Amid turmoil over tariffs Bessent rises in Trump trade world

WASHINGTON - Minutes after US President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on a tariff plan that triggered a stock market rout and global upheaval, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent strode out of the White House to explain the abrupt turnabout.

“President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” Mr Bessent told reporters. “This was his strategy all along.”

It was the clearest sign yet of the larger role Mr Bessent has taken this week in articulating Mr Trump’s trade policies to the financial markets, even though his messaging has sometimes contradicted that of the President and business leaders.

Multiple sources close to the White House said Mr Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, was seen as the proverbial adult in the room, giving the President the best counsel among a team of advisers on trade that includes tariff hawk Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

“The President is the one who ultimately... altered his strategy,” said Mr Stephen Moore, a long-time Trump adviser and economist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-think tank.

“But I think it was Scott who was always trying to take on the protectionists in the White House, who were always pressing Trump to go big on the tariffs.”

One White House official told Reuters Mr Bessent had favoured lower levies while Mr Navarro had favoured higher ones, though the whole trade team backed the decision Mr Trump announced on April 2 in the Rose Garden.

The multi-nation reciprocal tariffs plan wiped trillions of dollars off global stock markets and sparked fears of a recession. Stock markets zoomed higher on April 9 after the reprieve, with the SP 500 posting its biggest daily gain since 2008.

Mr Bessent publicly stuck to the administration’s script in defending the original tariffs policy. But in private conversations, he