Tariff turnaround - it's all so stupid. And today's move doesn't make us "all good"

Today, I was doing work while keeping an eye on the financial markets, and it seemed like a relatively even day, which in itself is better than the wreckage that the first full week of April had been. Around 20 minutes after my last check-in in the early afternoon, I took a look, and instead of the DOW being up 200, it was up more than 2,000.

Well something had to have happened. What was it?

At 1:18 p.m. ET, Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social there would be a 90-day pause on his steep "reciprocal" tariffs for non-retaliating countries.

"I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately," part of Trump's post read.

And apparently that was all that was needed to have coked-up traders cover their shorts buy back into the markets? There are still tariffs in place for much of the world and those will still raise prices over what we're paying today, and Trump also boosted tariffs to 125% on China, and China is slapping 84% tariffs on anything we send to them (sorry, Wisconsin ginseng farmers).

But hey, if you bought in today, you made out like a bandit!

It was the S&P 500's best day since 2008, while Nasdaq enjoyed its second-largest one-day rally on record, topped only by a 14% gain back in 2001. For the Dow, Wednesday's rally marked its largest since 2008.

"Over the last few days it looked pretty glum, so I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history," President Trump said on Wednesday from the White House lawn. "That's a pretty big change."

Ummm Donnie, 2001 and 2008 were good times for the financial markets or the economy. Just wanted to remind you of that.

And just because Trump panicked and backed off on some of his random and reckless policies of the last week, we are still nowhere near where we were when he started this BS 2 months ago....or even 1 week ago.

I threw $5,000 into the fire. But then I reached in and pulled out $3,000, severely burning my hand and convincing all the people around me that I'm insane. ART OF THE DEAL!

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— Rex Huppke (@rexhuppke.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 6:09 PM

It's all so stupid, because the people in charge are stupid and think they are so elite to be sheltered from consequence that they don't need to care. Well, until they saw Trump's approval ratings going down like the stock market.

But what are the dead-end manosphere types going to think about Trump caving, since they believe he's such a "manly decider".

My question now: If tariffs were the key to restoring the manhood of Americans, what does this 90-day "pause" mean? Do all the men who just had their masculinity restored have to return their testicles to a lockbox for 3 months? I have questions. www.salon.com/2025/04/09/f...

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— Amanda Marcotte (@amandamarcotte.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 7:16 PM

As Marcotte notes, are we going have this entire charade happen again 90 days from now, and be hanging over us during the 4th of July? Or sooner? Today's reversal isn't going to give any honest business person enough confidence to decide to invest and build factories, because there's no way anyone can know what the terms of trade and business will be in 6 months or 6 weeks or 6 days. And I think that includes Trump himself.

So despite the modifying of some of the worst and most random tariffs on partners that we had even terms of trade with, we're still in a worse economic spot than we were at the start of April, with prices going up more than they were already set to rise. And in TrumpWorld, there's absolutely no plan beyond taxes on imports, which means they won't be able to provide the conditions bring back and support manufacturing jobs in the coming months, or for the coming years.