BURSTFormer White House staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin said President Trump was “forced” to introduce a 90-day pause on tariffs due to crippling market shares.
“Donald Trump said as much on the South Lawn, that he was looking at the bond markets collapsing and that was what forced his hand into this reversal,” Farah Griffin, who served in the first Trump White House, said during a Wednesday appearance on CNN’s "The Lead with Jake Tapper."
Shifts in U.S. trade policy shocked the traditionally safe bond market into a stalemate marked with only one bond offering at its opening Tuesday. The president admitted Wednesday that he pared back his tariff plans after watching turmoil in the bond market and a stark warning from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Fox News.
“I thought that people were jumping a little out line,” Trump said Wednesday afternoon at the White House, adding that people were getting “a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”
Farah Griffin, who now co-hosts "The View," went on to criticize the Trump administration's framing of the aggressive agenda.
"I get the sense that a lot of the major decisions these past few days have been made in a very small circle," she added. "And a lot of the communication staff and the staff who are going on television talking about what's going on are often kind of behind the curve in the president's decisionmaking, because we were repeatedly told this is not a negotiation. Then Donald Trump says it is a negotiation."
Trump addressed questions about mixed messaging from the White House on Monday, saying some import taxes will remain, while others might vanish if countries reach out to close a deal.
“They can both be true. There can be permanent tariffs and there can also be negotiations,” Trump told reporters.
“We have many, many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with us, and they’re going to be fair deals, and in certain cases, they’re going to be paying substantial tariffs. They’ll be fair deals,” he added.
Businessmen including billionaire investor Bill Ackman publicly fumed over the negative impact of tariffs if they went into effect without pause. Farah Griffin said their concerns also likely convinced the president to change course.
“I do believe the White House is hearing from foreign leaders, but more importantly, they're hearing from business leaders, business leaders who, a lot of them, bet big on Donald Trump,” she told Tapper.
“They thought he was going to be good for the economy. They were expecting Trump term one all over again, and then they saw the markets in shambles. So, I think his hand was forced here. And thank God. You're hearing a big sigh of relief from Capitol Hill and from our allies around the world right now,” she added.