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.
And his base will claim he’s doing them a favor. “Look, he’s lowering prices by removing tariffs (that totally already existed before him!)”