All the President’s Reversals

And why they point to a risky theory of politics.

During his address to Congress on Tuesday, President Trump spoke lovingly about tariffs. “It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it?” he said.

“That along with our other policies will allow our auto industry to absolutely boom,” he added. “It’s going to boom. Spoke to the majors today, all three, the top people, and they’re so excited.”

Trump did indeed speak with the CEOs of the “Big Three” automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Stellanis) before the speech — but if they were excited about Trump’s new import taxes, they had a funny way of showing it.

“Long term, a 25% tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border will blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen,” Ford CEO Jim Farley has said. The executives reportedly used their presidential call to ask for an exemption to the tariffs, which were set to add $60 billion in costs to the industry and drive up the average price of a new car by $3,000, according to two separate analysts.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the auto industry would be exempt from the North American tariffs after all, though only for one month.

We’ll see what happens after 30 days — Leavitt said the companies should use the time to “shift production here to the United States of America,” a process that will take much longer than a month — but if another exemption is handed down, I wouldn’t be surprised.

After all, Trump repeatedly delayed or walked back tariff threats during his first term, a pattern that has repeated itself in his second. The president originally promised to impose the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on January 20, which was then pushed back to February 1, then February 4, then March 4, then briefly April 2, before eventually returning to March 4, when they took effect (although they had been paused for the auto industry by March 5). In his first week back in office, he also dropped a tariff threat against Colombia after securing immigration concessions.

Speaking at the U.S.-Mexico border on Wednesday, Vice President Vance said that the administration “doesn’t want to have 500 different industries getting 500 different carve-outs,” but it appears that carmakers won’t be the last to receive an exemption from the North American tariffs. Per Politico, the president is considering a carve-out for the agricultural industry as well. And Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said this morning that a much wider array of goods and services are “likely” to receive an exemption until April 12.

All that whiplash has driven up the nation’s Economic Policy Uncertainty Index, as measured by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which now stands nearly at Covid-era levels:

I don’t know of any similar Political Uncertainty Index, but if one existed, it would be shooting up sky-high as well. Consider this partial list of issues on which the second Trump administration has reversed itself taking office:

• The White House imposed a funding freeze, then rescinded it, then said it was still in effect.

• The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) asked about 180 probationary employees who were terminated to come back to work.

• The same thing happened at the National Nuclear Security Administration.

• And with Agriculture Department employees working on the avian flu.

• And with veterans, military spouses, and people with disabilities who had been let go from the National Science Foundation.

• And with prospective employees at the National Park Service.

• Federal workers were told to email their supervisors five things they did that week, then many workers were told not to, then they were told to again, and then some were once again told not to.

• Hundreds of thousands of employees — including frontline Veterans Affairs (VA) health care workers — who received the Office of Personnel Management “buyout” offer were then told the offer wasn’t on the table for them, even if they had already tried to accept it.

• The General Services Administration posted a list of more than 400 federal buildings, including the Justice Department and FBI headquarters, that were going to be sold, then quickly removed it.

• Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has repeatedly claimed certain spending cuts, then deleted them from their website, including at least one instance in which the agency announced a cut, then deleted it, then put it back.

• The Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that the government website that ships free coronavirus tests to Americans would be shut down, then decided to maintain the program about 15 minutes later.

• There have been some U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contracts, like one that produced peanut paste for severely malnourished children, were canceled and then restored.

• Research grants and employees at a federal health program for 9/11 survivors were reinstated after initially being cut.

• Trump signed an executive order ending the de minimis exemption, which allows goods valued under $800 to be shipped duty-free, for products from China, leading the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to temporarily stop accepting packages from China because of the difficulty of addressing the change. Then the USPS reversed itself, and then Trump reinstated the exemption entirely.

• The president also amended his Canada and Mexico tariffs to keep the de minimis exemptions in place for those countries, after originally signing an order that would have ended them.

• The Interior Department rescinded an order that was set to stop legal services for unaccompanied migrant children.

And that doesn’t even include the 41 court rulings that have paused Trump actions. (Yes, some of the above actions overlap with those court cases, but I only included incidents in which the administration voluntarily reversed itself).

Three takeaways here:

1. Trump and Musk are relying on a risky theory of government. According to the New York Times, one Musk ally has told employees to use the technique known as “zero based budgeting,” in which a company starts from a baseline of zero and has to justify all spending from there, rather than starting at the baseline of its prior budget and justifying cuts one by one.

Musk used the strategy when he took over Twitter — but it’s a risky one to bring over to the public sector, especially for someone like Musk who seems to lack a full view of just how many operations the government entails. Many of the reversals seem to be borne of an after-the-fact realization of the consequences of certain cuts, like slashing the federal workforce meaning that many veterans will be fired, or CDC cuts leading to worse health care for 9/11 survivors, or what it means for USAID contracts to be terminated.

“Move fast and break things” works in Silicon Valley; less so in Washington, where any false move could place people’s health care, sense of security, or livelihoods on the line.

2. They are also playing with a risky theory of politics. Both Trump and Musk have acknowledged that their actions could come with consequences — but they seem confident that the stakeholders involved (with companies, voters, or lawmakers) won’t mind. “Bear with me,” Trump said to farmers facing agricultural tariffs on Tuesday. “Will there be some pain?” he wrote about the tariffs last month. “Maybe (and maybe not!) But we will make America great again, and it will be all worth the price that must be paid.”

Meanwhile, Musk told House Republicans last night that he “can’t bat a thousand all the time” but promised to correct mistakes quickly. Will Americans “bear with” Trump as his actions bring potential consequences? Maybe! But it’s also quite a gamble, considering that some of his moves (the tariffs included) are likely to raise prices, the very issue that many of them elected him to fix.

3. Trump is still (highly) amenable to outside pressure. Trump likes to portray himself as permanently immune from backlash or consequences. But his second term has proved otherwise. Not only has Trump repeatedly been forced to trim his sails by the courts — proving that judicial enforcement still has bite — but he has also proved amenable to pressure from lawmakers (on issues like tariffs and the 9/11 survivor research), markets (stocks dove after the tariffs went in place and then partially rebounded after the exemptions), the media (the Covid test program was restored after questions from the Washington Post), and the general desire to avoid chaos (the de minimis exemption for China was brought back after more than a million packages piled up at JFK Airport). Musk has even proved responsive to former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau’s questions about USAID contracts.

In some respects, the story of Trump’s second term has been that of a powerful president, trampling over checks on his power. But when considering these (many) reversals, Trump comes across just as afraid of public (and congressional) pushback as any president before him — even if he often takes the unusual step of taking an action, then consulting with stakeholders, and then pulling back, waiting to see the consequences and backlash he receives after-the-fact rather than merely gathering that advice in the first place.