A Fox News correspondent had to pump the breaks on the network’s attempts to frame Donald Trump’s sudden 90-day pause on his sweeping tariff plan as an example of his brilliant negotiating prowess.
Fox hosts John Roberts and Sandra Smith tried to highlight Trump’s “art of the deal” mantra when discussing the pause, which came after Trump and his administration vowed to keep the tariffs in place as countries approached him to negotiate. But in multiple appearances on Wednesday, Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino had to force his Fox colleagues to face the music.
“Let’s be clear about what happened, who capitulated here and why,” he said on Wednesday. “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 my sources.”
Trump announced the 90-day pause on the most egregious tariffs Wednesday, while increasing the massive levies on China and leaving in place a reciprocal 10 percent tariff on all other nations. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later came out at the White House to praise his tactics, which sent the markets flying higher after days of steep plunges into the red.
“To tell you right now that Donald Trump outsmarted the world,” Gasparino said. “Trust me, I’m an American, I support my president, but that’s not really what happened here.”
Gasparino highlighted how, despite the administration’s claims that 75 countries have approached the White House to negotiate, it hadn’t actually struck any deals.
“If you read between the lines, and not even with what Scott Bessent said, we have no deals, right?” Gasparino said. “There’s nobody that is really there saying this is what we’re going to do. And they paused it anyway.”
Gasparino did lavish praise onto Bessent, who he said was more skilled at navigating such negotiations than Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and trade adviser Peter Navarro.
“Scott Bessent is finally in the White House,” he said. “He’s finally leading this. I mean, up until a couple days ago, it was Lutnick, it was Peter Navarro, the Commerce Secretary, the trade advisor, very much hawks. Not with Scott Bessent, who believes in cutting deals, as opposed to, you know, just putting these tariffs out there.”
Still, despite Trump’s “brilliant” success in cornering China, the surrender was spurred more by the massive overnight bond sales by allies like Japan than it was by “any one conversation,” he said.
“If you have a mass sale of bonds, that means people are losing confidence in the U.S. economy, on the ability to do deals with us,” Gasparino explained.
“It’s the bond market and the sort of lending markets that’s the plumbing of the economy, and those markets were imploding last night,” he added. “That’s why we have a 90-day freeze.”
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