00:00 Speaker A
Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent as we were just talking about there speaking out a short time ago from the White House praising the President’s negotiating strategy.
00:13 Scott Bessent
It took great courage, great courage for him to stay the course until this moment and what we have ended up with here, as I told everyone a week ago, they’re in in this very spot. Do not retaliate and you will be rewarded. So, every country in the world who wants to come and negotiate, we are willing to hear you. We’re going to go down to a 10% baseline tariff for them, and China will be raised to 125 due to their insistence on escalation.
02:13 Speaker A
Let’s bring in our Yahoo Finance’s Ben Worskol. What a difference a day makes, Ben. My first question is, Ben, and I was just talking to Julie about this. Why now, Ben? Why do you think Trump made this reversal at this moment?
02:42 Ben Worskol
Well, according to Bessent there, um, one thing he said at a different point is that this was Trump’s plan all along. He he, the way he described it as, this was a conversation he had with with Trump in Florida on Friday. Bessent was definitely down in in Florida with him in Mar-a-Lago. And that this was sort of part of the idea here that he was going to wait for this day to do it. You know, there there there’s a lot of questions around that that you guys raised at the top about sort of the bond market and the stock market having so having so many problems in recent days sort of forcing this issue. But but their their their theirs their case here is that this is sort of part of the the quote art of the deal, and that they’re trying to do this. Um, a couple other points I’ll make too on sort of what we saw this afternoon, and I think in the market reaction. One is I do think Bessent being the one that that came out to announce this is a signal to markets about kind of which side of Trump’s aids are are in charge here. Terry Haines at Pangaea policy made this exact point in an initial reaction that Bessent being the kind of pole position person here, the person that talks about this, is a signal to markets that other folks that have been more hardline, the Howard Blatniks, Peter Navarros of the world, aren’t aren’t as powerful. So, that’s that’s one aspect that I think is important here in this announcement in terms of the optics. The other one is the big one is that this is kind of increasingly becoming all about China. Um, Bessent at another point said that China is the main problem with US trading at this point. And so, it’s a clear focus on China. And what also is happening here in Washington this week is that negotiations are happening, not just with any countries, but with China’s neighbors, with Vietnam’s, um, South Korea, Japan, to to create deals there first to kind of increase the pressure on China.
06:00 Speaker A
And yet, Ben, I’m seeing, for example, the New York Times is reporting not only are the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, our closest trading partners, still in effect, but it sounds like they’re getting the additional 10% that’s the universal tariff on everyone else.
06:45 Ben Worskol
Yeah, that’s one of the one of the questions. I’ve asked and answered, yes, in response to that question about this afternoon. So, it’s unclear how that works. They’re already paying more than 10% based on these illegal immigration and fentanyl duties that are that are that were in place from even before Trump’s liberation day announcement. Another big question here is the European Union. Um, they announced their own reciprocal tariffs, and Trump’s whole reason for raising the rate on China was because of their of their reciprocal duties. And the White House isn’t answering questions yet about whether European Union will go down to 10%, or it’ll raise, or what will happen there.
08:01 Speaker A
Thank you, Ben, for trying to make sense of this very fast-moving situation. Thank you so much.
08:13 Ben Worskol
Mhm.