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      Trump’s Tariff Reversal Calms Some G.O.P. Nerves, but Questions Linger

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      President Trump’s whipsawing tariff policy has prompted bipartisan alarm on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are outraged and Republicans are caught between their deep opposition to tariffs and fear of criticizing Mr. Trump.The president’s abrupt announcement on Wednesday that he would halt most of his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days just a week after announcing them allayed the immediate concerns of some G.O.P. lawmakers, many of whom rushed to praise Mr. Trump for what they characterized as deal-making mastery.But behind those statements was a deep well of nervousness among Republican lawmakers who are hearing angst from their constituents and donors about the impact of Mr. Trump’s trade moves on the financial markets and the economy. Some of them have begun signing onto measures that would end the tariffs altogether or claw back Congress’s power to block the president from imposing such levies in the future.“I’m just trying to figure out whose throat I get to choke if it’s wrong, and who I put up on a platform and thank them for the novel approach that was successful if they’re right,” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said of the sweeping tariffs on Tuesday during a hearing with Jamieson Greer, the Trump administration’s top trade official.On Wednesday, after Mr. Trump pulled back most of the tariffs but retained a 10 percent tariff rate for most countries and announced additional penalties on China, Mr. Tillis still sounded anxious. He said the move was likely to “reduce some of the escalation,” but added that there was still considerable work to be done to prevent another market meltdown.“We’ve got to get a deal before we get rid of uncertainty,” he told reporters soon after Mr. Trump announced the change in a social media post.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Southeast Asia, With Little Leverage, Seeks to Placate Trump on Trade

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      Southeast Asian leaders, their export-driven economies in peril, are trying to placate the president. “We may have to comply,” Thailand’s finance minister said.They were hit by some of President Trump’s most punishing tariffs, in one case as high as 49 percent. The new levies threatened to cripple their economies, which have prospered by making sneakers and tech goods for American consumers.So Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia and Vietnam rushed to appease Mr. Trump. They promised not to retaliate, unlike China and Europe. And they proposed to reduce or even eliminate their own tariffs on American imports.On Thursday, the region woke up to the good news that Mr. Trump had paused his “reciprocal” tariffs. The president suggested he had reversed course because of the market turmoil they had caused. Still, Southeast Asia is sticking with its conciliatory approach.In a statement on Thursday, the economic ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean, said the 10-country bloc was “united in the opinion that retaliation is not an option.” (The ministers were in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for a meeting that had been previously scheduled.)Despite Mr. Trump’s 90-day pause, the anxiety here is palpable. His tariffs, the Asean statement said, are “introducing uncertainty and undermining trust in the global trade system.” Millions of livelihoods in the region are on the line. Thailand’s finance minister, Pichai Chunhavajira, acknowledged that the White House had leverage over his nation in matters of trade.“This is how you negotiate,” Mr. Pichai said in an interview. “You start with an extreme measure and then ease your demand along the way. We may have to comply.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Egg Prices Continued to Rise in March

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      Egg prices have reached record highs as bird flu outbreaks have hit poultry farms and forced producers to cull tens of millions of hens.For weeks, President Trump has repeatedly boasted that his administration had managed to bring egg prices down. But new data on Thursday showed that egg prices at the grocery store continued to climb in March.Egg prices rose 5.9 percent over the month, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They climbed at a slower rate, though, after rising 10.4 percent in February and 15.2 percent in January.Compared with a year earlier, egg prices are up 60.4 percent.Egg prices have reached record highs in recent months as bird flu outbreaks have hit poultry farms and forced producers to cull tens of millions of hens. But Mr. Trump, who had vowed to bring down grocery prices while on the campaign trail, has continued to claim victory on egg prices. This month, Mr. Trump said that egg prices had dropped 59 percent, and on Monday, he said that egg prices were down 79 percent.Consumers might not be feeling relief because the president is not referring to retail egg prices. He is instead pointing to the wholesale price of eggs, which has fallen by roughly half since the beginning of his second term.Wholesale egg prices dropped from a national average of $6.55 a dozen on Jan. 24 to $3.26 on April 4, according to data from the Agriculture Department. Wholesale egg prices are also down from a peak of more than $8 a dozen at the end of February.But the average retail price for a dozen large eggs reached $6.23 in March, up from $5.90 the month before, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Encouragement of Stock Investors Draws Scrutiny

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      Was the president manipulating the market with his comments, as his critics say, or reassuring Americans, as the White House maintains?President Trump began his Wednesday with some advice for those rattled by his steep tariffs.“BE COOL,” Mr. Trump told his followers on social media after the markets opened. Just a couple of minutes later he wrote, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”Hours after that, Mr. Trump sent the markets soaring when he paused the levies for 90 days. The S&P 500 climbed several percentage points in a matter of minutes and was on its way to its best day since the recovery of the 2008 financial crisis.Soon after Mr. Trump’s pause, Democrats and government ethics experts asked the perhaps obvious question: Did Mr. Trump give the green light to his followers to cash in on a forthcoming rise in stock prices?“How is this not market manipulation?” Representative Mike Levin, Democrat of California, said on social media, referring to action that is potentially illegal. “If you’re a Trump supporter and you did what he said and you bought, then you did great. On the other hand, if you’re a retiree or a senior or somebody in the middle class over the last few days that didn’t have the tolerance for risk and you decided to sell, you got screwed.”The news of Mr. Trump’s pause came as Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, was testifying on Capitol Hill. Representative Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada, pressed him on Mr. Trump’s aim.“It’s not market manipulation,” Mr. Greer said. “We’re trying to reset the global trading system.”“How have you achieved any of that?” Mr. Horsford asked. “So if it’s not market manipulation, what is it? Who’s benefiting? What billionaire just got richer?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Appeals Court Clears Path for Trump to Resume Firing Probationary Workers

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      The Trump administration is once again free to fire probationary employees. For now.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in a 2-to-1 decision, sided with the government on Wednesday to block a lower-court ruling in Maryland that had led to the reinstatement of thousands of federal workers who had been fired in February.The purge of the employees had marked one of the first stages of President Trump’s plan to rapidly downsize the civil service and overhaul or eliminate entire offices and programs. Since then, the status of the workers has been tied up in legal battles over whether the firings had been carried out lawfully.The Wednesday appeals court decision came a day after the Supreme Court blocked a similar ruling in California reining in the government in a separate case. There is now no court order in place to stop the government from firing probationary employees.Both courts ruled on narrow issues of standing: whether the probationary firings harmed the plaintiffs so much that they had the right to sue in district court. In California, nonprofit organizations sued the government over the firings at six agencies because they said they benefited from the services the federal workers provided. In Maryland, 19 states and the District of Columbia sued 20 federal agencies, arguing that the government was obligated to give them notice when personnel actions could abruptly and significantly increase demand for unemployment benefits.It was not immediately clear what the latest decision meant for the thousands of fired probationary employees, nearly all of whom had been recently reinstated as a result of district court orders. The back-and-forth has left the employees in a state of limbo, wondering if they will be fired again after having just been rehired.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      House Votes to Curb National Injunctions, Targeting Judges Who Thwart Trump

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      The House passed legislation on Wednesday that would bar federal district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions, part of an escalating Republican campaign to take aim at judges who have moved to halt some of President Trump’s executive orders.The bill, approved mostly along party lines on a vote of 219 to 213, would largely limit district court judges to issuing narrow orders that pertain to parties involved in a specific lawsuit, rather than broader ones that can block a policy or action from being enforced throughout the country. It would make an exception in cases that were brought by multiple states, which would need to be heard by a three-judge panel.It faces a slim chance of becoming law because of the obstacles it faces in the Senate, where seven Democrats would have to join Republicans to allow it to advance. So far, similar bills have not been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.House Republicans have framed the legislation, named the No Rogue Rulings Act, as a necessary constitutional check on what they claim is an abuse of power by judges attempting to wield political influence from the bench.Citing an increase in nationwide injunctions since Mr. Trump took office, Republican lawmakers have argued that an unelected federal judge in one district should not be able to block the executive branch from implementing nationwide policies, a duty they say should be left to appeals courts or the Supreme Court.The Supreme Court “must reach a majority in order to make something the law of the land, and yet a single district judge believes that they can make the law of the land,” Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who introduced the bill, said on the House floor on Wednesday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bond Sell Off Raises Questions About U.S. Safe Haven Status

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      A sharp sell-off in U.S. government bond markets has sparked fears about the growing fallout from President Trump’s sweeping tariffs and retaliation by China, the European Union and others, raising questions about what is typically seen as the safest corner for investors to take cover during times of turmoil.Yields on 10-year Treasuries — the benchmark for a wide variety of debt — shot 0.2 percentage points higher on Wednesday, to 4.45 percent, a big move in that market. Just a few days ago, it had traded below 4 percent. Yields on the 30-year bond rose significantly as well, at one point on Wednesday topping 5 percent. Borrowing costs globally have also shot higher.The sell-off comes as investors have fled riskier assets globally in what some fear has parallels to what became known as the “dash for cash” episode during the pandemic, when the Treasury market broke down. The recent moves have upended a longstanding relationship in which the U.S. government bond market serves as a safe harbor during times of stress.Volatility has surged as stock markets have plummeted amid fears that the U.S. economy is hurtling toward stagflation, in which economic growth contracts while inflation surges. The S&P 500 is now on the verge of entering a bear market, meaning it has dropped 20 percent from its recent high.“The global safe-haven status is in question,” said Priya Misra, a portfolio manager at JPMorgan Asset Management. “Disorderly moves have happened this week because there is no safe place to hide.”Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury secretary, sought to tamp down concerns on Wednesday, brushing off the sell-off as nothing more than investors who bought assets with borrowed money having to cover their losses.“I believe that there is nothing systemic about this — I think that it is an uncomfortable but normal deleveraging that’s going on in the bond market,” he said in an interview with Fox Business.But the moves have been significant enough to raise broader concerns about how foreign investors now perceive the United States, after Mr. Trump decided to slap onerous tariffs on nearly all of its trading partners. Some countries have sought to strike deals with the administration to lower their tariff rates. But China retaliated on Wednesday, announcing an 84 percent levy on U.S. goods after Mr. Trump raised the tariff rate on Chinese goods to 104 percent.In a social media post on Wednesday, the former U.S. Treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers said the broader sell-off suggested a “generalized aversion to US assets in global financial markets” and warned about the possibility of a “serious financial crisis wholly induced by US government tariff policy.”“We are being treated by global financial markets like a problematic emerging market,” he wrote. More