President Trump's trade war dominated the week, sending global markets reeling. He then put a 90-day pause on some tariffs, but left a 10% across-the-board tariff and ramped up his standoff with China. … The Supreme Court also gave Trump a green light on deportations and government firings — for now. … Congress squeezed through a measure that paves the path for Trump's legislative agenda in one "big, beautiful bill." … And Trump continued his campaign of retribution against those who've stood in his way.
Here are four takeaways from week 12 in our continued look at President Trump's first 100 days in office:
1. How Trump has handled tariffs shows the furthest thing from stability and predictability. His team says that's the point, but most don't appear to be buying it.
On multiple occasions, Trump has referred to himself as "an extremely stable genius." This week, though, put in stark relief the chaos that has so often defined Trump's time in the White House. Some are still trying to sell Trump's strategy as The Art of the Deal.
"No one creates leverage for himself like President Trump," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said this week. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt noted that 70 countries have reached out to make "tailor-made deals."
There have been mixed messages from Trump advisers — some insisting that the tariffs are permanent, others saying they're a negotiation tactic. Trump himself said they can be "both."
"There can be permanent tariffs — and there can also be negotiations because there are things that we need beyond tariffs," Trump told reporters.
Trump seemed to dig in on tariffs while talking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday. He pushed back against a reporter's question of whether there's a threshold of pain that he's willing to tolerate in the markets.
"I think your question is so stupid," Trump said. "I mean, I think it's just — well, I don't want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something."
Two more days of a market in the red ensued. By Wednesday morning, he was advising people in ALL CAPS on social media: "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY."
"BE COOL!" he said in another. "Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!"
But, by the end of the day, Trump apparently had reached his threshold of market pain. He reversed course, ditching some of the tariffs, because, he said, people "were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid."
The market rallied Wednesday, but with Trump increasing tariffs to 145% on China, by Thursday, the Dow was down again. And, remember, China has leverage, too, because it buys a lot of U.S. government debt, and they seem to have every intention of using it.
The reality is a lot of damage has already been done — not just to 401(k)s and small businesses stateside, who rely on global supply chains, but also to relationships with trade partners around the world.
Who knows what next week will hold, but right now people just don't like Trump's tariff policy. Only 39% said they approve of his handling of trade, according to a Quinnipiac poll, and 7-in-10 think his tariff policies will hurt the U.S. economy in the short term.
Trump advisers continue to tell people that despite all that to "trust in Trump." The one thing Trump can hang his hat on is that message seems to be getting through to his base. Even though 53% overall in the same survey said they think, in the long term, the tariffs will hurt the economy, almost 9-in-10 Republicans said they think they will help.
2. The Supreme Court gives Trump a green light — for now.
The Trump administration had lost case after case in lower courts. But Trump continues to push the boundaries when it comes to freezing grants to universities, firings of federal workers and deportations — and he's hoping the conservative majority at the Supreme Court helps him out.
This week, the Supreme Court did come down on Trump's side, giving him a temporary green light to continue deporting people through the Alien Enemies Act, firing probationary workers and keeping leaders at agencies he feels are "hostile" to his agenda out of those agencies.
The court seems to be trying to walk a line. ABC's Devin Dwyer writes that "the high court's conservative majority has been neither a rubber stamp for the president nor an aggressive check on his prerogative. Instead, it has been a narrowly divided stickler for civil procedure, charting a cautious approach to explosive political disputes. In most cases, it has said very little about the substance of Trump's actions."
The court on Thursday night said the Trump administration had to "facilitate" a Maryland man's return, who the government acknowledges was improperly deported. But it didn't require it or give a timeline for when to do so by.
As much as Chief Justice John Roberts would likely love to continue that approach and try to toe a line away from politics, that approach won't last forever, especially as Trump continues to test the constitutional limits.
3. Trump's legislative agenda gets a big step forward.
The House approved a budget framework narrowly Thursday, 216-214, that paves the path for Congress to pass Trump's "big, beautiful bill" — that's expected to include Trump's proposed broad tax cuts — eventually. It's complicated, but, in short, the House and Senate have now passed the same framework, and that unlocks a process known as budget reconciliation that only requires 51 votes to pass in the Senate and avoid a filibuster.
Passage of the House bill was a big win for Speaker Mike Johnson. Conservatives had threatened to tank it, and Johnson had to scrap a vote on it Wednesday night because of it. The Senate initially identified $4 billion in cuts — essentially nothing on the scale of federal spending — while House conservatives want $1.5 trillion. So to get something Republicans in both chambers can agree to isn't going to be easy.
4. Trump continues his campaign of retribution.
Trump vowed "retribution" for his 2020 election loss as a candidate and, in office, has certainly followed through with his vendettas. On Wednesday, he signed executive orders targeting a law firm that represented Dominion Voting Systems, which won a nearly $788 million defamation lawsuit against Fox News, and he went after two former Trump 1.0 officials.
They included Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, who penned an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times and then wrote a book about his experience, as well as Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA.
The executive order strips Krebs of any security clearances, labels him a "risk" and calls him a "significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government authority." As head of CISA, Krebs repeatedly tried to reassure Americans of the integrity of the vote — and he disavowed mis- and disinformation. This executive order makes the extraordinary pronouncement that he "falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen." So the administration has targeted anyone who appears to get in the way of Trump's agenda — and propaganda.
Here's a day-by-day look at what happened in the past week:
Friday, April 4:
- Jobs report shows the country added 228,000 jobs and unemployment ticked up to 4.2%.
- Nationwide anti-Trump protests planned for the weekend.
- Trump extends TikTok shutdown another 75 days. This is Trump's second extension.
- Trump plans to pause federal funds to Brown and call for restrictions at Harvard. Princeton also says several dozen research grants were frozen to them as well, according to reporting by Reuters.
- Judge rules Trump administration has to bring back Maryland man deported by mistake within three days.
- Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says that Trump's tariffs raise the risk of higher inflation and slower growth.
- By a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court allows the administration to freeze millions of dollars in grant funding for diversity and instructional programs at public and private universities, including $65 million in teacher training.
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, websites devoted to climate change and weather research scheduled to shut down at midnight.
- The Dow drops 2,000 points or 5.5% on the heels of Trump's tariffs. China also issued retaliatory tariffs of 34%.
- Politico reports that the acting administrator of FEMA "was given a lie detector test … to determine if he leaked details of a private meeting concerning efforts to dramatically shrink FEMA."
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Denmark's foreign minister release very different readouts of their meeting. Rubio mentions NATO paying more for its own security. The Danish foreign minister bluntly notes that he "made it crystal clear that claims and statements about annexing Greenland are not only unacceptable and disrespectful. They amount to a violation of international law."
Saturday:
- Elon Musk swipes at Peter Navarro, one of Trump's top trade advisers, after a Navarro appearance on CNN defending Trump's tariffs: "A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing. Results in the ego/brains>>1 problem," Musk wrote in a post on X.
- Senate Republicans approve a budget plan, but House Republican fiscal hawks come out against it.
- People protest Trump's presidency at events in all 50 states.
- President Obama spoke at Hamilton College in Upstate New York: "It is up to all of us to fix this," Obama said, including "the citizen, the ordinary person who says, 'No, that's not right.'" He said he is "more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don't give up students who are exercising their right to free speech."
- The attorney who argued the Maryland deportation case on behalf of the administration has been placed on leave by Justice Department. At one point during the hearing, he said the man who was deported on administrative error "should not have been removed."
- Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement: "At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States. Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences."
- Musk says in an event hosted by the Italian prime minister: "I hope it is agreed that both Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America."
- Trump meets with the Major League Baseball World Series champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, at the White House.
Sunday:
- Trump on Air Force One describes tariffs to reporters as "medicine." He also insists that he won a seniors golf tournament. The Palm Beach Post notes: "Trump managed a golf trifecta — he attended, played or competed at all three of his Trump National Golf Club sites in Florida — after arriving April 3, 2025, for a four-day stay in his home state."
- The U.S. revokes visas for people from South Sudan. A civil war is happening in neighboring Sudan.
- Washington City Paper's Tom Sherwood reports there are plans for Trump to hold a military parade June 14 in Washington. It would stretch 4 miles, from the Pentagon to the White House. June 14 is the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. It is also Trump's 79th birthday. Plans for a similar parade were curtailed in 2018 because of logistics and cost. Instead, there were flyovers but the day was dampened by rain.
- U.S. strikes in Yemen kill at least six. Trump posted a video of the bombing that suggested a larger death toll.
- Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an influential vaccine skeptic, says the MMR vaccine is "the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles."
Monday:
- Goldman Sachs ups odds of a recession to 45%.
- Trump asks the Supreme Court to block order to bring Maryland man back from prison in El Salvador. Chief Justice Roberts pauses the deadline to do so, which would have been Monday.
- Trump threatens China with more tariffs: "China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th."
- Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he spoke with Japan's prime minister about the tariffs and that "tough but fair parameters are being set" for negotiations.
- The stock market tumbles for a third straight session. Global markets dropped as well.
- The National Park Service edits Harriet Tubman references on Underground Railroad web page, the Washington Post reports.
- Stock market declines more under Trump than under any other president to this point in their presidency since the Dow was created in 1957 — 17%. Bush was the other who saw it at 15%, but Bush inherited a bear market. Trump inherited a bull market.
- Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. The visit revealed some differences between them.
- JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is warning shareholders that the odds of higher inflation and a recession have gone up because of Trump's tariffs: "The recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession," Dimon wrote in his annual letter to shareholders.
- Trump says there will be direct talks with Iran, starting Saturday.
- Asked if he is considering a pause in tariffs to help markets, Trump says, "We're not looking at that." He says they could both be permanent or other countries can make a deal.
- Trump says he will add a 50% tariff above what the U.S. has already put on China if it doesn't strip away retaliatory tariffs. Of his tariff policy, Trump said, "It's an honor to do it."
- Trump gets a 5-4 win at the Supreme Court, overturning a lower court ruling that had banned Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants to El Salvador. The court didn't say if it was constitutional and said immigrants should be given advance notice and an opportunity to be heard. The court says Alien Enemies Act objections have to be brought by individuals not as a class.
- Trump vows to veto legislation put forward by some Republican senators that would require congressional approval of tariffs 60 days after they're proposed.
- The New York Times reports that nearly 300 students have had their visas revoked and could be deported.
Tuesday:
- Trump allows older, coal-fired power plants that were set to be retired to continue operating. The reason given is to meet the growing energy demand in the country, including from data centers.
- The Department of Homeland Security revokes the legal status of those who used CBP One app.
- Elon Musk calls Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro "truly a moron." White House Press Secretary Leavitt, in response, says, "These are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs. Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue. You guys should all be very grateful that we have the most transparent administration in history, expressing our disagreements in public." Navarro is 75 and Musk is 53.
- Politico reports that the White House denies that Trump is planning a military parade on his birthday.
- NBC News reports that Trump is weighing drone strikes on Mexican cartels. Mexico's president pushes back: "We do not agree with any kind of intervention or interference. This has been very clear: We coordinate, we collaborate, [but] we are not subordinate and there is no meddling in these actions."
- Iran disputes that it will hold "direct" talks, saying they will be indirect and through a mediator.
- Trump speaks to South Korea's president about tariffs.
- Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he will tell the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water.
- China is not backing down in the face of Trump's tariffs: "The U.S. tariff escalation threat against China compounds its mistake and further exposes its nature of blackmail, which China will never accept," the Chinese government said in a statement. "China will fight until the end if the U.S. side is bent on going down the wrong path."
- China also criticizes Vice President Vance for comments last week, saying the U.S. was borrowing money from "Chinese peasants." A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman calls the remarks "ignorant and impolite." Vance had said in a Fox News interview: "We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture."
- Jaguar Land Rover and Audi say they are pausing exports to the U.S.
- Trump's U.S. Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer defended Trump's tariffs, calling this "a moment of drastic, overdue change." During the hearing, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. , asked, "Whose throat do I get to choke if this proves to be wrong?"
- Trump says at a National Republican Campaign Committee dinner that there's "no chance" he would support a Senate tariff bill that curtails some of his powers in implementing them. "Oh, that's what I need. I need some guy telling me how to negotiate," he said facetiously.
- Colorado Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd, who co-sponsored House legislation with Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. on scaling back presidential tariff power, tried to downplay a split with Trump: "This isn't a political issue for me," Hurd said. "I believe Congress must reclaim its constitutionally mandated authority, and I would support this measure regardless of who is in the White House."
- The administration fired another female military leader, Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield. She had been branded a "woke ideologue" in a December letter from a conservative group to now-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the New York Times reports.
- The Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to fire over 16,000 probationary employees from the federal government, at least for now.
- Trump meets with Republican lawmakers to talk about the Senate-passed reconciliation framework. Leavitt says Trump is in favor of it and expects House Republicans to pass it. House Republicans are moving forward with the bill despite not having the votes at this point.
- Some states are pushing back on the Department of Education's mandate to comply with eliminating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion elements in schools or lose federal funding.
- The IRS agrees to share tax information of immigrants in the country without permanent legal status. The IRS previously didn't in an effort to get immigrants to pay taxes. They paid about $97 billion in taxes in 2022, including about $60 billion to the federal government, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
- The Washington Post reports: "Acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause announced plans to resign after administration officials sidestepped her and senior IRS executives to get that deal done. She had also begun to feel increasingly shut out by U.S. DOGE Service officials, who were calling many of the shots at the IRS."
- Leavitt says Trump "directed" his trade team to create "tailor-made trade deals with each and every country that calls up this administration to strike a deal." She says almost 70 countries have reached out since Trump's tariff announcement last week.
- After an early rally, the stock market closed down, as optimism for trade deals faded. The Dow had gone up more than 1,400 points, but wound up down 0.8%. The S&P fell 1.6%. The Nasdaq dropped more than 2%. The market hit its lowest level in a year.
- The AP reports that tourism has plummeted to the U.S. since Trump has taken office: The "National Travel and Tourism Office released preliminary figures Tuesday showing visits to the U.S. from overseas fell 11.6% in March compared to the same month last year. The figures did not include arrivals from Canada, which is scheduled to report tourism data later this week, or land crossings from Mexico. But air travel from Mexico dropped 23%."
- Park Service restores pages referencing Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. "Changes to the Underground Railroad page on the National Park Service's website were made without approval from NPS leadership nor Department leadership," NPS spokeswoman Rachel Pawlitz said in email to the AP. "The webpage was immediately restored to its original content."
- A federal judge, a Trump appointee, says the Trump administration's exclusion of the AP from the White House is unconstitutional. "The Government offers no other plausible explanation for its treatment of the AP," the judge writes. "The Constitution forbids viewpoint discrimination, even in a nonpublic forum like the Oval Office." The AP, however, was not immediately restored because the judge gave the administration until Sunday to appeal.
- The White House announces that El Salvador's president will visit the U.S. Monday followed by Italy's Georgia Meloni Thursday.
- The Washington Post gives Vice President Vance four Pinocchios for saying in an interview on Fox News: "You see our Social Security system -- 40% of the people who are calling are actually committing fraud."
- RFK Jr. tells CBS News: "The federal government's position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine." But "the government should not be mandating those."
- Trump says the European Union has to buy $350 billion of U.S. energy to end the trade war. The EU hits back with 25% tariffs on a broad set of U.S. goods, like whiskey and motorcycles.
- The administration freezes almost $2 billion in funds to Cornell and Northwestern.
Wednesday:
- Trump's tariffs went into effect at midnight. It will be 104% on anything made in China. China, meanwhile, imposes 84% tariff on U.S. goods.
- European luxury goods makers are feeling the squeeze of Trump's trade war, the New York Times reports.
- Delta, the most profitable U.S. airline, is critical of Trump's trade policies, calling it the "wrong approach" in an interview with CNBC. The company says flight bookings are weaker than expected. After Trump won, the company's CEO said Trump's approach to industry regulation would likely be a "breath of fresh air."
- The Senate confirms former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel. "He's going to bring home the bacon," Trump says of Huckabee, adding, "even though bacon isn't too big in Israel — had to clear that up."
- The Senate confirms Paul Atkins as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
- The Senate also confirmed former Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan to be U.S. ambassador to Canada, Ronald Johnson to be ambassador to Mexico and Kevin Cabrera to be U.S. ambassador to Panama.
- Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, speaks in D.C. She also met with Trump in the Oval Office, and Trump says, "She's done a really excellent job." He had once referred to her as "the woman in Michigan."
- Minutes after the stock market opened down again, Trump posts on social media: "BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before! … THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!"
- Trump pauses some tariffs for 90 days. The markets go up as a result. But tariffs on China going to 125% threatens to deflate those gains. "I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line," Trump said during a photo op with "racing champions." "They were getting yippy. You know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid."
- Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says the market rally is because it saw what Trump was doing as a major policy mistake. "What we have today is a partial reversal of an egregious mistake," he said on CNN.
- Goldman Sachs rescinds its recession forecast.
- Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll to serve as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the AP reports.
- Federal judges in New York and Texas halt deportations of some Venezuelan immigrants who challenged the Alien Enemies Act.
- A federal appeals court clears the way for Trump to restart firings of probationary government employees. The divided 4th Circuit determined the coalition of Democratic attorneys general lacked standing to bring the case.
- A Quinnipiac poll finds that Americans overwhelmingly think tariffs will hurt the economy in the short term – 72% said so, only 22% said that they would help. In the long run, it was 53% hurt, 41% help. That mirrors Trump's approval rating, where just 41% approve of the job he's doing overall. Just 39% approve of the job he's doing on trade.
- Trump signs an executive order calling for a review of and strips any security clearance from Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA. It labels him a "risk" and calls him a "significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government authority." Krebs repeatedly said, as head of CISA, that the 2020 election was not stolen. This order says Krebs "falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen." (It was not.)
- Trump also signed orders going after yet another law firm, one that represented Dominion Voting Systems in its successful defamation case against Fox News, and Miles Taylor, a former first-term Trump official, who anonymously wrote an op-ed describing himself as part of a "secret resistance" to Trump.
- Trump also signs executive orders mandating "acceptable water pressure in showerheads." The White House describes it as an order "to end the Obama-Biden war on water pressure and make America's showers great again."
- A federal judge issued a permanent injunction on National Institutes of Health funding caps. The Trump administration is appealing.
- The Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration to put a temporary pause on reinstating leaders at two agencies. It was another case in which the Trump administration lost in lower courts, but made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to step in.
- House Speaker Mike Johnson scraps a vote on a budget framework because conservatives are not happy with the $4 billion in identified cuts in the Senate bill. The House is looking at cuts of $1.5 trillion.
Thursday:
- There was a prisoner exchange between Russia and the U.S. A Russian-American ballet dancer, who had made a pro-Ukraine donation, had been jailed in Russia for more than a year. Trump's effort to get her released was at the request of a close Trump associate, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO. "I appreciate the ballerina who was released," Trump said. "That was at the request of a very good friend of all of ours, actually. Dana White called me and he said it's the friend or the relationship of one of the fighters for UFC or one of the fighters, and Dana is an incredible guy."
- The House passes a bill related to voting that would require sweeping changes to voter registration, including requiring those signing up to present documents proving U.S. citizenship. The SAVE Act, or Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, passed 220-208 with all Republicans and four Democrats voting in favor.
- Wednesday's stock rally fades, as U.S.-China trade war intensifies. The Dow closed down 2.5% after going up 8% the day before. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also fell more than 3% and 4%, respectively, after soaring the day before.
- The House approves a budget framework, laying the path to getting Trump's agenda through — eventually -– using the budget reconciliation process.
- Tariffs on China to be as high as 145%.
- Telephone services for receiving Social Security benefits will continue, another sign of the Trump administration further backing off the in-person requirements it announced for Americans seeking services that were set to go into effect Monday.
- In an effort to pressure immigrants in the U.S. without permanent legal status, the New York Times reports that the Trump administration is seeking to strip migrants of Social Security Numbers.
- The Supreme Court today orders the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return to the U.S. of a Maryland man who was mistakenly taken to El Salvador and remains in custody there — a rare win for those challenging the administration's deportation orders. The court sent the case back to the district court judge to clarify one aspect of her decision "with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs."
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