The President's Daily Brief
PDB Afternoon Bulletin | April 9th, 2025: Trump Slams The Breaks On Tariff War—Except Against China & Bombshell Report Shows Biden's COVID Coverup
Wed, 09 Apr 2025
In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin: First, Trump pumps the breaks on his global trade war, announcing a 90 day pause on most of his reciprocal tariffs. But he’s not granting China a reprieve, instead hiking their tariff to an eye-watering 125 percent. Later in the show, we are learning that the Biden administration allegedly concealed a congressionally mandated report revealing that several U.S. military service members contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan, China in October of 2019, contradicting the former administration’s public claims about when the virus started circulating. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief TriTails Premium Beef: Visit https://TryBeef.com/PDB for 2 Free Flat Iron steaks with your first box over $250 Birch Gold: Text PDB to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What are the latest developments in Trump's tariff policy?
It's Wednesday, the 9th of April. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, Trump pumps the brakes on his global trade war, announcing a 90-day pause on most of his reciprocal tariffs. Not so fast, China. The White House is not granting China a reprieve. Quite the opposite, the U.S.
is hiking their tariff to an eye-watering 125%. Later in the show, we're learning that the Biden administration concealed a congressionally mandated report revealing that several U.S. military service members contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan, China in October of 2019, contradicting the Biden administration's public claims about when the virus started circulating.
But first, today's afternoon spotlight. The markets are breathing a sigh of relief today as President Trump announced a 90-day pause on his reciprocal tariffs, opting instead to only implement his 10% baseline tariff on all global imports. The notable exception here is, of course, China.
Trump had already imposed a 104% trade tax on Chinese imports, which took effect at midnight, but said Wednesday that he would further raise the tariff on China to 125%, effective immediately. The president cited the, quote, "...lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets and their refusal to negotiate new trade deals."
As a reminder, Trump initially announced a 34% reciprocal tariff on China last week, on top of an existing 20% tariff. But after Chinese leaders responded by announcing a 34% tariff of their own on American goods over the weekend, Trump added an additional 50% levy against China. Are you with me so far?
Then, China continued to dig in their heels, announcing Wednesday that they'll raise the 34% tariff on American-made goods to 84% effective on Thursday. That reprisal appears to have triggered President Trump's decision to single out China from his 90-day reciprocal tariff pause and raise their rate to 125%. Okay.
Prior to Trump's latest tariff announcement, China's finance ministry issued a statement condemning the president's adversarial approach to foreign trade, saying, quote, the U.S.
's practice of escalating tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake, which seriously infringes on China's legitimate rights and interests and seriously damages the rules-based multilateral trading system, end quote. Well, that's cute. The statement implies that the Chinese regime has been following the rules.
As we discussed on Monday's show, it's more than a bit ironic to see leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, act as if they have any respect for international rules and norms. Regardless, it doesn't appear that China plans to come to the negotiating table anytime soon. In a separate statement, China's Ministry of Commerce said, "...if the U.S.
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