惠关税三个月，也相当于对他前一天似乎完全支持的计划进行了令人震惊的逆转。与此同时，他的贸易代表正在国会山就关税的好处作证，似乎让他对暂停关税一事毫无察觉。

来自共和党同僚、商界高管甚至密友的连日施压似乎并未打动特朗普，他上周坚称：“我的政策永远不会改变。”

然而，到了周三，说服特朗普改变路线的活动显然不会停止。在美国国债市场（通常是投资者的安全角落）大幅抛售之后，这一点也变得显而易见：总统战略的经济后果可能是灾难性的，而且比他的顾问们此前预测的还要糟糕。

据三位知情人士透露，财政部内部对债券市场发展日益增长的担忧，是特朗普决定暂停其“互惠”关税制度的一个核心因素。

财政部长斯科特·贝森特（Scott Bessent）在周三宣布暂停之前的一次会议上直接向特朗普表达了这些担忧，凸显了白宫经济官员们的担忧，这些官员当天早些时候向特朗普通报了美国国债市场加速抛售的情况。

来自商界主要盟友致电白宫高级顾问，也越来越多地关注债券市场令人不安的发展，并敦促特朗普撤回相关举措。

两位知情人士表示，周三上午特朗普在社交媒体上发布有关股市的消息时，他尚未决定暂停大幅增加的新关税税率。

但他在当天下午晚些时候承认，他一直在密切关注债券市场的动荡。

“债券市场非常复杂，我一直在关注，”特朗普告诉记者。 “现在债券市场很好。但是，是的，我昨晚看到大家有点不安。”

特朗普坐在椭圆形办公室敲定他的声明，两位顾问也加入了进来，他们已经成为关税计划的对立面：贝森特和商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克。

“我们没有联系律师，或者——它只是写出来而已。我们是发自内心地写的，对吧？它是发自内心地写的，而且我认为写得很好，但它是发自内心地写的，”特朗普随后说道，他描述了一个更多地受冲动而非精心策划的战略驱动的过程。

即使特朗普安抚了市场——至少目前如此——他也提出了新的问题，他暗示他将考虑豁免部分美国公司的关税，并表示他将“本能地”做出任何此类决定。

旋风般的星期三

白宫又是一个旋风般的星期三，顾问们忙于跟上总统的决定。在经历了总统任期内最令人羞愧的一次退缩后，他试图庆祝胜利，急于将周三股市上涨的功劳归于自己——却对上周创纪录的万亿美元损失避而不谈。

“这是股市历史上最大的涨幅。这相当不错，”特朗普在椭圆形办公室告诉记者。“如果继续下去，就会回到四周前的水平。”

如果特朗普计划在周三凌晨在市场动荡数日后暂停新关税，那么他并没有公开透露他的意图。许多白宫官员得知他的决定的同时，全世界也通过Truth Social上的帖子得知了新关税暂停的消息。

甚至连他自己的高级贸易官员似乎也只是模糊地意识到这一变化是可能的，直到特朗普在社交媒体上宣布这一改变。

“看起来你的老板就像是突然抽走了你的地毯，暂停了关税，”特朗普宣布这一决定时，内华达州民主党众议员史蒂文·霍斯福德在国会山举行的听证会上对美国贸易代表杰米森·格里尔说。格里尔当时并未透露任何重大转变即将到来。

贝森特和其他官员坚称，暂停对除中国以外所有国家征收新关税的决定并非让步；相反，他们认为此举是特朗普总体计划的一部分。

让各国坐到谈判桌前。

“他需要极大的勇气，巨大的勇气才能坚持到现在，”贝森特说道。他上周末飞往棕榈滩，与特朗普就关税的最终结果进行了长时间的讨论。

尽管他的顾问们对此避而不谈，但总统承认，日益高涨的批评、日益加深的焦虑以及金融市场不断扩大的损失，促使他在周三下午突然决定暂停征收多项关税三个月。

“我认为人们有点过分了，”特朗普告诉记者。

对债券抛售的担忧

周三上午，美国政府的经济团队高度关注债券抛售问题。债券抛售在前一天加剧，并在隔夜急剧加速，推高了收益率，实际上，这与全球经济如此不稳定和动荡的时刻通常发生的情况截然相反。

从历史上看，美国国债价格通常在股市抛售时上涨，因为投资者争相将资产转移到全球避风港，而美国市场长期以来的这种地位得益于其安全性和流动性。

特朗普宣布关税政策以来首次举行的财政部债券拍卖中，由于需求意外疲软，美国国债价格出现逆转，随后加速上涨，这引发了越来越多的担忧。美国国债的大幅抛售，加上新发行美国国债的需求低迷，进一步引发了人们对外国正在放弃购买新发行美国国债和出售其持有的债券的担忧。由于债券收入用于支付税收无法覆盖的政府项目成本，人们普遍担心特朗普更广泛的议程将面临危险。

在周三的电视采访中，贝森特驳斥了这些举动，称其“令人不安，但很正常”。

但对于贝森特来说，他的金融生涯与债券市场息息相关，并且在内阁任职期间一直致力于压低10年期国债收益率，财政部高级官员发出的警告他心知肚明，并在后来与特朗普的谈话中有所体现。

总统密切关注着电视上对他本人的报道，他甚至看到一些亲密盟友也发出了可怕的警告，称关税可能导致经济衰退。周三早上，他正在观看福克斯商业频道，摩根大通首席执行官杰米·戴蒙表示，特朗普的关税政策导致贸易战升级，经济衰退“很可能是”结果。

戴蒙告诉福克斯商业频道的玛丽亚·巴蒂罗莫：“市场并不总是正确的，但有时它们是对的。”

高管们纷纷致电白宫

在白宫内部，企业高管、共和党人以及总统的其他盟友纷纷致电，敦促他重新考虑关税政策，但几乎没有迹象表明特朗普正在考虑暂停加征关税。

随着市场持续下跌，贸易鹰派人士继续在电视上宣传特朗普不惜一切代价加征关税的策略，高管们纷纷致电白宫办公厅主任苏西·威尔斯、副总裁JD·万斯和财政部长斯科特·贝森特，直接向特朗普陈述情况。

这些消息人士表示，威尔斯尤其有效地说服了特朗普，市场暴跌正在耗费他未来议程所需的大量政治资本。随着市场持续下跌，议员们接到的选民来电也越来越多，他们对此表示愤怒。

贝森特周末在佛罗里达与特朗普的谈话重点关注关税的总体目标，他似乎也更多地参与了公共信息传递，频繁谈论目前数十个国家正在争夺贸易协议。

“这是由总统的策略驱动的。我和他周日进行了一次长谈，这始终是他的策略，”贝森特周三表示。

然而，特朗普承认他一直密切关注市场，称过去几天市场表现“低迷”。

在宣布颠覆全球贸易体系的关税一周后，总统站在白宫外三辆色彩鲜艳的赛车前，反思导致他退缩的原因。他试图将很大程度上是自己造成的问题归咎于自己，并表示他的信誉并未因这次打击而受损。

“你必须保持灵活性，”特朗普说。“我认为在金融市场，因为它们会变化，看看今天的变化有多大。”

Inside Trump’s tariff retreat: How fears of a bond market catastrophe convinced Trump to hit the pause button

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/09/politics/trump-tariffs-retreat-bond-market

Kevin Liptak, Jeff Zeleny, Phil Mattingly, Kayla Tausche and Alayna Treene, CNN

April 9, 2025

 

CNN — 

President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to reverse course on his sweeping tariff plan by announcing a three-month pause revealed his threshold for political pain: One week.

“They were getting yippy,” Trump said, explaining the rising criticism raining down on the White House over the last week. “They were getting a little bit yippy, a little afraid.”

Even for a president famous for his policy bobs and weaves, Wednesday’s announcement he was pausing his long-touted reciprocal tariffs for three months amounted to a stunning reversal of a plan he had appeared only a day earlier to be fully behind and came as his own trade representative was testifying on Capitol Hill to the benefits of the tariffs, seemingly catching him unaware of the pause.

Days of pressure from fellow Republicans, business executives and even his close friends hadn’t appeared to move Trump, who insisted last week: “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE.”

By Wednesday, however, it had become evident the campaign to convince Trump to change course would not let up. It had also become plain after a sharp sell-off in US government bond markets — usually a safe corner for investors — that the economic ramifications of the president’s strategy were potentially catastrophic and worse than his advisers had previously predicted.

The growing alarm inside the Treasury Department over developments in the bond market was a central factor in Trump’s decision to hit pause on his “reciprocal” tariff regime, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent raised those concerns directly to Trump Wednesday in a meeting that preceded the pause announcement, underscoring concerns shared by White House economic officials who had briefed Trump on the accelerating selloff in the US Treasury market earlier in the day.

Calls to top White House advisors from key business community allies also increasingly focused on the troubling developments in the bond market as they made the case for Trump to pull back.

Trump had not yet made the decision to pause the dramatic new tariff rates when he was posting on social media about the stock market Wednesday morning, two of the people said.

But he acknowledged later in the afternoon that he’d been watching the bond market turmoil closely.

“The bond market is very tricky, I was watching it,” Trump told reporters. “The bond market right now is beautiful. But yeah, I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.”

Sitting in the Oval Office to tap out his announcement, Trump was joined by two advisers who had become dueling faces of the tariff plan: Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

“We didn’t have access to lawyers or – it was just wrote up. We wrote it up from our hearts, right? It was written from the heart, and I think it was well written too, but it was written from the heart,” Trump said afterward, describing a process driven more by impulse than mapped-out strategy.

Even as Trump calmed the markets – for now, at least – he also raised new questions by suggesting he would consider exempting some US companies from tariffs, saying he would make any such decisions “instinctively.”

Whirlwind Wednesday

It was another whirlwind Wednesday at the White House, with advisers scrambling to keep pace with the president’s decisions. He sought to take a victory lap after one of the most humbling retreats of his presidency, eager to take credit for the stock market gains Wednesday – without mentioning the record-setting, trillion-dollar losses over the last week.

“It’s the biggest increase in the history of the stock market. That’s pretty good,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “If you keep going, you’re going to be back to where it was four weeks ago.”

If Trump was planning early Wednesday to pause his new tariffs after days of market turmoil, he did not reveal his intentions widely. Many White House officials heard of his decision at the same time the world learned, via post on Truth Social, that the new tariffs were on pause.

Even his own top trade official seemed only vaguely aware the change was possible by the time Trump announced the reversal on social media.

“It looks like your boss just pulled out the rug from under you and paused the tariffs,” Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada told US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer during a hearing that was underway on Capitol Hill when Trump made his announcement. Greer had offered zero indication to that point the major shift was coming.

Bessent and other officials insisted the decision to pause the new tariffs on all nations except China was not a backdown; instead, they framed the move as all part of Trump’s master plan to bring nations to the negotiating table.

“It took great courage, great courage for him to stay the course until this moment,” said Bessent, who flew to Palm Beach last weekend for a lengthy discussion with Trump on the endgame of the tariffs.

Even as his advisers danced around it, though, the president acknowledged that the rising criticism, deepening angst and mounting losses in the financial markets contributed to his abrupt decision on Wednesday afternoon to impose a three-month pause on many of the tariffs.

“I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line,” Trump told reporters.

Alarm over bond selloff

The administration’s economic team spent Wednesday morning intensely focused on the bond selloff that had intensified a day earlier and accelerated aggressively overnight, driving yields higher and, in effect, demonstrating the exact opposite of what would normally happen during such an unstable and volatile moment in the global economy.

Historically, Treasurys rally in moments of stock market selloffs as investors rush to shift assets to a global safehaven, the longstanding status due to the safety and liquidity provided by the US market.

Watching the inverse play out, then accelerate after unexpectedly weak demand at the first Treasury Department auction to take place since Trump’s announced his tariff regime, led to growing alarm. The sharp selling of Treasurys – coupled with low demand for a sale of new US Treasury debt – sparked further concerns that foreign countries were abstaining from buying new US Treasurys and selling the debt they had. Because bond revenue pays for the cost of government programs that tax revenue doesn’t cover, worries abounded that Trump’s broader agenda was in jeopardy.

In a television interview Wednesday, Bessent dismissed the moves as “uncomfortable, but normal.”

But for Bessent, whose finance career was deeply intertwined with the bond market and who has been fixated on driving down the 10-year yields in his cabinet post, the alarm relayed by senior Treasury officials was understood and reflected in the later conversation with Trump.

The president, who is a close monitor of his own coverage on television, had seen even some of his close allies issue dire warnings about the prospects of a recession as a result of the tariffs. He was watching Fox Business channel on Wednesday morning when JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said a recession was “a likely outcome” of an escalating trade war resulting from Trump’s tariff policies.

“Markets aren’t always right, but sometimes they are right,” Dimon told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo.

Executives light up White House phones

Inside the White House, telephone calls had been coming quickly from business executives, Republicans and other allies of the President urging him to reconsider his tariffs, but they received little indication a pause was in the works.

Executives had been lighting up the phone lines of chief of staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance, and Treasury secretary Scott Bessent to make the case to Trump directly as trade hawks continued to promote Trump’s tariffs-at-all-costs approach on television as the market continued to sink.

Wiles, these sources said, had been particularly effective in convincing Trump that the market rout was costing considerable political capital that he would need for future agenda items, with lawmakers fielding increasingly angry constituent calls as the market continued sinking.

Bessent, whose conversation with Trump in Florida over the weekend focused on zeroing in on the overall goal of the tariffs, also appeared to assume more of a role in the public messaging, talking frequently about the dozens of countries now jockeying for trade deals.

“This was driven by the President’s strategy. He and I had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along,” Bessent said on Wednesday.

Trump, however, acknowledged he’d been keeping a close eye on markets, calling their performance “glum” over the last few days.

A week after making a tariff announcement that upended the global trading system, the president stood outside the White House in front of three colorful race cars and reflected on what led to his retreat. He sought to take credit for a problem largely of his own making, saying his credibility was not eroded by the whiplash.

“You have to have flexibility,” Trump said. “I think in financial markets, because they change, look how much you change today.”