Associated Press: Mexico's President Reacts to President Trump Postponing Tariffs On Most Goods

"Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded positively to Trump’s announcement that he would postpone 25% tariffs on most goods imported from Mexico until April 2nd after a call between the two leaders earlier in the morning. Read more...

Source:Associated Press of the United Mexican States.

From the Associated Press

"President Donald Trump said Thursday that he has postponed 25% tariffs on most goods from Mexico and some imports from Canada for a month. Trump said in the Oval Office that he still plans to impose “reciprocal” tariffs starting on April 2." 

From the Associated Press

The New Democrat has been all over the cleanup in isle 9 President Trump on this issue. This is what my colleague Derik Schneider wrote about this in February: 

"President Trump's cave on the tariffs, is just like his his cave on the attempt to unilaterally freeze government spending last week. His got negative feedback from his own people and then he tried to spin it like it was some type of victory for him. 

Imagine being the coach of a football team and you just lost a game 35-7, after you spent a week talking about how your team is going to beat the other team and the press is talking about how bad your team was beat and your answer is something like: "We didn't get shut out. We scored in that game. You thought we would get shut out". 

This is what Donald Trump is like as President of the United States, he swings for the fences every time he tries to do anything. And when he misses badly, he tries claim victory by saying he did something that he had nothing to do with. He's like the amateur card player who goes to Las Vegas with his 10,000$ in savings on a Friday night, leaves on Sunday with 100 bucks left, claiming he just made a 100 bucks... 

From The New Democrat

This is what Ederik Schneider wrote about this in February: 

"Sorry, but I don't give credit to people for: 

Not jumping off the bridge. 

Not breaking into my house. 

Not hitting my car when they're parking. 

I don't give cabbies a bigger tip from dropping me off at the right location. 

When you almost create a trade war and you are just pausing that trade war, you don't deserve credit for almost blowing up your house, but putting pause on that. Perhaps you really want to look at the consequences of that. Will the insurance company be fooled. That sort of thing... 

From The New Democrat

This is what Kire Schneider wrote about this in February: 

"As Ederik mentioned yesterday and what Jesse Dollemore talked about today, is that Donald Trump creates all these man-made disasters (generally unintentionally, I believe, because he doesn't know what he's doing) and gets leaders of other countries to make some announcement announcing that they're doing what they already agreed to do years ago, or at least weeks ago.

Countries like Canada and Mexico, Britain, the European Union, already have a pretty good dossier  of President Trump. They know how easy it is to play him, to manipulate, to make him feel good. And they do that because if they make him feel good, he'l probably leave their countries alone. 

In the 1950s and 60s there was a term for someone like Donald Trump: he's what you would call back then a "damn fool". Another term from that era would be patsy. "Damn fool" would probably be a good term for most of Donald Trump's blue-collar supporters who see them as their lord and savior, who will take America back to it's "glory days' and they'll be in-charged again. But that's a different discussion...

From The New Democrat

This is what Fred Schneider wrote about this in February: 

"Donald Trump as President of the United States, (which is a big enough American nightmare right there) is like a stocker at a grocery store, who is a bit of a klutz, who just made another mess, cleans up all the apple sauce, or tomato sauce, the milk, that he just knocked over on the floor, who then cleans up that mess and expects extra credit for cleaning up his own mess, that he should've never created in the first place...

From The New Democrat

And from what I wrote about this in February: 

"No offense to Catherine Rampell and The Washington Post: The New Democrat was on this line of thinking about how Donald Trump handles his own problems that he creates for himself last week. How he politically shoots himself in the foot and sees a doctor about that and acts like he repaired the damage to his own foot himself and claims to be a world class surgeon, or something. But we're glad that Catherine Rampell picked up about this as well. Her CNN appearance last week when they were talking about the President's tariffs, suggests that she was already thinking about this for her column as well. 

I don't have much to add to what Ederik, Kire, and Fred have already said about this. 

The only thing that I would add is that Donald Trump is both an incompetent, as well as a narcissist when it comes to governing. He's simply not qualified to be President of the United States as far as actually doing the job. And you combine with the fact that he has way too much overconfidence and probably doesn't trust the people around him that he should actually listen to. So as a result, he simply ends up making a lot of bad decisions... 

From The New Democrat

I believe Washington Post economics columnist Catherine Rampell got into this in February as well: when foreign leaders publicly verbally kiss the ass (to be frank and these are my words) of President Trump, that's enough for him to back down from whatever he's currently threatening to do to them. From President Claudia Sheinbaum: 

“Many thanks to President Donald Trump. We had an excellent and respectful call in which we agreed that our work and collaboration have yielded unprecedented results, within the framework of respect for our sovereignties,” Sheinbaum said in an X post. “We will continue to work together, particularly on migration and security issues, which include reducing the illegal crossing of fentanyl into the United States, as well as weapons into Mexico.”

From CNBC

But the point is, we still have a status-quo trade relationship between Canada and Mexico. It looks no different today than it did in December. 1 difference would be that the President of the United States has been verbally attacking the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the United Mexican States. That wasn't going on 4 months ago. 

So why did President Trump hit pause on his tariffs? I think personally clean up the tomato sauce that he knocked over in isle 3, the apple sauce in isle 4, and the milk that he knocked to the floor, but we could debate that. But the Stock Market was down a total of 1,300 points on Monday and Tuesday. Up yesterday by a 1 point because perhaps they were thinking that automakers were going to be exempted from the tariffs. And inflation is still up and perhaps will be again for March.

Donald Trump is the Stock Market President. He judges the economy based on how the Stock Market is doing. When it's down, that's bad for him politically, as well as financially. So he paused the tariffs and perhaps tomorrow will lie about what a great deal he got from Canada and Mexico in exchange for him cleaning up his own political supermarket mess. 

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