So what changed? According to Karoline Leavitt, the White House’s punchy press secretary, President Trump’s dramatic decision to pivot on his punishing tariffs was always part of his long-term strategy.
Indeed, said Leavitt – with that dead-pan confidence of hers which, combined so brilliantly with her jaw-dropping condescension, sends the press pack half mad with fury – reporters had “clearly missed the art of the deal.” Ouch.
Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary, took the same line, claiming that sending the financial markets into paroxysms of volatility had been the president’s “strategy all along” while another Trump advisor, Stephen Miller, labelled it “the greatest economic master strategy from an American president in history”.
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