‘The View’ Cohosts on Trump’s Tariffs Turnaround: ‘No Strategy’

Amanda Bell April 10, 2025, 11:56 am

Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, and Ana Navarro on The View — ABC

Donald Trump abruptly changed his mind about imposing tariffs on almost every other country in the world (except for Russia) and announced a 90-day pause for everywhere but China on Wednesday. So, on Thursday’s (April 10) episode of The View, that about-face earned the top spot on the “Hot Topics” discussion, and the day’s panelists — Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin — weighed in on why he decided to order the pause, despite his officials insisting it wasn’t going to happen, and what could happen next.

“I think what’s fascinating to me is that the corruption is just completely out in the open at this point,” Hostin said first. “Because these kinds of actions, where Trump tweeted out before this little pause, he said, ‘This is a great time to buy,’ and that’s really a whistle to those billionaires … or people that have money that can buy low and then the stock market prices go up. That’s generally called insider trading, and that would ordinarily trigger an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. We know now that that’s not probably going to happen because all of these government agencies have been destroyed and dismantled, but someone with knowledge of an economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up right before posting about how great a time it is to buy right before the policy change happened would certainly be guilty of insider trading.”

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Griffin also pointed out that the stock market bounce that followed Trump’s newest announcement still hasn’t given people back what they lost yet. “I don’t know that I assign that much strategy to it, just to be honest. Because people who lost money, the wealthiest among us, even if they bought the dip, they still have less money today than they did before… [That’s] why some of his loudest supporters, Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, were basically begging for this.” She also pointed to the fact that the European Union wanted to negotiate and so did major business leaders. “I think you heard from the business community, who largely were behind him in his reelection. The stock market had record gains after he was elected in 2024, and then we’ve lost all of those gains…. in a few months. Jamie Dimon went on Fox News and basically encouraged that there be some kind of a pause, and just a matter of hours later, he decided to heed that. So I see this in listening to the business community that put him in office.”

Still, Griffin cautioned, “What happens in the next 90 days is critical. Is it that we negotiate some smart trade deals that box out China and expand relationships with our allies, or is it merely a pause and we’re in the same sort of roller coaster [then]?”

Sara Haines criticized the lack of clarity, saying, “They’re creating one problem and saying, ‘No, let’s bring it all home for the American workers.’ I haven’t heard one plan about how they’re going to build all this manufacturing.”

She also reacted to a clip of the U.S. trade representative’s testimony that it was planned, saying, “He definitely did not plan this. I’m going to second Alyssa in that there was no strategy here.” Instead, she shared her own multi-pronged theory on why Trump relented with the pause. “What happened was he was trying to go hard, and one by one, he lost everyone. He even had people like Oren Cass, who’s a pro-tariff economist, the other day that said, ‘Okay, well, I’m a this could still work. But here are some warnings.’ And then, all the millionaires dropped, all the congressional Republicans [dropped]. Because remember, as much as Donald Trump talks about, ‘I could run for a third term,’ these people have to run again, all of these senators, all of these congresspeople, recognize that their boss for the first time is not Donald Trump. It’s going to be those voters. And when they go back to these town halls and are getting screened out of the room, they’re going to have to start listening. And the cherry on top of him was probably his polling. We all know he loves popularity. It took a fast dip with all that people are feeling right now, so kind of as those numbers all fell, I think he saw the end was near.”

Navarro added that if it was a strategic and planned move on Trump’s part, it would make him sadistic. “What kind of government leader puts his people through this kind of distress and sadness and anxiety just for giggles?” she added. She went on to note that there are still potential repercussions to the continued tariffs on China and 10% tariffs on everything else. “Let’s not underestimate the result of on consumer confidence, of the havoc he has wreaked for the last 11 weeks. We’ve antagonized our allies yet again. And this reminds me of what’s happening with DOGE as well, where there’s so many things that could be done with a scalpel and that people would say, ‘This is a good idea,’ but no. Like with DOGE, they go in there with a wrecking ball and just having absolutely no second thought about the consequences.”

The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC