Trump stokes ‘market manipulation’ accusations with tariffs U-turn: Live updates

The U.S. benchmark S&P 500 index closed 9.5 per cent higher on Wednesday in response to Trump’s U-turn and the relief continued into Asian trading on Thursday with Japan’s Nikkei index surging more than 8 per cent, while even Chinese markets like the CSI 300 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index showed gains.

The UK’s FTSE 100 has since soared by more than 6 percent when stock markets opened in London.

You can follow all the latest market reaction with Tara Cobham below.

Social media erupted last night with accusations that the president had played a reverse “pump and dump” scheme with the American economy: driving stock prices down only to buy them up before prices rise again.

Democratic Senator Adam Schiff is calling for an investigation into insider trading, with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warning members of Congress to declare any recent stock purchases they might have made.

President Donald Trump changed course again on Wednesday and announced a 90-day pause of his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs while hiking other duties on China to 125 percent.

The president’s decision followed several days of sharp losses on the stock market.

In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed that his reversal was a result of what White House officials have claimed are dozens of foreign nations reaching out with the intention of re-negotiating trade policy with the United States, rather than implementing tariffs of their own.

He said yesterday afternoon that his decision was made in response to days of market panic and rippling effects across various economic sectors, which Trump and other White House officials spent days unsuccessfully trying to quell.

“I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,” Trump told reporters at a White House event with NASCAR drivers Wednesday afternoon.

“I’ve reversed it. It’s for a short period of time.”

He continued to try to explain away the disaster in the Oval Office a short while afterwards.

Here’s his latest attempt to spin what surely amounted to a humiliating climbdown that badly undermined his “Liberation Day” rhetoric, not to mention his political credibility.

Here’s a full report from John Bowden and Andrew Feinberg on a monumental day.

Mike Johnson backed down on Wednesday and canceled plans to vote on a Republican budget resolution acting as the vessel for major parts of Donald Trump’s agenda.

The Republican speaker of the House set up votes Wednesday on a budget resolution authored by his peers in the Senate as the GOP moves on to the next step of the reconciliation process. But Johnson, who can suffer just three defections among his caucus for the vote to succeed, is still facing (according to various reports) more than a dozen likely or potential “no” votes from Republicans if the vote goes ahead.

John Bowden has the latest from Washington, D.C.

The Trump administration has abruptly replaced FBI Director Kash Patel as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll has been named interim head of ATF while continuing to lead the Army, a person familiar with the matter told The Independent.

Ariana Baio has the details.

U.S. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard has reportedly set up her own DOGE-like group to cut costs and investigate “weaponization” in the 18 agencies under her authority, according to a new report.

Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group was established in adherence to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to “bring about transparency and accountability” in the U.S.’s intelligence agencies, according to a press release from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was released on Tuesday.

A tattoo equipment supplier in Pennsylvania is worried they won’t make it to summer. A three-person team making optical scanners in San Diego saw their bills double overnight. A coffee shop in New Orleans may be forced to raise its prices.

Asian shares surged in early trading on Thursday, with Japan’s benchmark jumping more than 2,000 points almost immediately after the Tokyo exchange opened, as relieved investors welcomed President Donald Trump’s U-turn on his tariff proposal.

Analysts had expected the regional comeback given that U.S. stocks had one of their best days in history Wednesday on a euphoric Wall Street, where investor hopes had run high that Trump would pause implementation of tariffs above 10 percent for 90 days to allow for negotiations.

The exception was China, which will now be hit with import taxes of 125 percent on goods shipped to the U.S.

On Thursday, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 jumped 8.3% in morning trading to 34,353.17, zooming upward as soon as trading began. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 soared 4.7% to 7,722.90. South Korea’s Kospi gained 5.5% to 2,419.37. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 3.7% to 21,003.84. The Shanghai Composite edged up 1.5% to 3,232.86.

With reporting from the AP