| It was just last month that President Donald Trump said he’s focused on the long term and was “not even looking at the stock market” reaction to his trade agenda. It appears that statement, like many of his tariff pronouncements and his views about China and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, is subject to revision. After the week started with stocks, Treasuries and the dollar all tumbling along with warnings from business leaders and top advisers, Trump’s resolve to stay the course seems to have wavered, Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey, Hadriana Lowenkron and Jaewon Kang report. The president said yesterday that he’s willing to “substantially” dial back his 145% tariffs on China if the US can get a deal with Beijing and that he had no intention of firing Powell, despite publicly musing previously about ousting the central bank chief and calling him “a major loser.”  Trump Photographer: Samuel Corum/Sipa This morning, the S&P 500 rallied as much as 3.4%, though that was tempered after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested a resolution to the US-China trade war wasn’t imminent. As Lucey, Lowenkron and Kang write, that shows just how much financial markets and the wider economy depend on Trump’s whims. But it’s also a sign that the president is more sensitive to market movement and to the counsel of advisers with Wall Street pedigrees, like Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Bessent told a closed-door investor summit yesterday that the standoff with China — which he characterized as essentially a trade embargo — was unsustainable and that the two sides will have to find a way to step back. Today Bessent made clear that the US didn’t intend to lower tariffs on China unilaterally and that a full trade deal could take two or three years to complete. The Treasury secretary also recently advised Trump to signal that he wasn’t looking to fire Powell or interfere with the Fed’s independence, two items of keen interest on Wall Street. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Trump hasn’t softened his stance on tariffs. She told Fox News that he’s leveraging US economic power to bring other nations to the negotiating table “and that includes China.” — Joe Sobczyk How is Trump’s tariff war threatening American exceptionalism and the global economic order? Bloomberg journalists answer questions in a Live Q&A on Thursday, April 24 at 11 a.m. EDT | 
