Fox Business correspondent: Trump didn't outsmart the world, the bond market forced his hand
Charlie Gasparino on Trump's pausing some tariffs: “I want to tell you right now that Donald Trump outsmarted the world. Trust me. I'm an American, I support my president. But that's not really what happened.”
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From the April 9, 2025, edition of Fox News' America Reports
CHARLIE GASPARINO (FOX BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT): Imean, I want to tell you right now that Donald Trump outsmarted the world. Trust me. I'm an American, I support my president. But that's not really what happened here from what I understand.
And I know, I'll get pushback, but here's what it is.
First off we should point out that one of the good things about this is that Scott Bessent is finally in the White House. He's finally leading this. I mean, up until a couple days ago it was Lutnick, it was Peter Navarro, the commerce secretary, the trade advisor, very much hawks. Now it's Scott Bessent, who believes in cutting deals as opposed to, you know, just not — you know, just putting these tariffs out there and let's be a mercantalistic economy. That's number one.
But, number two, let's recall what happened overnight and from what I understand, and I'm getting this from people that are talking to the White House, the — what happened in the bond market overnight, the spike in yields on the 30-year and the 10-year bond, which showed that people were dumping our bonds. And who were those people dumping our bonds? Japan, the biggest holder of bonds, was selling bonds. That's what I'm getting from some very big money managers. China, maybe to some extent, but it was largely Japan and others.
If you have a mass sale of bonds, that means people are losing confidence in the U.S. economy, on the ability to do deals with us, and, from what I understand, this is what forced the hand of this 90-day reprieve.
Now, is it a good thing? You know, are people coming to the table? Yeah. But if, you know, if you read between the lines, or not even, with what Scott Bessent said, we have no deals, right? There's nobody that is really there saying this is what we're going to do. And they paused it anyway.
So, my thing that — I'll give you this, there is some art of the deal here. And, by the way, brilliant move by putting China in the corner. But, that's a whole separate thing, cause remember that's a very difficult negotiation. Everybody else is a lot easier. They really wanted, they do want a deal with us, whether they want to be, you know, forced into really bad trade deals on their end is a whole other negotiating story.
But, make no mistake about it, you cannot divorce this decision right here from what happened last night, which was, you know, I — people focus on the stock market all the time. It's the bond market and the sort of lending markets that's the plumbing of the economy. And those markets were imploding last night and that's why we have a 90-day freeze. Let's see if those markets improve. Someone told me we had a decent treasury auction today. But if you can't sell your treasuries, guys, and people are unloading your treasuries, like Japan, which is I believe the largest foreign holder after China, game over.