In the aftermath of President Donald Trump's “liberation day” announcement, the administration is sending conflicting messages about whether countries should expect tariff relief if they come to the negotiating table.
"It depends," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Thursday evening. "If somebody said that we're going to give you something that's so phenomenal, as long as they're giving us something that's good."
"Every country's called us," Trump said, telling reporters he spent the day talking with foreign leaders and business executives about tariffs. "That's the beauty of what we do. We're in the driver's seat."
The president cited China as an example, and said he can imagine a scenario in which the U.S. offers concessions if Beijing comes to a deal to sell Chinese-owned company ByteDance's video-sharing app TikTok. "I think that maybe China will call and say, 'well, we're upset with the tariffs,' and maybe they want to get something a little bit in order to get TikTok approved."
The president's suggestion Thursday evening that countries come to the table with "phenomenal" offers for tariff relief follows repeated suggestions by his own senior deputies in the past 48 hours that the duties won't be lifted anytime soon — a script that is likely intended to establish a stronger position in the negotiations they say aren’t happening in the first place.
"Let me make this very clear. This is not a negotiation," the president's top trade official, Peter Navarro, told CNBC. "This is a national emergency." Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has also poured cold water on the notion that levies will be lifted in the near term, telling CNN: "I don't think there's any chance Trump is going to back off his tariffs. This is the reordering of global trade."
The administration's new tariff policy — which includes a baseline 10 percent tariff on all imports and higher rates for countries with which the U.S. has a significant trade deficit — is part of a strategy Trump hopes will usher in a broader economic realignment that will bolster domestic manufacturing. The White House is also hyper-fixated on pressuring countries to lift their non-tariff barriers to trade, such as intellectual property theft, export subsidies, import licensing requirements, and sweatshop labor.
The White House also reportedly circulated talking points to Republican surrogates urging them against describing the new duties on imports as a starting point for negotiations with foreign countries, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, telling them to characterize the new policy as a response to a national emergency instead.
"I am not part of the negotiations, so we will see," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg News on Wednesday. "I'm sure there will be a lot of calls. I'm just not sure there will be negotiations."
Other high-profile figures in the president's orbit have suggested that countries should expect relief if they come to the negotiating table. "I wouldn't want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump," the president's son, Eric Trump, wrote in a social media post on Thursday. "The first to negotiate will win – the last will absolutely lose." Pressed by National Review about Eric Trump's comments, a White House official stressed that the president's second-eldest son does not work in the administration and that the president has effectively communicated to foreign leaders: "It's not a negotiation until it's a negotiation."
Tariff-skeptical Republican lawmakers are hopeful that the administration is engaging in closed-door conversations with foreign trade representatives about how to proceed.
"Whether or not the plans are public doesn’t matter to me," Senator Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) told National Review in a brief interview on Thursday. "What matters to me is whether or not the plans are well thought out."
“I think there is negotiation going on right now behind the scenes," Senator Mike Rounds (R., S.D.) said on Thursday. "That’s the only place negotiations should go on.”
Some administration officials have sought to characterize tariffs as new policy that will only be lifted if foreign governments make major concessions to the U.S. And yet the White House is being coy about the timeline for such negotiations, which administration officials might negotiate such deals, and whether countries should expect tariff relief on the baseline 10 percent tariff rate in addition to country-specific rates.
Tucked inside Wednesday's executive order is a provision that suggests some wiggle room on tariffs if countries retaliate or cave to the administration’s demands. "Should any trading partner take significant steps to remedy non-reciprocal trade arrangements and align sufficiently with the United States on economic and national security matters, I may further modify the HTSUS to decrease or limit in scope the duties imposed under this order,” the order reads.
The "massive non-tariff barriers" are what "need to go in order to resolve this national emergency," a senior official told reporters on a call ahead of Trump's Rose Garden tariff announcement. In the White House's view, "any country that thinks that they can simply make an announcement promising to lower tariffs" is ignoring the underlying problem that "massive non-tariff barriers" institutionalize trade models to "cheat America." Eliminating these barriers won't happen overnight and may require countries to pass laws in some instances, administration officials say.
As free-trade-minded Republicans and investors reel from the market uncertainty following Trump's new tariff policy, economic populist Republicans say that the president should have the latitude to negotiate how he pleases.
"If he feels that a country has presented a viable plan — he makes that decision — I would fully support it. On the other side, he may not feel that that country has made or will keep its commitments. So, he may keep those tariffs on," said Senator Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio). "Either way, the important part of the policy is that we’re finally have a president standing up for working Americans."
The tariff announcement has already made a huge impact on Wall Street, with the Dow falling 1,700 points on Thursday, the largest single-day drop since the 2020 Covid panic, and another 1,000 points at Friday’s opening bell.
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