The line fell silent.
In a phone call from the Oval Office, President Trump had just delivered unwanted news to three of America’s strongest executives: Mary Barra of General Motors, John Elkann of Stelantis and Jim Farley of Ford.
Everyone has to bend, Mr Trump said on the call, which took place in early March. Invoices are in force on April 2. It’s time for everyone to be on board.
Car leaders, as well as leaders of other industries, argued that Mr Trump’s 25 percent invoices for cars coming from Canada and Mexico would cause destination in their supply chains and hit a hole through their industry. They had won a concession when Mr Trump agreed to give them a one -month postponement until April 2.
But now, the three great car leaders have appeared to realize that it makes no sense to fight for more. They had taken as much as they would go.
For corporate America, including some great donors, the shock of Mr Trump’s second term is that it turns out that he really believes that what is saying publicly for 40 years: foreign countries are removing America and invoices is a silver sphere for America’s problems. When he says “invoice” is the most beautiful word in the dictionary, he means it.
In Mr Trump, invoices are not just a negotiating tool. He believes they will make America again rich. And they combine two of his favorite presidency characteristics: it is a unilateral force that can activate or erase into a whim and create a begging economy, forcing powerful people to come in front of him to beg for mercy.
This account is based on interviews with more than twelve Trump administration officials and others familiar with the dynamic in the White House over invoices. They called for anonymity to discuss private conversations and discussions.
In the corporate community – a team that spends a fortune on advisers to interpret Mr Trump and where the cliché gets “seriously but not literally” is in high circulation – many had adhered to the view that he saw invoices only as a leverage tool. It wasn’t that Mr Trump loved invoices, they said. It was that he loved what their threat could attribute to a negotiation.
Over the years, it had become conventional wisdom that the stock market was the guidance of Mr Trump and the protective sailing and that any sinking in markets would limit the field of its invoices, which were more surgically implemented seven years ago.
But Trump 47 has so far been upset by a market fall and headlines that would have forced Trump 45 in the reverse. The industrial average Dow Jones has shaved over 600 points since the new invoices began. The S&P 500 has fallen into correction, which means it has been reduced by more than 10 percent from its top.
During his first term, Mr Trump had a weaker stomach for the financial pain caused by a much closer invoice program. He put invoices in more than $ 300 billion of products throughout his first term. Now, less than two months, it has hit invoices in about 1 trillion goods.
Some recent opinion polls show a growing number of Americans who reject Mr Trump’s handling of the economy, but his advisers insist that they are more for prolonged high prices than invoices.
One of Mr Trump’s advisers, speaking about the condition of anonymity to describe private talks, said Biden’s presidency proved to Mr Trump that the stock market is not an unmistakable barometer of the future of the economy nor a useful index. If it were, Mr Biden, who chaired a rising stock market, would certainly be the president, the consultant said, explaining Mr Trump’s thought.
Counselors say Mr Trump knows that foreign leaders are watching to see if he is following his threats, seeking signs of weakness. They have said that he believes that supporting his invoices will permanently harm his preferred image as powerful.
He has sometimes granted discharge from species – such as when he is exempt from invoice products from Canada and Mexico that comply with his North American trade agreement. But he has repeatedly said that larger invoices are on the road.
Business leaders are now rapidly reassessing the happy cases that had guided their thinking from election day.
Bill Reinsch, a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former official of the Department of Commerce, said Mr Trump was clear in his intentions campaign and that his pricing proposals this time were much deeper and wider than his first.
“I think it was clear,” he said. “I don’t think people paid great attention.”
Their mistake is understandable.
During the 2024 elections, Mr Trump’s new cultivation of financial advisers sent reassuring signals to Wall Street. Their public observations suggest that Mr Trump’s second commercial policy would be very the same as the first. In September, Howard Lutnick, now the trade secretary, described the invoices as a “negotiation chip” that would eventually lead to freer markets. And Scott Bessent, who became secretary of Mr Trump’s Treamury, wrote in a letter to his clients last year that “the invoice weapon will always be loaded on the table but was rarely unloaded”.
It is still possible for Mr Trump to move away from some of his invoices, but if he is thinking of a reversal, he would be new to his closest advisers. Mr Trump has repeatedly stated that he is planning to issue much more extensive invoices on April 2 and his advisers have told foreign officials and executives that they will not be discouraged. His comments to his secretaries and assistants at Oval Office Meetings with his public rhetoric, according to two people with immediate knowledge, who spoke about the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
Mr Trump plans personally or dictates the social positions of the truth that threaten the ever -escalating invoices, as China, Canada and the European Union contradict its challenges. Even former assistants who believe that his maximizing approach is wrong say he has a valid point for how China and Europe have unjustly dealt with the United States when it comes to trade.
He believes that so far the pressure has worked, the assistants say, citing Mexico’s willingness to stop the flow of immigrants without documents and Fentyl in the United States. Even after Mexico he came forward with these measures, Mr Trump still pushed with 25 percent invoices before stopping their application on various items.
One of the biggest differences between the first term and now is that Mr Trump is much more confident about his instincts and has stored his team with people who echo. He rarely hears strong views on his economic policies.
Mr Trump has been heavily opposed to invoices during his first term from those who said they would increase the costs for consumers and businesses and slow down the economy. His team included people that Mr Trump would be sadly referred to as “globalists” – such as Steven Mnuchin, Finance Minister and Financial Advisor Gary Cohn, who worked with others to stop invoices, receiving documents from the President’s office and showed their presidents to Commerce. Other assistants, such as Larry Kudlow, were less contradictory, but they are still skeptical of a protective trade policy.
Mr Trump’s commercial transaction consultant, Peter Navarro, used the Oval Office struggles to shout at the so -called globalists. Now, returning for a second term, Mr Navarro’s differences with other advisers are more distinctive.
Mr Bessent was director of mutual funds and Mr Lutnick was the Managing Director of the company Wall Street Cantor Fitzgerald. But both have embraced public invoices before their work is granted. And whatever they think about invoices privately, no one sits in the decisive office by Mr Trump, strongly supporting his financial ideas. The arguments of his current team revolve around the public messages about invoices, as well as the exceptions and scale and the timetable of invoices, but no one disputes the idea of using them in some form.
Nor does Mr Trump hear strong disagreement from Capitol Hill. Republican legislators are either transformed into protectionism or by speech. The Wall Street Journal editorial council is the rare institution that continues to consistently challenge its approach to trade.
Mr Lutnick, who also oversees the US Trade Bureau, receives many calls from unhappy business leaders, along with White House Chief Susie Wiles and Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins.
On the night of March 13, Mr Lutnick, Mr Bessent, Kevin Hassett, who is the director of the National Financial Council and some others met at the Naval Observatory with Vice President JD Vance to discuss a coherent public message about the economy, in the midst of complaints from allies.
White house officials refused to comment on the meeting.
But in a statement given by the White House, Mr Navarro described Mr Trump’s advisers to follow his lead, describing them as “a different team with complementary skills sets and a high level of confidence with names such as Bessent, Greer, Hassett and Lutnick, one sound ”.
A few exceptions have been granted. Mrs Rollins heard from farmers who wanted to get rid of Potash, an important ingredient for fertilizer. Mr Trump finally agreed on a 10 %reduced invoice, but was unhappy with postponement, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. In a statement, Ms Rollins said that “a decrease in the President’s invoices for Potassa is a crucial step to help farmers manage and secure the basic costs of input at the planting period while boosting long -term agricultural trade”.
But in many other cases, Mr Trump seemed much less willing to provide significant exceptions to industry than he was in his first term.
While some industry executives have tried to promote during discussions with the White House, very few have said anything publicly. Those who won the anger of Trump’s administration. Those who have spoken privately have any sandwiches any criticism of Mr Trump between the rich praise.
Some companies have been “intimidated” to promote invoices, cautious to become some kind of target, Mr Reinsch said. “No one wants to become public,” he said, “because they are worried about the consequences.”
However, these companies are still based on policies that favor, such as tax cuts and liberalization.
