Wall Street Breakfast
Stocks to the moon as Trump backs off trade war (except for China)
09 Apr 2025
Trump does U-turn on tariffs, pausing on nearly all countries, but raising China rate. (0:16) Stocks explode higher, with Dow up nearly 3,000 points. (2:50) Bond yield rise forced Trump’s hand. (3:11) Show NotesChina boosts tariffs on U.S.Episode transcripts: seekingalpha.com/wsb Sign up for our daily newsletter here and for full access to analyst ratings, stock quant scores, dividend grades, subscribe to Seeking Alpha Premium at seekingalpha.com/subscriptions.
Full Episode
Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis. Good afternoon. Today is Wednesday, April 9th, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn. Our top story so far, and it's a doozy. You may not be able to fight the Fed, and you certainly can't beat the bond market.
In a massive U-turn, President Donald Trump let most countries off the hook from the large tariffs he announced last week, instead zeroing in on an escalating battle with China. And stocks are rocketing higher, with the S&P 500 up about 8%, the Nasdaq Composite up 10%, and the Dow up 7%.
Mohamed El-Erian, advisor at Allianz, says, Up to an hour ago, there was a debate on what would convince the U.S. administration to opt for some type of pause on tariffs. Would it be Congress, the president's advisors, business leaders, the legal system, markets, or something else? We got the answer today.
It's the government bond market, particularly how close it gets to the line that separates wild price volatility from market malfunctioning.
Facing a big sell-off in stocks and, more importantly at this point, a persistently big rise in Treasury yields when part of the plan was to get rates down, the White House went from declaring no exemptions, no pauses, and negotiations one country at a time to eliminate every trade deficit to a 90-day pause with tariffs dropping to 10% on the majority of the countries on the original list.
But Trump also boosted tariffs on China again in response to an earlier move by Beijing. Based on the lack of respect that China has shown the world's markets, I am hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125% effective immediately, Trump said on Truth Social. The president said other countries have called U.S.
federal agencies, such as the Departments of Commerce and Treasury, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to trade, trade barriers, tariffs, currency manipulation, and non-monetary tariffs. Also effective immediately, he added. Earlier on Wednesday, Beijing retaliated against U.S. tariffs of 104% by raising its tariff rate on imports from the U.S. to 84%.
The world's second largest economy called the American trade barriers a mistake on top of a mistake. There is some vagary in what countries are included in this pause, though. Robin Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, says, "...this trade war was really always about the U.S. versus China. The U.S.
made a strategic error by picking fights with everyone instead of just focusing on China. The 90-day pause fixes that and is thus very good. It also gives Xi an off-ramp if he reverses China's retaliatory tariffs. In trading, the bulls charged immediately." Among the biggest gainers in the S&P 500 were airlines and chip stocks, up more than 20%.
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