Trump team tries to project confidence and calm after his tariff moves rattled markets

Trump team tries to project confidence and calm after his tariff moves rattled markets
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer testifies before the Senate Finance Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP)
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Updated 14 April 2025
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Trump team tries to project confidence and calm after his tariff moves rattled markets

Trump team tries to project confidence and calm after his tariff moves rattled markets
  • White House advisers and Cabinet members tried to project confidence and calm amid Trump’s on-again, off-again approach to tariffs on imported goods

ATLANTA: Trump administration officials were out in force across the television networks Sunday defending President Donald Trump’s economic policies after another week of reeling markets that saw the Republican administration reverse course on some of its steepest tariffs.
Trump, meanwhile, said on his social media platform that there ultimately will be no exemptions for his sweeping tariff agenda, disputing characterizations that he has granted tariff exceptions for certain electronics, including smart phones, whose production is concentrated in China. Rather, Trump said, “those products are subject to the existing 20 percent Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”
White House advisers and Cabinet members tried to project confidence and calm amid Trump’s on-again, off-again approach to tariffs on imported goods from around the world. But their explanations about the overall agenda, coupled with Trump’s latest statements, also reflected shifting narratives from a president who, as a candidate in 2024, promised an immediate economic boost and lower prices but now asks American businesses and consumers for patience.
A week ago, Trump’s team stood by his promise to leave the impending tariffs in place without exceptions. They used their latest news show appearances to defend his move to ratchet back to a 10 percent universal tariff for most nations except China (145 percent), while seeming to grant exemptions for certain electronics like smartphones, laptops, hard drives, flat-panel monitors and semiconductor chips.
Here are the highlights of what Trump lieutenants said last week vs. Sunday:
There are varying answers on the purpose of the tariffs
Long before launching his first presidential campaign in 2015, Trump bemoaned the offshoring of US manufacturing. His promise is to reindustrialize the United States and eliminate trade deficits with other countries.
LAST WEEK
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, interviewed on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” played up national security. “You’ve got to realize this is a national security issue,” he said, raising the worst-case scenarios of what could happen if the US were involved in a war.
“We don’t make medicine in this country anymore. We don’t make ships. We don’t have enough steel and aluminum to fight a battle, right?” he said.
SUNDAY
Lutnick stuck to that national security framing, but White House trade adviser Peter Navarro focused more on the import taxes being leverage in the bigger economic puzzle.
“The world cheats us. They’ve been cheating us for decades,” Navarro said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He cited practices such as dumping products at unfairly low prices, currency manipulation and barriers to US auto and agricultural products entering foreign markets.
Navarro insisted the tariffs would yield broader bilateral trade deals to address all those issues. But he also relied on a separate justification when discussing China: the illicit drug trade.
“China has killed over a million people with their fentanyl,” he said.
Speaking before Trump’s Truth Social post disputing the notion of exemptions, Lutnick alluded to that coming policy. “They’re going to have a special focus-type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”
The status of negotiations with other nations, including China, remains fuzzy
LAST WEEK

With the higher rates set to be collected beginning April 9, administration officials argued that other countries would rush to the negotiating table.
“I’ve heard that there are negotiations ongoing and that there are a number of offers,” Kevin Hassett, director of the White House Economic Council, told ABC. He claimed that “more than 50 countries (were) reaching out,” though he did not name any.
SUNDAY
Navarro named the United Kingdom, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Israel as among the nations in active negotiations with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Lutnick and other officials.
Greer said on CBS that his goal was “to get meaningful deals before 90 days” –- the duration of Trump’s pause -– “and I think we’re going to be there with several countries in the next few weeks.”
Talks with China have not begun, he said. “We expect to have a conversation with them,” he said, emphasizing it would be between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump took an aggressive tone himself Sunday in his social media post, saying “we will not be held hostage by other Countries, especially hostile trading Nations like China, which will do everything within its power to disrespect the American People.”
Navarro was not as specific about Beijing. “We have opened up our invitation to them,” he said. Lutnick characterized the outreach as “soft entrees … through intermediaries.”
Pressed on whether there is any meaningful back and forth, Navarro said, “The president has a very good relationship with President Xi.”
Then he proceeded to criticize several China’s polices and trade practices.
The pitches are different, but confidence is constant
LAST WEEK

Navarro was bullish even after US and global trading markets suffered trillions of dollars in losses.
“The first rule, particularly for the smaller investors out there, you can’t lose money unless you sell. And, right now, the smart strategy is not to panic,” he said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
SUNDAY
Navarro’s optimism did not waver despite another net-loss week for securities markets and rocky bond markets. “So, this is unfolding exactly like we thought it would in a dominant scenario,” he said.
Others confronted some of the more complex realities of trying to achieve Trump’s goal of restoring a bygone era of US manufacturing.
Lutnick suggested the focus is on returning high-tech jobs, while sidestepping questions about lower-skilled manufacturing of goods such as shoes that could mean higher prices because of higher wages for US workers. But some of that high-tech production is what Trump has, for now, exempted from the tariffs that he and his advisers frame as leverage for forcing companies to open US facilities.
Hassett did acknowledge widespread angst.
“The survey data has been showing that people are anxious about the changes a little bit,” he said, before steering his answer to employment rates. “The hard data,” he said, “has been really, really strong.”


’Kyiv should be ours’: Russians boosted after Putin-Trump call

Updated 13 sec ago
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’Kyiv should be ours’: Russians boosted after Putin-Trump call

’Kyiv should be ours’: Russians boosted after Putin-Trump call
“I am rooting for our country, I love it very much and I just want Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) to just, after all, get justice done,” Anastasia told AFP
Asked what her main feeling was following the talks, pensioner Sofiya said: “Uncertainty“

MOSCOW: A day after Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump spoke by phone on Ukraine, showering each other with compliments, Russian home-maker Anastasia had one wish: for Moscow to finish what it started in 2022.

In the fourth spring of Moscow’s devastating offensive, which has killed tens of thousands, diplomatic movement in recent days has given Russians a boost in confidence that victory — in some shape or another — is approaching.

In the call with Trump on Monday, the Russian leader once again brushed off calls for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, as demanded by the West and Kyiv.

Despite that, the US president said the “tone” of the conversation was “excellent.”

Russia controls a fifth of Ukraine and holds an upper hand on the battlefield.

“I am rooting for our country, I love it very much and I just want Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) to just, after all, get justice done,” Anastasia told AFP in the Moscow suburbs, echoing official language calling for the defeat of Ukraine.

Not knowing how or when it would happen, the 40-year-old mother, who declined to give her surname, said she was getting impatient.

“I don’t want my children to have to solve this issue. Let’s decide it here and now.”

But she had no trust in Trump — who she said is “just a businessman” who “wants money and nothing else” — and worried the “Anglo-Saxons” will trick Russia.

Putin has shown no sign of scaling down his maximalist demands for ending the Ukraine conflict, seeking little short of capitulation from Kyiv.

At talks in Istanbul last week, Russian negotiators demanded Ukraine abandon territory it still controls in the east and south.

Russia also wants Ukraine barred from NATO and for Western military support to end.

Putin has repeatedly called for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to be removed from office.

Confidence was tinged with uncertainty in Moscow after the Putin-Trump call, in which the Russian leader floated a vague “memorandum” that would outline demands for a peace deal and Trump said Kyiv and Moscow would begin talks swiftly.

Many in Moscow did not know what Trump or Putin meant.

Asked what her main feeling was following the talks, pensioner Sofiya said: “Uncertainty.”

“It’s interesting what will happen to us, not only to our families, but our country,” said the 72-year-old, who declined to give her surname.

Like many, Sofiya saw no real progress from last week’s talks — the first direct negotiations on the conflict in more than three years.

“I don’t know how to express this, but I would like calm and peace,” she said.

Moscow has ramped up military censorship amid its Ukraine offensive, threatening years in prison for those who criticize or question the campaign.

Zelensky said Russia was not serious about talks and is trying to “buy time” to continue its offensive.

Putin was indeed hoping to advance more on the ground and will not “miss the opportunity” for a summer offensive, said Russian analyst Konstantin Kalachev.

He called the Trump call a “tactical victory” for the Russian leader.

“Russia is hoping to push them (Ukrainian forces) this summer,” Kalachev said.

“There will be no peace, while Russia has not yet used the option of a final offensive,” he said, highlighting the prospect of a summer ground campaign.

Though Putin said both sides should be ready to make “compromises,” few were forthcoming from the Kremlin or on the streets of Moscow.

“I believe that Odesa, Kharkiv, Nikolayev (Mykolaiv), Kyiv should be ours,” said another pensioner, 70-year-old Marina, who also declined to give her surname, reeling off a string of Ukrainian cities that Russia has not formally claimed.

Russian state TV said Moscow’s negotiators threatened in Istanbul to seize more land if Ukraine does not pull its troops out of the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions that Moscow claims to have annexed.

“If the four regions will not be recognized in the nearest future, the next time there will be six regions,” said state TV presenter Yevgeny Popov.

Moscow’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky later evoked Russia’s 21-year war with Sweden in the 18th century, hinting Moscow was ready for a long fight.

Marina, too, said she would support Russia to fight on, even as thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed.

“Of course, it is a big shame that our people are also dying,” she told AFP. “But there is no other way.”

Poland to try suspect in alleged Russian plot to assassinate Zelensky

Poland to try suspect in alleged Russian plot to assassinate Zelensky
Updated 9 min 10 sec ago
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Poland to try suspect in alleged Russian plot to assassinate Zelensky

Poland to try suspect in alleged Russian plot to assassinate Zelensky
  • The man, identified as Pawel K., was arrested in April 2024
  • Prosecutors said he had declared his readiness to act for Russia’s military intelligence

WARSAW: Polish authorities have indicted a man charged with planning to help Russian foreign intelligence services prepare a possible attempt to assassinate Ukraine’s president, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The man, identified as Pawel K., was arrested in April 2024 after cooperation between Polish and Ukrainian prosecutors, and faces up to eight years in prison.

According to prosecutors, he had declared his readiness to act for the military intelligence of the Russian Federation and established contacts with Russians who were directly involved in the war in Ukraine.

“The activities were to help, among other things, in the planning by the Russian special services of a possible assassination attempt on the life of ... the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky,” the prosecution said in a statement.

Pawel K.’s tasks included collecting and providing information on security at the Rzeszow-Jasionka Airport in southeastern Poland, prosecutors said.

Poland, a hub for Western military supplies to Ukraine, says it has become a major target of Russian spies, accusing Moscow and its ally Belarus of trying to destabilize it — accusations which the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.


PKK urges Turkiye to ease leader’s solitary confinement for any peace talks

PKK urges Turkiye to ease leader’s solitary confinement for any peace talks
Updated 48 min 56 sec ago
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PKK urges Turkiye to ease leader’s solitary confinement for any peace talks

PKK urges Turkiye to ease leader’s solitary confinement for any peace talks
  • The disbanding mechanisms are unclear yet
  • Hiwa said the PKK has shown “seriousness regarding peace,” but “till now the Turkish state has not given any guarantees”

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq: The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has said Türkiye should ease prison conditions for its founder Abdullah Ocalan, declaring him the group’s “chief negotiator” for any future talks after a decision to disband.

The Kurdish group, blacklisted by Ankara and its Western allies, announced on May 12 it had adopted a decision to disarm and disband after a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that cost more than 40,000 lives.

The group’s historic decision came after an appeal by Ocalan, made in a letter from Istanbul’s Imrali prison island where he has been held since 1999.

Zagros Hiwa, spokesman for the PKK’s political wing, told AFP on Monday that “we expect that the Turkish state makes amendments in the solitary confinement conditions” to allow Ocalan “free and secure work conditions so that he could lead the process.”

“Leader Apo is our chief negotiator” for any talks with Türkiye, Hiwa added in an interview, referring to Ocalan.

“Only Leader Apo can lead the practical implementation of the decision taken by the PKK.”

The disbanding mechanisms are unclear yet, but the Turkish government has said it would carefully monitor the process to ensure full implementation.

Hiwa said the PKK has shown “seriousness regarding peace,” but “till now the Turkish state has not given any guarantees and taken any measure for facilitating the process” and continued its “bombardments and artillery shellings” against the Kurdish group’s positions.

The PKK operates rear bases in Iraq’s autonomous northern Kurdistan region, where Türkiye also maintains military bases and often carries out air and ground operations against the Kurdish militants.

Turkish media reports have suggested that militants who had committed no crime on Turkish soil could return without fear of prosecution, but that PKK leaders might be forced into exile or stay behind in Iraq.

Hiwa said the PKK objects to its members or leaders being forced to leave, saying that “real peace requires integration, not exile.”


Second man in court over arson attacks linked to UK PM Starmer

Second man in court over arson attacks linked to UK PM Starmer
Updated 58 min 38 sec ago
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Second man in court over arson attacks linked to UK PM Starmer

Second man in court over arson attacks linked to UK PM Starmer
  • Neither of the suspects has been charged under terrorism laws or the new National Security Act
  • Police said the first fire involved a Toyota Rav4 car that Starmer used to own

LONDON: A second man to be charged over a series of arson attacks on houses and a car linked to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer appeared in a London court on Tuesday.

Over five days earlier this month, police were called to fires at a house in north London owned by Starmer, another at a property nearby where he used to live, and to a blaze involving a car that also used to belong to the British leader.

Last week, Ukrainian Roman Lavrynovych, 21, was charged in connection with the fires, and on Tuesday Romanian national Stanislav Carpiuc, 26, who was born in Ukraine, appeared in court accused of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life.

“The alleged offense arises from three fires set at locations linked to the prime minister in the last fortnight,” prosecutor Sarah Przybylska said. “At this stage the alleged offending is unexplained.”

Neither of the suspects has been charged under terrorism laws or the new National Security Act which aims to target hostile state activity.

Police said the first fire involved a Toyota Rav4 car that Starmer used to own. Days later, there was a blaze at a property where Starmer once resided and the following day there was an attack on a house in north London that he still owns.

Starmer, who has lived at his official 10 Downing Street residence in central London since becoming prime minister last July, has called the incidents “an attack on all of us, on our democracy and the values we stand for.”

Wearing a light blue hoodie, Carpiuc, who was arrested on Saturday at London’s Luton Airport, spoke only to confirm his name and address while listening to the proceedings through a translator.

He was remanded in custody until a hearing on June 6 at London’s Old Bailey court when his co-accused Lavrynovych is also due to appear.

The prosecutor said a decision would be taken at this hearing as to whether the case would proceed under the terrorism protocol.

Carpiuc’s lawyer Jay Nutkins said his client had lived in Britain for nine years and had just completed a two-year degree at a university in Canterbury.

“He denies being at the scene of any of these fires,” Nutkins said.


Carpiuc funded himself through construction work, Nutkins said. On a casting website for models and actors, an entry under Carpiuc’s name said he was born in western Ukraine and was seeking work as a model.

On Monday, police arrested a third man in connection with the fires and he remains in police custody.


Russia accuses NATO of ‘aggressive actions’ in Baltic Sea after Estonia tries to seize tanker

Russia accuses NATO of ‘aggressive actions’ in Baltic Sea after Estonia tries to seize tanker
Updated 20 May 2025
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Russia accuses NATO of ‘aggressive actions’ in Baltic Sea after Estonia tries to seize tanker

Russia accuses NATO of ‘aggressive actions’ in Baltic Sea after Estonia tries to seize tanker
  • Zakharova said Moscow was closely monitoring events in the Baltic

MOSCOW: Russia on Tuesday accused NATO of carrying out what it called aggressive actions in the Baltic Sea that impeded the freedom of shipping after Estonia tried and failed to seize a tanker.

Estonia said on Thursday last week that Moscow had briefly sent a fighter jet into NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea during an attempt to stop a Russian-bound oil tanker thought to be part of a “shadow fleet” defying Western sanctions on Moscow.

Asked about the matter at her weekly news briefing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow was closely monitoring events in the Baltic and would react to what she called illegal actions by NATO vessels if they caused risks.