Reciprocal tariff 90-day pause (except China)

One week after Liberation Day, with bond markets reeling, President Trump announced on April 9, 2025 that he was pausing the higher country-specific reciprocal rates for 90 days. Most trading partners were dropped back to the 10% global baseline while negotiations happened; China was excluded from the pause and its rate was instead increased sharply. The mechanism was an executive order modifying the original IEEPA tariff action.

This entry is tagged paused because the 90-day suspension of the country-specific rates is the clearest example on this site of a deliberate freeze. The 10% baseline kept being collected throughout, so "paused" here refers specifically to the higher country-by-country levies, not the whole program.

The story did not end at day 90. The pause was repeatedly extended and renegotiated country by country over the summer of 2025, and then the entire IEEPA apparatus — pause, baseline, and all — was invalidated when the Supreme Court held on February 20, 2026 that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs. CBP stopped collecting all of it within days.

Status as of July 2026; verify before relying on this for decisions. As a standalone event, the April 9 pause is the moment the administration blinked in the face of market pressure — but the tariffs it paused were later struck down entirely, so the pause ultimately became moot.