President Donald Trump’s frenzied tariff barrage has been marked by reversals and faulty rollouts, baffling U.S. trading partners and businesses while raising questions about the aims of his signature policy. 

During his first six weeks in office, Trump imposed sweeping Canada and Mexico tariffs, only to pull back with exemptions and deferrals. Confusion has surrounded new import taxes on China. An ambitious proposal to charge duties on previously exempt low-cost packages had to be hastily reversed when it became clear the government lacked the ability to actually collect them.

Trump has said tariffs can help achieve his most ambitious goals, from remaking the U.S. economy to raising trillions in revenue. But several hasty announcements have injected chaos into the economy and financial markets, casting doubts about the White House’s trade strategy. 

“There are a lot of mixed signals from the administration regarding which tariffs will apply to which goods on which dates,” said John Veroneau, a former general counsel for the U.S. Trade Representative who is now a partner at Covington & Burling LLP. “The uncertainty is challenging for U.S. companies trying to make decisions.”

Many of Trump’s early tariff moves came before his full trade team was even in place. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was sworn in only late last month. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer took office late last week. 

The absence of key lieutenants on the issue has left the trade agenda largely shaped by Peter Navarro, a White House trade adviser and first-term loyalist who is one of Trump’s loudest protectionist voices.

And, in a repeat of Trump’s first-term trade wars, when some bitter internal fights spilled into the open, some officials have already begun complaining about the tariff rollout. Some White House officials have criticized the hasty implementation of duties that have forced adjustments after the fact, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Trump’s supporters say his rapid tariff rollout reflects the president’s urgency to address trade inequities, lure more investment and stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. The swift action — and some ambiguity around it — can help bring foreign leaders to the negotiating table and win concessions, like those Trump secured from Colombia his first week in office.

Changing parameters can also reflect the evolution of trade talks, said National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. 

“During a negotiation, sometimes terms will change because we’re making progress,” Hassett told Fox Business on March 7. “So I don’t view it as some kind of confusing uncertain tariff thing; I think what we’re seeing is a negotiation that’s very orderly.”

Even so, the pace has fed confusion, coming on top of regulatory pivots and uncertainty about the future of tax cuts. U.S. equities have taken a beating, and consumer confidence has eroded, economic warning signs that pose political risks for the president.

Trump’s trade pronouncements have sometimes evolved in real time, with dates and targets occasionally shifting in impromptu news conferences, social media posts and television appearances by Cabinet officials.  

The latest example came as Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico took effect earlier this week, prompting a market selloff and a frenzied push to blunt the impact of the levies. The scramble culminated March 6 with a one-month reprieve for goods traded under the North American trade deal. Hours after Trump imposed the pause, oil companies and other manufacturers were working to understand the full contours of the relief.

The S&P 500 slid 1.8% and the Nasdaq 100 sank 2.8% on March 6, with the tech-heavy gauge on the brink of a technical correction. Equities failed to rebound even after Trump’s decision to delay levies on Mexican and Canadian goods covered by the trade pact.

The president even stirred uncertainty during his primetime address March 4, where he sought to defend his tariffs to the public. Trump said he’d imposed a 25% tariff on foreign aluminum, copper, lumber and steel — a possible slip of the tongue given he only set in motion a formal copper investigation a week ago.

In an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that aired on the morning of March 7, Trump was asked if businesses would receive more clarity over his trade strategy. He responded by saying that Mexico and Canada tariffs could actually increase over time despite the short-term reprieve.

“The tariffs could go up as time goes by, and they may go up,” Trump said. “You know, I don’t know if it’s predictability.”

Trade experts blame Trump’s rush to impose tariffs, with actions directed by the president himself and his close advisers instead of regulators steeped in the law. Many of the duties have also been enacted using authority under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, instead of following customary investigations and extensive public scrutiny. 

Trump Control

“All of this is sloppy and messy because tariffs are not supposed to be imposed using IEEPA or done directly by the White House,” said Jennifer Hillman, a former general counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and judge at the World Trade Organization. Normally, levies are imposed with greater notice, and tied to specific products, with detailed announcements that include specific tariff codes “so everyone knows what to expect,” said Hillman, now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Consider the confusion that gripped trade lawyers from Beijing to Washington early March 4, hours after Trump doubled China’s levies to 20%. A March 3 order laying out the change did not specify a new start date, prompting fears it was actually retroactive to early February. 

It was only later on March 4 that a regulatory notice from U.S. Customs and Border Protection was posted online, making explicit the higher levies had in fact kicked in at 12:01 a.m. — not a month earlier.

Foreign leaders at times have reported trouble sorting details with U.S. counterparts. For instance, Chinese officials have struggled to identify a reliable interlocutor in the White House, said one person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the conversations were private.

North American U-Turn

Trump has described himself as a master dealmaker. But the retreat from his Canada and Mexico duties, the largest U.S. tariff hike in a century, had all the hallmarks of trade policy being shaped on the fly.

On the morning of March 5, Trump administration officials were discussing a plan to potentially end one-day-old duties for imports that comply with rules of origin under the existing three-nation trade agreement known as USMCA. The push for a deal had been invigorated just hours after the tariffs kicked in March 4, as the S&P 500 Index wiped out post-election gains and Republicans groused about political blowback. 

Navarro dismissed the market reaction. “We’ve had two days of volatility in the markets and everybody’s hair is on fire,” Navarro told CNN on March 5. But talks on a potential car carveout were already underway, after Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Stellantis NV, asked for relief and extra time to shift more investment and production to the U.S.

“What they said was, ‘Look we are domestic American automakers and if you put a 25% tariff on us and you don’t put it on the Germans and you don’t put it on the Koreans and you don’t put it on the Japanese you’re helping everybody but us,’” Lutnick told Fox News on March 5. 

Lutnick suggested a bigger exemption was in the works that would apply to all traded goods under the USMCA. “The president is going to come up with a plan this afternoon,” Lutnick separately told Bloomberg Television. 

By March 6, Lutnick previewed the carveouts on CNBC and Trump later signed a one-month exemption for all Mexican and Canadian goods covered by the deal. But stakeholder firms still had trouble grasping which imports would receive relief; a White House official who briefed reporters ahead of time on condition of anonymity repeatedly referred questions on details of the move to the U.S. Trade Representative. 

Package Problems

A month earlier, the administration was forced to suspend plans to end a longstanding tariff exemption for parcels containing goods worth less than $800 after officials realized the U.S. Postal Service and other carriers didn’t have systems in place to collect the fees. 

The move was seen as a blow to Chinese retailers such as Temu and Shein that have exploited the so-called de minimis exemption to aggressively expand U.S. sales. But it was imposed so abruptly it caused tumult for carriers such as the Postal Service, which temporarily froze package shipments from China and Hong Kong before reversing the halt hours later.

In three separate presidential executive orders issued after the initial tariff proclamations, the White House suspended the plan. Trump then deputized Lutnick with developing a way to collect the levies. It’s unclear how long that will take.