The point is he is covering his ass. He has no grand strategy. He got scared when the bond market started tanking. He apparently took his advisors and the GOP in Congress by complete surprise. But he had to find some cover. His Treasury Secretary said, oh yeah, Trump said that (the tariff pause) Sunday, but then Trump showed that was a lie when he said the part out loud yesterday that he got spooked by the bond market. So Trump himself undermined the whole WH argument by his Treasury Secretary and the Press Secretary that the pause was planned from the start. He admitted it was a total seat of the pants, panic move in response to the bond market tanking.
Trump acknowledged he could cause a recession, but just didn’t want a depression, according to WSJ
Trump himself, yesterday, admitted that it was not part of any plan/deal:
The president told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny that he decided to institute the 90-day pause because he thought “people were jumping a little bit out of line — they were getting yippy.”
“I was watching the bond market,” Trump said. “The bond market is very tricky. I was watching it. But if you look at it now, it’s beautiful.”
Of all the financial warning signs plaguing traders over the past week, the bond market’s behavior was by far the scariest.
