Donald Trump has been president for less than three months. In news cycle terms, it feels more like three years. That’s because this week feels like way longer than six days. And, mind you, it’s still Friday. Who knows what else will happen between now and Saturday?
The big news this week, of course, was the stock market bouncing up and down like a yo-yo as Trump imposed, then paused tariffs on other countries. Oh, except for China — where the tariffs jumped up even more. Anxiety over that caused the markets to take a dive again on Thursday.
So what are Americans making out of all of this?
Well, it depends on where they get their news and information. Conservative media, mostly, is portraying Trump as a brilliant negotiator and genius businessman. They see him as the master of the art of the deal.
Everyone else, and, yes, even a few in conservative media outlets, continue to watch an unstable stock market and rickety world economy and ask: “What is Trump doing? Does Trump even know what he is doing?”
Once again, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board continues to be among Trump’s biggest critics when it comes to the shifting tariff policies. On Wednesday night, after a truly topsy-turvy day, the Journal’s editorial board wrote, “Trump Blinks on Tariffs, Again, for Now.”
In it, the board said, “Who knows what Mr. Trump really intends, and it isn’t clear he even knows. He’s still fixated on erasing the U.S. trade deficit with nearly every individual nation, which makes no sense given the differences in economies. His 90-day pause means the tariffs could come back with a vengeance if he doesn’t like the concessions countries offer.”
It continues, “For businesses, this means more uncertainty, which means continuing delays in capital investment crucial for growth. Consumers will still feel pain because companies price inventory on replacement cost, not average cost, so tariffs are already hitting prices.”
The board went on to call Trump’s trade policies “reckless,” adding, “Never bet against America, it’s said, and normally global investors don’t want to. It’s a sign of the magnitude of Mr. Trump’s tariff mistake that he’s goading them into doing so. He needs a policy reversal, not a pause.”
This editorial, along with several others by The Wall Street Journal, is notable for two reasons. One, the Journal is owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The second is the Journal's speciality is business and the economy.
Meanwhile, the editors of the National Review wrote, “Now that the pause has come, the question is: Why? Remember, the administration’s stance isn’t that there are some things it would like to work on with other countries to improve the terms of trade for the U.S. Its stance is that the current status of global trade is a national emergency, justifying the usurpation of Congress’s tax and trade authority. That would suggest the drastic actions that the White House was just praising as positive and necessary should stay in effect.”
Meanwhile, Trump supporters are bending themselves into pretzels trying to either explain Trump’s policies or dismiss concerns. That’s something you rarely saw from them when Joe Biden was president.
The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell noted, “MAGA content creators were close observers of the stock market during Biden’s term, casting every slide as an American crisis for which the president bore full blame. But after Trump’s tariffs sparked a market meltdown and whiplash return amid fears of an escalating trade war, some have scrambled to offer alternative explanations for the financial tumult, or to explain why such bloodletting is worth the cost.”
Harwell also reminds readers of all the MAGA influencers who blamed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris for what they viewed as a lousy economy before last fall’s election. Now, they are now telling everyone to have patience under Trump. This doesn’t include all influencers. As I’ve mentioned in the newsletter several times in the past week, sports podcaster and digital media owner Dave Portnoy has been critical of Trump after supporting him before the election. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has also questioned Trump and his tariffs.
“But,” Harwell wrote, “the big question is whether the influencers will have any impact on Americans’ minds. An Economist-YouGov poll conducted Saturday through Tuesday found that Trump’s approval rating had dropped to 43 percent, a new low for his presidency, with respondents voicing anxiety over how tariffs could raise prices for the things they buy.”
For more of the details of what happened Wednesday, check out The Washington Post’s Michael Birnbaum, Natalie Allison, Cat Zakrzewski and Theodoric Meyer with “The 18 hours that changed Trump’s mind on trade.”
Also, there’s this: The New York Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum and John Koblin with “Market Chaos Brings Big Ratings to Television Business News.” Grynbaum and Koblin reported that between April 2 and Monday, Fox Business’s audience was up 25% compared to the week before, and up 35% compared to a year ago. CNBC's average viewership from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern on Monday — the day Trump originally announced his tariffs — was up 75% compared to its average weekday audience since November.