Fox Business’ Charlie Gasparino doubled down on his criticism of Donald Trump’s tariff policy, saying the U.S. could be headed for “deep trouble.”
Gasparino was on Business’ sister channel, Fox News, to dress down Trump for a second time in as many days Tuesday morning. On Monday he went on a tweet spree, saying the president “blinked” in negotiations with China over reducing tariffs.
On Tuesday, Gasparino told America’s Newsroom anchors Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer that if you’re a “realist,” you recognize that you just “can’t do” what Trump and his economic advisers “tried to do” by slapping huge tariffs on dozens of nations.
“I do think you have to be a realist here, and the realism is this: You can’t do what they try to do with the U.S. economy on trade,” he began.
“If you do that, you will get a bond market. And by the way, we look at stocks all day, the bond market is what rebelled and caused this. I don’t care what anybody says. You can’t sell your debt. Well, guess what? Your budget deficit gaps out.
“If the bond market shuts down, your paycheck doesn’t come to you because your business needs the short-term bond market to basically float bonds to get your money. This is the plumbing of the financial system.”
“Every major bond investor” told Gasparino that Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs were crazy, he said.
“And I’ll tell you that day after Liberation Day, I was at a restaurant sitting there with a drink in my hand, and I’m looking at my phone, and every major bond investor was telling me this is insane,” he told the hosts.
“Yields were starting to spike through the roof. The 10-year yield, remember, that’s the most important one. The reason why? Every consumer rate is pegged off that. If that starts gapping out to 4.5—we’re at 4.4 now, you got to check the chart—but the 5 where it was heading that night? Oh, we’re in deep trouble.”
After Trump announced the supercharged levies in early April, experts from Deutsche Bank warned that the early trading picture represented a “simultaneous collapse in the price of all U.S. assets”—including bonds.
Higher yields—or interest rates—meant bond prices fell and jittery investors were dumping Treasuries to raise cash.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Treasury’s reputation as a “safe-haven asset” appeared “tarnished.”
Gasparino touched on that issue during his Monday tweet spree, writing: “Trump raised tariffs on the world, the markets, particularly the bond market—which we need to finance our debt—rebelled. Trump then was forced to back off. End of story. Film at 11 of the president spinning this as a major victory.”
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