Tipsheet

This News Outlet Just Sent the Stock Market Into a Frenzy With Fake News About Trump's Tariffs

Jeff Charles
Jeff Charles  |  April 07, 2025 11:45 AM

CNBC stepped in it big time when it published a headline claiming that President Donald Trump is considering a three-month pause on the tariffs he imposed last week.

On its chyron, the network claimed White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said “Trump is considering a 90-day pause in tariffs for all countries except China.”

The fake news spread like wildfire on social media, with many users reposting the false headline. The stock market spiked eight percentage points after the headline was reposted on X, as illustrated by Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal. Yet, after it was revealed that Hassett never said this, the market took a 3.5 percent drop.

In reality, Hassett did discuss a potential pause during an appearance on Fox News with host Brian Kilmeade, who asked if such a move was being considered.

“I think that the President is going to decide what the President is going to decide,” Hassett replied. “There are more than 50 countries in negotiation with the President.”

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The adviser explained that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the White House to discuss the tariff situation. He also noted that Trump’s team “had a reach out overnight from Taiwan.”

Hassett further urged critics of the tariff plan “to ease off the rhetoric a little bit.”

The fact is that, say, a ten percent baseline tariff is on 14 percent of GDP. That's about how much trade we have, how many imports. And so 86 percent of GDP is affected by the deregulation and the tax cuts and everything else … even if you think that there will be some negative effect from the trade side, that's still a small share of GDP. The idea that it's going to be a nuclear winter or something like that is completely irresponsible.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt affirmed on Monday that there will be no pause in Trump’s tariff plan as CNBC intimated. A CNBC reported indicated that he spoke with Leavitt on a phone call and she told him it is “fake news that the White House is considering a 90-day pause” and that President Trump “is committed to his tariff regime and any reports that he’s considering a 90-day pause are ‘fake news.’”