President Donald Trump’s decision to pause the implementation of his tariff agenda underlines a reshuffling of his trade messaging, or at least the messengers seeking to ease concerns among the American electorate.
Senior White House officials maintain that the senior counselor for trade Peter Navarro, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and U.S. Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer all have played an equal part in advising the president on implementing his tariffs.
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But throughout this week, as the White House publicly flipped its tune on pausing implementation to allow bilateral trade negotiations to take place, Navarro, Trump’s toughest tariff hawk, has taken more of a backseat, while Bessent has spearheaded the administration’s attempts to calm fears on both Wall Street and Main Street.
Nearly a dozen current and former Trump White House and administration officials, granted anonymity to speak on internal discussions, say that Navarro, in particular, has worn out his welcome with “just about everyone” besides the president himself.
“F**k Navarro,” one former White House aide told the Washington Examiner. “He has no allies in the building except DJT.”
“He’s definitely going to be the guy POTUS picks to fall on the sword if Bessent can close these deals in a timely manner,” a second, current White House aide predicted.
Prior to the tariff pause, Navarro held frequent briefings with reporters about Trump’s tariff policies, both via telephone and on the White House driveway. But on Wednesday, Bessent, alongside White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, delivered the first comments on Trump’s pause to reporters.
“This was driven by the president’s strategy,” Bessent said Wednesday afternoon. “He and I had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along.”
The president also leaned on Bessent during Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting to speak on the stock market’s Wednesday gains, the ensuing losses on Thursday, and updates regarding the fresh trade negotiations with other countries.
Top Trump aides, including Bessent, said this week that the president had always planned to initiate a pause to allow for trade negotiations to take place, even after Leavitt called reports that Trump was considering the idea “fake news.”
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Still, two former Trump economic advisers plugged into the White House told the Washington Examiner that Bessent’s focus on the Treasury markets, specifically the 10-year yield, during discussions with the president and the trade team over the past week ultimately “pushed [Trump] over the finish line here.”
Before Trump announced the pause, 10-year Treasuries rose nearly 20 basis points on Wednesday as hedge funds sought to unwind debt-backed positions. That movement reversed after the president’s announcement and stabilized again on Thursday, even as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite sold off the bulk of Wednesday’s gains.
Bessent denied Wednesday that the bond movement had anything to do with Trump’s decision before the president himself suggested the opposite later that day.
“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,” he told reporters when asked to explain his decision.
The White House chided the Washington Examiner and other news media outlets for trying to write a “tick-tock” story on how Trump’s strategy evolved this week and sought to tamp down on rumblings about the apparent shift in the status quo. A senior White House aide noted that Navarro and Lutnick are booked to appear on NBC and CBS Sunday morning programming.
“If there was any hesitation, we wouldn’t put [Navarro] on a Sunday show,” a senior West Wing aide told the Washington Examiner Thursday. “He has a bunch of other TV hits throughout today. Fox prime time. Same thing with Howard [Lutnick]. Howard’s on the Sunday shows as well.”
“Everyone’s stature and responsibility is exactly the same,” that person continued. “So no one’s being downgraded. No one’s being sort of lowered on the totem pole. That’s not the case.”
“President Trump has assembled the best and most experienced trade and economic team in modern American history with unique insights from the private sector, government, and academia,” White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai added in a statement. “Every member of the administration is aligned on playing from one playbook, President Trump’s playbook, to use tariffs and strike custom-tailored trade deals to finally end America’s national emergency of chronic trade deficits.”
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Just minutes after Desai delivered his statement to the Washington Examiner, Navarro got down in the mud on CNN after anchor Kasie Hunt asked if he was physically “in the room” with Trump when he elected to put a pause in place on Wednesday afternoon.
“That’s the wrong question to ask. Was I part of the process? You don’t understand how this works. You don’t have to be in the room,” Navarro shot back at Hunt. “I went to prison for this. I never talk about what happens in the Oval.”
