NEW YORK: “A huge disagreement” in his administration overshadowed US President Donald Trump’s tariffs war, according to his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and neither she nor Vice President JD Vance could slow him down.
The tariffs war was not well planned, and Trump’s claims that it would fill the nation’s coffers and not be a tax on consumers were “so much thinking out loud”, she said in candid interviews with Vanity Fair published on Tuesday.
It was “more painful than expected”, she admitted.
“There was a huge disagreement over whether (tariffs were) a good idea” among Trump’s advisers, but he went ahead, Wiles said.
As Trump prepared to announce his tariffs, ranging from 10 per cent to 100 per cent on April 2, which he called “Liberation Day”, Wiles said she teamed up with Vice President JD Vance to try to apply the brakes.