Trump refutes that the recent tantrum in bonds forced him to pause his trade war

President Donald Trump says the bond market’s big swings this month didn’t scare him off from his trade war.

In an interview with Time Magazine published on Friday, the president insisted he wasn’t worried about the wild moves in the bond market in the days following the unveiling of tariffs on what he called “Liberation Day.”

Shortly after Trump announced sweeping tariffs on April 2, the yield on the 10-year US Treasury spiked to 4.45%, its highest level since January.

Trump ultimately announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs, but he told Time that it had nothing to do with the bond sell-off, saying that the reaction among bond investors didn’t worry him.

“It wasn’t for that reason,” Trump told the magazine. “I’m doing that until we come up with the numbers that I want to come up with. I’ve met with many countries, talked on the telephone, and don’t even want them to come in.”

“The bond market was getting the yips, but I wasn’t,” he added.

Trump and his team seemed to suggest the opposite, with the president pointing to moves in the bond market while speaking to reporters after announcing the pause.

“The bond market is very tricky. I was watching it, but if you look at it now, it’s beautiful. The bond market right now is beautiful,” Trump said. “But I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.”

Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, later said that the bond sell-off prompted the president to act with more “urgency” when deciding to pause tariffs.

Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have said the administration is focused on the 10-year US Treasury yield. The key bond yield influences borrowing costs for Americans, which Trump has said he wants to lower.

“He and I are focused on the 10-year Treasury, and what is the yield of that,” Bessent told Fox Business in February. “He wants lower rates. He is not calling for the Fed to lower rates.”

The bond market is likely acting as more of a “check and balance” for Trump than the stock market, which Trump has previously used as a gauge for how well his presidency was going, Peter Berezin, the chief global strategist at BCA Research, said.

“The bond market dictates what happens to mortgage rates for homeowners in general, not just real estate developers. And home ownership is much more broad based than equity ownership is. So I think bond market is probably the more important driver and more important constraint on Trump’s behavior,” he said.

Michael Brown, a senior research strategist at Pepperstone, also thinks the bond market was a major factor in Trump’s decision to reverse his tariffs.

“We had equities coming quite sharply, lower Treasurys selling off quite aggressively across the curve, and the dollar weakening very, very significantly against pretty much all of its peers,” Brown said. “And I think that really did end up forcing his hands to walk back some of the rhetoric.”