Top White House and administration officials have been promising businesses, consumers and fellow Republicans more “certainty” on trade in the coming days, eager to calm skittish markets and avoid the stock market plunge that accompanied the White House’s initial tariff roll-outs.
But they have one problem: Donald J. Trump.
Just days out from Trump’s April 2 announcement of global tariffs, which he has hailed as “Liberation Day,” even those closest to the president — from Vice President JD Vance to his chief of staff Susie Wiles and his own Cabinet officials — have privately indicated that they’re unsure exactly what the boss will do, according to three people who have spoken with them.
While some details of the administration’s plan for what Trump has dubbed “reciprocal tariffs” on global trading partners are starting to trickle out, the president has at times upended them or floated contradictory policies that are keeping everyone — even his inner circle — guessing.
“No one knows what the fuck is going on,” said one White House ally close to Trump’s inner circle, granted anonymity to speak freely. “What are they going to tariff? Who are they gonna tariff and at what rates? Like, the very basic questions haven’t been answered yet.”
Indeed, while the White House is projecting confidence publicly, multiple administration officials, as well as top allies on the outside, are privately concerned that next week’s roll-out could be as rocky as when he imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China on March 4, worsening a rout on stocks that began in mid-February. Though the S&P 500 has since regained some ground, all of its previous gains since Election Day have been erased.
Part of that is because Trump continues to threaten to plow ahead with an expansive tariff rollout, siding with the trade protectionists in his administration despite warnings from other advisers of the negative economic impacts. Inflation rose at a higher-than-expected rate last month, the Commerce Department disclosed on Friday, even before the potential onslaught of higher prices from the sweeping tariffs.
But it’s also because the president continues to throw curveballs at businesses — and even his own team.
Case in point: Wednesday’s decision to slap the auto industry with 25 percent tariffs. While expected in some fashion in the near future, the announcement came together so last minute that the White House wasn’t fully prepared and had to delay afternoon programming as they sought to finalize the plan, according to two people familiar with the roll-out.
The White House also didn’t brief industry stakeholders in the U.S. or abroad beforehand — though a White House official argued that if they were “smart” they would have known it was coming, since Trump himself issued a public warning.
To be sure, White House officials appear to be taking messaging precautions so as to not spook markets ahead of next week. The president has been suggesting publicly for several days now that reciprocal tariffs expected on April 2 won’t go as far as he originally proposed.
“I may give a lot of countries breaks,” Trump said. “We might be even nicer than that.”
On Wednesday, he reiterated that potential reprieve, predicting to reporters that people will be “pleasantly surprised” by the “somewhat conservative” tariffs.
But behind the scenes there’s an uneasy feeling as even people close to the president hold their breath for “Liberation Day.” After all, Trump — who once dubbed tariffs “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” — continues to double down on his desire to punish nations who he believes have cheated the U.S.
“I think it would be a mistake to think next week all of a sudden we’re going to get a bunch of clarity,” said Tom Graff, chief investment officer at financial advisory firm Facet. “I’m sure they’re trying to reset with financial markets and build some certainty, but I don’t think the president is going to have a personality transplant.”
“I think he wants to keep his options open,” Graff added.
In a series of statements, the White House and the various Cabinet heads said the administration is working together to implement Trump’s vision. “As the movie ‘Drumline’ goes, ‘one band, one sound,’” White House senior adviser for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro said in a statement.
“We are the greatest economic team and April 2nd will be a historic day for American workers,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai said that “President Trump has been unequivocally clear for decades about the need to revitalize American industry and restore American Greatness” and that “every member of the Trump administration is aligned on delivering on this vision with an America First agenda of tariffs, deregulation, the unleashing of American energy, and tax cuts.”
Part of the uncertainty stems from the president seeming to undermine his own team at times. After Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett said in recent weeks that only about 10 or 15 countries — or the “dirty 15,” as Bessent put it — would face reciprocal tariffs, Trump said Wednesday that actually every country will be hit with a tariff.
The president similarly undercut Lutnick earlier this month, after the Commerce secretary suggested Canada and Mexico might avoid the full 25 percent Trump had threatened over border security and fentanyl — though two people close to the president said Lutnick was freelancing and has since been told to stay on message. Trump went ahead and slapped that duty on the two North American neighbors on March 4, but then paused much of it a day later and exempted certain goods — a rollercoaster of announcements that left many businesses and investors unsure about how the new tariffs would work.
Indeed, Trump has continued to shift the scope, targets and timeline of his tariffs at a whiplash-inducing pace. The duties he promised, pre-inauguration, to levy on Canada and Mexico his first day in office shifted to Feb. 1, then Feb. 4, then March 4, before being largely rolled back until April 2. There is little clarity about what parts of those tariffs — which could hit more than $1 trillion worth of trade — will go into effect next week.
The size of the so-called reciprocal tariffs, which the administration says it’s calculating for individual trading partners based on their treatment of U.S. imports, could also shift. Administration officials have indicated to foreign diplomats that those duties are meant to be a starting point for negotiations with other countries, meaning American companies may not know what if any tariffs will stick.
Trump also threatened to impose tariffs April 2 on various critical industries, including pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, copper and lumber, before indicating in recent days that those tariffs are likely to be delayed.
“We may have sectoral tariffs on April 2, and we may not,” a White House official, granted anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations, said Monday. “No final decisions have been made yet on sectoral tariffs being tacked onto” the reciprocal tariff announcement next week.
Needless to say, the president’s shifting desires have made it difficult to plan, as Cabinet officials have indicated in private. In recent days, Lutnick told U.S. trading partners seeking clarity that he would try to give them a heads up the day before April 2, telling them that the details are too fluid at the moment to preview. Bessent has also admitted to people that the final tariff regime remains a moving target.
The internal uncertainty also stems in part from an ongoing administration divide on the tariff strategy and the tug of war to influence Trump in recent weeks. Bessent, Wiles and even Vance — who has aspirations to run for president himself in 2028 — have been pushing for either a narrower tariffs regime, or for the president to make final decisions quickly and in an orderly way so that businesses can plan.
On the other hand, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Navarro are said to be encouraging Trump’s long-standing tariff fixation.
The divisions have caused tensions. While Navarro is a genuine tariff believer, Lutnick — who has a close relationship with Trump and enjoys influence that others in the Cabinet do not, as of yet — is widely seen as supporting whatever Trump wants to ingratiate himself with the president, a dynamic that has infuriated others in the administration.
“He goes into the Oval and tells the president whatever he wants to hear,” said the first White House ally, who called Lutnick a “fucking nightmare” and argued he does so without consideration of the economic consequences.
Over the past few weeks, the more tariff-cautious faction in the administration has tried gently to pull Trump back from blanket, indiscriminate tariffs.
Those concerned about a broad tariffs strategy fear it could upend the economy just months after voters sent Trump back to the White House, expecting an economic boom. There’s a fear that tariffs will only be passed onto consumers, exacerbating high prices at a time when polls show voters think Trump isn’t doing enough to address the cost of living. Consumer sentiment, as measured by a monthly University of Michigan survey, continues to drop precipitously, even across parties and income groups, the latest update released Friday showed.
That’s to say nothing about how the levies will impact millions of businesses and jobs. How, some wonder for example, will American car manufacturers be able to stay in business with their supply-chain now turned upside down?
Others worry that the political fallout could cost Republicans their congressional majorities in the midterms.
“If tariffs did have an inflationary impact — or an impact on interest rates that caused inflation and the economy moved toward a recession — that would be a very bad thing in my judgement,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told POLITICO, though he acknowledged a skilled rollout could work. “It would turn the Trump presidency from a four year term into a two year term, because we’d lose in the midterms.”
The problem Trump’s own advisers and Hill Republicans face is that the president doesn’t share their alarm. He’s long believed that other countries are cheating America and that tariffs will usher in a new period of economic growth — economists’ warnings be damned. While many Hill Republicans have sought to justify his tariff obsession by chalking it up to a negotiating tactic, the reality is Trump really believes in the protectionist policies pushed by aides like Navarro, the longtime trade adviser whom Republicans almost universally distrust. The president also believes that his tariffs are popular with voters.
“This is Trump, not anyone else,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), when asked who is driving the tariff decisions. “We don’t have the ability to do anything other than complain, which I did,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who chairs the Senate committee that oversees trade policy issues, told reporters this week he hasn’t yet engaged with Trump on tariffs.
Some in the administration appear to be holding out hope that forthcoming trade reports the president mandated in a Day One executive order, which are due on April 1, will prompt Trump to narrow his approach further. Other Trump allies have hoped that the president’s infatuation with the stock market would be their saving grace. But so far, the president has held steady.
“The president isn’t looking at it like they are,” said one of the people close to Trump’s inner circle of the president’s advisers.“For [him], if the economy tanks, then fine, the economy tanks — because the president truly believes that it will rebound and the countries will give in because they can’t withstand the pressure from the U.S.”
As for political blowback, this person continued: “No. 1, the president is not running for reelection — so where this may have been a political concern in his first term, it’s not a political concern now. … And No. 2, we’re probably gonna lose the House in the midterms.”
It’s unclear how candid Trump’s advisers have been to the president about their fears. One White House ally on the outside close to Trump’s team said even his most senior advisers abhor telling Trump what he doesn’t want to hear — but another argued that the president simply isn’t internalizing the warnings.
“I don’t think it’s like no one wants to tell Trump the bad, the hard news,” said one of the outside allies mentioned above. “I think people have tried to have a conversation with him, and he’s dead set on it. He’s a true believer.”
Doug Palmer contributed to this report.
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