April 10th, 2025: How The World Is Reacting To Trump’s Tariff Pause & Russia’s Spring Offensive Begins
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It's Thursday, the 10th of April. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. We'll start things off with President Trump hitting pause on his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days. We'll look at the reasons behind the reversal and how the markets reacted to the news. Later in the show, Ukraine's top general says Russia's spring offensive is already underway, centered in the country's northeastern Assumi region. We'll bring you the latest from the front lines. Plus, after slashing foreign aid, the Trump administration is now walking some of it back, quietly reinstating several programs, including those providing emergency food relief.
We'll explain what's changing and why. And in today's Back of the Brief, an update on a story that we brought you yesterday, as Beijing denies that a significant number of Chinese nationals are fighting alongside the Russian army. I guess it just depends on your definition of significant. But first, today's PDB Spotlight. In a whirlwind turnaround, President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday a 90-day pause on his sweeping global reciprocal tariffs, sending stocks soaring after a week of intense market volatility. The announcement came just hours after the reciprocal tariffs officially took effect. though one country was not granted a reprieve. Care to guess which one? While announcing the pause, President Trump singled out China for their, quote, lack of respect when it comes to international trade and said he was raising the tariff on imports from our third largest trading partner from 104% to a staggering 125%. That's effective immediately. We should also mention that a 10% baseline tariff on almost all U.S.
imports that was implemented on Saturday will remain in place, as will the 25% tariff on all foreign-made automobiles and the 25% global tariff on imported steel and aluminum. Still, investors were jubilant. Look at that, they're jubilant, with the stock market posting one of its largest rallies in history. The S&P 500 climbed more than 9% on the news. That's its biggest one-day gain since 2008. And the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended nearly 3,000 points higher, its best day since March 2020. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, meanwhile, oh, listen to me, I sound just like a business reporter, closed up more than 12%, the largest one-day jump for the index since 2001, and its second best day ever. That's according to a report from CNBC.
The news also quelled fears of a looming economic downturn, at least for now, with Goldman Sachs revising their probability of a recession from 65% down to 45%. And when, of course, was the last time you heard anyone use the word quelled. It's not entirely clear what prompted the turnaround by President Trump, who as recently as Monday said his administration was not considering a pause on the new tariff regime. But in a post to Truth Social on Wednesday, the president said he decided to pump the brakes to allow time for U.S. officials to negotiate new trade deals with targeted countries. President Trump wrote that, quote, He added that since none of these countries, unlike China, have implemented retaliatory measures since he unveiled his tariffs, he was more than happy to give them a little more breathing room to work on finding a resolution, saying, quote,
The White House may have also been influenced by the bloodbath on Wall Street over the past week, which erased trillions of dollars from stock markets and caused a spike in U.S. government bond yields, according to a report from Reuters. President Trump said Wednesday that he, quote, saw last night that people were getting a little queasy, a little yippy. When it comes to China, however, he vowed to continue tightening the economic screws, saying, quote, Hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S. and other countries have been no longer sustainable or acceptable. For now, White House officials said they would not be releasing a list of the more than 75 countries that have reached out to negotiate, though analysts said that the EU, the European Union, is likely at the top of the list. On Monday, EU leaders offered to eliminate all industrial tariffs on the U.S., but President Trump did not appear to be swayed by the idea at the time.
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