The Trump White House rarely admits defeat. It prefers the posture of inevitability: broad shoulders, big hands, and economic proclamations delivered with the rhythmic confidence of a real estate listing. Thursday morning, that posture cracked.

Buried in a late Friday news dump, Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order exempting more than 100 food items from the reciprocal tariffs he once insisted were essential to safeguarding America’s economic security.

The order itself makes clear why: domestic demand, production capacity, and trade negotiations all made these exemptions “necessary and appropriate.” In other words, the policy had become politically and economically untenable.