From the moment that President Donald Trump unveiled his radical rates on Wednesday through the chaos of the market which followed the next day, the telephone of the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent turned on with text messages from managers related to his old industry.
According to people who know the question. After all, as a former director of investments at Soros Fund Management, Bessent was a potential ally. He was considered someone who could explain to the president that new extreme samples would damage the economy and continue to wreak havoc on the markets.
But, in fact, Bessent was not the main engine of the pricing announcement, according to a person familiar with the issue. He used his role in oval office meetings to define potential scenarios for markets and the economy according to different levels of tariff, said the person.
The prices were largely shaped by a small group in the inner circle of Trump, with critical decisions on the structure of homeworkup to the threadBefore the president’s announcement. A treasury spokesperson refused to comment.
Now, Trump’s attempt to redo the American economy and stimulate products manufactured in America is in contradiction with a Wall Street establishment which has benefited for decades that international trade leads to world order. And even some Republican legislators ring the alarm.
In the past two days at least, the market of the market that Wall Street feared,to erase5.4 Billions of dollars of value and drag the S&P 500 at the lowest level in 11 months. Recession fears are developing worldwide. And the leaders who had rallied behind the promises of the Trump administration to reduce taxes and mitigate the regulations are now featured with an economic agenda that is important to make their business.
Investment capital companies are remind The first public offers and the temperature of the expectations of a return in agreement that they hoped would help the funds of juice juice. Healing funds are weighing That Trump’s next decision is too unpredictable to even bet. Bank leaders who had planned a more pro-growth program should take off expectations, with JPMorgan Chase & Co. economists. Predict an American recession This year.
The market dive even pushed some of Trump’s most ardent donors in the political world to predict the wider benefits: Texas senator, Ted Cruz, said that prices everywhere “would destroy jobs here at home and do real damage to the American economy”. On his podcast, hewarn the samplesMake Republicans vulnerable to a “bloodbath” in the mid-term elections in 2026.
Trump – Who, in his first administration, paid particular attention to the performance of the stock market – has shown that he will not be easily convinced to change the course by diving induced by prices. He said on Friday that politics will remain and that large companiesindifferentby the price plan. While the markets slipped the most in five years, the president was in his West Palm Beach Golf Club.
Within the administration, the repercussions of the market caused nervousness, and the officials plan to know if the fallout of the market extend to a third session on Monday. However, there is a feeling that any change in policy should come from the only president. And Trump concentrates in the long term with the prices, said a person familiar with the case. He underlined the need to revive the American manufacturing base, to secure supply chains and to reduce dependence on competitors.
“The only special interest that guides President Trump’s decisions is the interest of the American people,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai. “The whole administration is aligned on the fight against national emergency that President Trump has rightly identified is posed by our country managing regular commercial deficits.”
Deployment rate
A Trump advisor who is not part of the administration criticized the way the samples have been deployed and the White House communication strategy while the markets crashed. He should have had teams of economists, business leaders and union workers explaining the plan on television, said this person.
In the weeks preceding the announcement of the price, some managers of Wall Street had already started to call on the secretary of the Treasury for help. Others are made public with their warnings. The founder of Citadel, Ken Griffin, repeatedly criticized the planned prices, claiming that they would bing the competitive advantage of the United States, while Warren Buffett qualified the prices “an act of war, to a certain extent”.
Bessent remains a key member of Trump’s economic team, according to an administration official. But the main advisor Peter Navarro and the trade secretary Howard Lutnick dominated the president’s attention on the prices, said a person close to the issue. US trade representative Jamieson Greer was also an integral part of the team.
Bessent,in an interviewWith Bloomberg Television after the prices announced on Wednesday, said that he was not part of the negotiations with other countries and focused on the administration’s tax agenda.
Investment capital companies had seen the arrival of Trump announce the return of the IPOs which had been largely dormant in the past three years and more loose restrictions to attract rich individuals as customers. Instead, this week let them rush to determine how portfolio companies would be affected by prices and are painful stock slides. The actions of Apollo and KKR & Co. won the biggest two -day collapses in their history.
Prosecutors note that certain sectors – such as domestic manufacturing – could always be ready for large boosts under the Trump administration. But they have expressed concerns to knowledge that prolonged uncertainty and a collapsed market will make the release of bets more difficult on the prices they hoped for. Already, companies such as Klarna Group PLC and Stubhub Holdings Inc. interrupted their IPOs.
They avoided publicly disseminating their opinions for fear of shooting the president, and rather trying to make backchannel their concerns through proxies and lobbyists instead.
There are also signs of reversal among Trump’s loyalists on Capitol Hill. Senator Chuck Grassley and three other Republicans have co -pacarraine a bipartite bill which intends to bring the pricing power back to the congress, requiring the approval of most new prices within 60 days. The head of the majority, John Thune, who finally has the power to decide to raise the bill for a ground vote, said that he was planning to examine the legislation.
“I know there is certain interest,” said Thune on Friday. He recognized that the party was watching Wall Street carefully and said he hoped to see the results of Trump’s plan “fairly quickly”.
Meanwhile, Saturday – as traders and managers of Wall Street and American companies were still in shock from market chaos – the White House employees published an announcement: Trump had won the second round of the senior golf championship in his Jupiter, Florida Club.
He would go to the championship on Sunday.
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
