Subject: Twas bonds that broke Don the Con
https://fortune.com/2025/04/09...
Trump didn’t care that the stock market was crashing. Bond yields were the ‘pain point’ that finally got him to pause tariffs


Gifted NYT link
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0...
The economic turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields, caused Mr. Trump to blink on Wednesday afternoon and pause his “reciprocal” tariffs for most countries for the next 90 days, according to four people with direct knowledge of the president’s decision.
Asked to explain the decision, Mr. Trump told reporters: “Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”

Behind the scenes, senior members of Mr. Trump’s team had feared a financial panic that could spiral out of control and potentially devastate the economy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others on the president’s team, including Vice President JD Vance, had been pushing for a more structured approach to the trade conflict that would focus on isolating China as the worst actor while still sending a broader message that Mr. Trump was serious about cracking down on trade imbalances.

After his reversal on social media, Mr. Trump’s team was put in the unenviable position of trying to spin the media that this was the plan all along, a brilliant strategy straight out of the pages of the president’s best-selling book, “The Art of the Deal.” Mr. Bessent went so far as to deny that the bond market had driven the change.