'Needed to get him alone': Trump advisers urged tariff pause with 'hovering' Navarro away

President Donald Trump's major economic cabinet officials, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, were only able to persuade him to temporarily reduce the burden of his "Liberation Day" tariffs because they spoke to him while his most fanatical trade adviser was out of the room, reported the Wall Street Journal on Friday evening.

Peter Navarro allegedly was the individual with the idea in the first place to urge that Trump set tariffs based on the size of the U.S. trade deficit, or balance between imports and exports, with each country — an idea not endorsed by mainstream economists, who don't generally view trade deficits as a universally bad thing.

"Navarro isn’t one to back down during policy debates and had stridently urged Trump to keep tariffs in place, even as corporate chieftains and other advisers urged him to relent. And Navarro had been regularly around the Oval Office since Trump’s 'Liberation Day' event," reported Alexander Saeedy and Josh Dawsey. "So that morning, when Navarro was scheduled to meet with economic adviser Kevin Hassett in a different part of the White House, Bessent and Lutnick made their move, according to multiple people familiar with the intervention. They rushed to the Oval Office to see Trump and propose a pause on some of the tariffs — without Navarro there to argue or push back."

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According to the report, Bessent and Lutnick "knew they had a tight window" and didn't even formally schedule the meeting with Trump.

They knew they "needed to get the president alone" — and it worked.

Trump's planned tariffs range from 10 to 49 percent on goods from virtually every country in the world, even Antarctic islands that don't have trade with the U.S. or even people. Under the 90 day "pause," the tariffs still apply but are reduced to the minimum of 10 percent for every country except China, which faces sky-high rates of 145 percent. All told, this is still enough to potentially raise the price of many goods, but briefly calmed markets which had been in freefall.

The two cabinet secretaries dispute this narrative of how the decision happened, with Lutnick, who has reportedly been getting on the president's nerves as of late, telling the Journal in a statement, “The notion that we are playing Gossip Girl games is simply false — we are fully focused on implementing President Trump’s vision.”