WSJ What’s News - The Trump Administration Is Quietly Watering Down Some Tariffs

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

P.M. Edition for Oct. 17. In recent weeks, President Trump has been tiptoeing away from some of the tariffs that underpin his signature trade policy, saying reciprocal tariffs don’t apply to dozens of different products. We hear from WSJ trade and economic policy reporter Gavin Bade about why that’s happening. Plus, a decade ago, Walmart rattled investors with a historic pay raise for employees to $9 an hour. WSJ reporter Sarah Nassauer tells us why today the move is considered a success. Plus, in a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House today, President Trump said he’d rather end the war in Ukraine than send Tomahawks to the country. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Trump says he'd rather end the war between Ukraine and Russia than send Ukraine powerful new weapons. Plus, Trump made tariffs his signature trade policy. Now, he's pivoting away from some of them. They're putting the offer out there to other nations to say, if you do a deal with us, we can carve out more of these tariffs as well. And how Walmart's decision to pay workers more shocked Wall Street, but then put the company on a path to success.

It's Friday, October 17th. I'm Alex O'Sullough for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. At a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelensky today, President Trump said he hoped Ukraine wouldn't need the U.S. to provide it with long-range tomahawk cruise missiles. So we're going to be talking about tomahawks

and would much rather have them not need tomahawks. Would much rather have the war be over, to be honest. Trump had been talking in recent weeks about sending the powerful weapons to Ukraine. The meeting between the two came after Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at length on the telephone yesterday. Trump says he plans to meet Putin separately in Hungary in the coming weeks to try to broker a peace deal. Since taking office in January, President Trump has made tariffs his signature trade policy.

Now, though, he's tiptoeing away from some of them, saying reciprocal tariffs don't apply to dozens of different products. WSJ trade and economic policy reporter Gavin Bade is here to tell us more. Gavin, what are some of the tariffs that the Trump administration is shifting on? Yeah, so this is a subtle but important shift in the Trump administration's reciprocal tariffs. These are the ones that he unveiled on Liberation Day back in April, then paused. Then there were a bunch of negotiations. He put them back in place in early August, right? And so what he's done in the last few weeks here is he has increased the exemptions or the carve-outs from these tariffs for a few dozen products.

They've also given indications that they're going to do more in the future. There was an executive order in September where Trump said, not only am I exempting more products from these tariffs, but I'm going to lay out an entire list of hundreds of products that I'm going to say are available for exemptions if we make a trade deal with another country. They're putting the offer out there to other nations to say, if you do a deal with us, we can carve out more of these tariffs as well. And why is this happening now? There's a few reasons for this. One of them is the reciprocal tariffs are under legal threat. This is based on a very novel interpretation of emergency national security law.

The Supreme Court is going to hear a case on this early next month. They're expanding this other trunch of tariffs, the so-called Section 232, the more classic national security tariffs. They're a much firmer ground, legally speaking. This is what you see as tariffs on steel, aluminum, automobiles. And really what we're tracking here is they are shifting the emphasis away from the reciprocal tariffs somewhat and toward the Section 232 national security tariffs. So for businesses that have been trying to navigate these tariffs that have been changing, what does this mean for them?

It's still going to be a lot of uncertainty here, right? In the first term tariffs and the tariffs on China, there was an official exemptions process. So any business could apply to the U.S. Trade Representative's office and say, hey, I get this component from China. I can't get it from anywhere else. Can I get a break on the tariffs until we, you know, redo it. our supply chain. And usually they would get that exemption. Now there's no such process. It's just if you want an exemption, you kind of have to call up Howard Lutnik, the Commerce Secretary, or call

up Jameson Greer, the U.S. trade representatives, and hope that you can convince them. There's not a bona fide technocratic process. So I think we're only going to see more uncertainty coming forward. Wall Street Journal reporter Gavin Bade. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you guys. In other news, we're exclusively reporting that Goldman Sachs is expanding its push into financing data centers and other infrastructure so the bank can grab a bigger piece of the AI boom. The Wall Street Giant is creating a team within its global banking and markets division that will focus on financing infrastructure, both for the AI buildout and for building and improving traditional infrastructure like toll roads and airports. That's according to people familiar with the matter. And the investment bank Jeffries appears to have calmed investors' worst fears about its involvement in the collapse of Auto Parts Maker First Brands. At the bank's Investor Day yesterday, CEO Rich Handler said Jeffreys believes it was defrauded and that he doesn't see the collapse of the auto parts supplier as a sign of broader credit issues.

Jeffreys shares rose almost 6%. Its stock tumbled 11% yesterday after the WSJ published a report about the firm's ties to first brands through, through both its investment banking and asset management divisions. In other trading today, American Express shares jumped more than 7% after the credit card company said its cardholders spent more and card fees grew, boosting profit. Stocks overall rose after some fresh comments from President Trump about new tariffs he's threatened to put on goods from China. He said in a television interview that those extra charges weren't sustainable.

The Dow, the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ all closed about half a percent higher. The three indexes also finish the week higher, with the S&P rising 1.8% overall to close back in your records after several turbulent days of trading. Coming up, how Walmart, once known for its low pay, became a case study for how to treat workers. That's after the break. There are tremors in the piece. process between Israel and Hamas that underscore the fragility of the high-stakes deal. The truce is stumbling after Hamas failed to return all of the bodies of dead hostages that remain in Gaza. Israel knew Hamas wasn't able to locate all of them, but the militant group's

initial decision to return only four bodies looked like stalling to Israel and set off a political skirmish. And even thornier issues lie ahead, such as the disarmament of Hamas. But the two sides must first pass the initial phase of the deal they agreed to last week, which was supposed to be the easy part. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton appeared in federal court for the first time today, following his indictment yesterday for allegedly mishandling classified information. Bolton pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was ordered to surrender his passport to his lawyer and the magistrate judge imposed restrictions on his travel. Bolton is the latest of the president's prominent critics to face prosecution.

And Apple has signed a five-year deal with Formula One for the U.S. rights to air its races. Apple TV will begin airing F-1 races in 2006. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Apple bid as much as $150 million a year for the rights to air the races. Back in 2015, Walmart increased its starting wage to $9. hour. Walmart was then, and still is, the largest private employer in the U.S., so raising the salaries of nearly half of its more than a million U.S. hourly workers made it the biggest pay raise in history. Investors reacted by sending Walmart shares down 10%, just during $215 billion

in market value in hours. Here's CNBC's Jim Kramer commenting on it to Walmart CEO Doug McMillan shortly after executives at an investor meeting mentioned how much the move would cost the company. I think it surprised a lot of people. I mean, I think people were shocked, frankly. You've got to give them that. The stock does not get hit like this. Fast forward to today, this fall, Walmart's experience will be published as a Harvard Business School case study, and now it's viewed as a success. I'm joined now by Sarah Nassauer, who covers large retailers for the journal. Sarah, looking at Walmart and all of its many operations, did that investment 10 years ago pay off?

Most people would say that it did, but it's not just, just a straight line from an increase to $9 an hour to today. That was the underpinnings of a pretty big strategic shift overall towards increasing wages gradually over time, adding more training and benefits, thinking about their employees a little differently, and at the same time, then using investments to grow online and reduce prices and increase their expectations for store managers

about store quality. They kind of use that announcement as a foundation for lots of other big strategy shifts over the last 10 years. And what does its business look like now just in terms of numbers? We've seen steady and very strong sales growth from them over the last, you know, at least eight years. And they're in a position where they have grown their e-commerce business. And they're still the country's largest company by revenue. You know, Amazon is close on their heels. But they have grown in a way that 10 years ago people did.

not think they would. How did Walmart's moves affect its competitors? Initially, really within weeks, we saw announcements from Target and TJX, which owns TjMax and other brands, that they would also set their minimum at $9 an hour. Years after, you saw Amazon, Target, others, surpassing Walmart's minimum and average wage. Where do Walmart's wages stand now compared to those competitors? Basically, just above the average of its retail. competitors, and that's very much by design. They used to be at the bottom, and now they're just above the middle. And that's where they say they want to be on wages, because they want to have enough money to do other things like bonuses and benefits and training. They feel that giving

a path to promotion, for example, that would mean a higher wage is something that keeps people around longer. And that's what they're trying to do is keep people around longer, they say. Wall Street Journal reporter Sarah Nassauer. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. And that's what's news for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap-up, What's News and Markets? Then on Sunday, as part of our USA 250 project, we'll be digging into how speculation

has helped shape the U.S. economy. That's in What's News Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show is produced by Pierre Biennameh and Zoe Colkin, with supervising producer Tali Arbell. Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Aisha El-Muslim is our development producer. Chris Zinsley is our deputy editor.

and Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Alex Osala. Thanks for listening.