Howard Lutnick told Fox Business that President Donald Trump is willing to ‘meet in the middle’ on tariffs, but not eliminate them entirely – yet.
Updated Mar 5, 2025, 10:50 a.m. UTCPublished Mar 4, 2025, 11:50 p.m. UTC
There’s a 70% chance that the trade war between Canada and the U.S. will be over by May, according to odds on a Polymarket contract on the topic, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox Business that U.S. President Donald Trump was open to negotiation.
On Tuesday morning, Canada and Mexico faced the implementation of 25% tariffs on all products entering the U.S., with President Trump citing their failure to curb fentanyl trafficking and illegal immigration as a national security threat.
But later in the day, Lutnick appeared to offer a potential avenue for negotiation, with odds rising 20% in a few hours on Polymarket.
I think [Trump is] going to work something out with them,” Lutnick said on Fox Business. “It’s not going to be a pause, none of that pause stuff, but I think he’s going to figure out: you do more, and I’ll meet you in the middle someway and we’re going to probably announce that tomorrow.”
Lutnick’s comments also appeared to calm crypto markets on ‘Turnaround Tuesday’ with bitcoin (BTC) up 1.5% and trading comfortably above $87,000, according to CoinDesk Indices data.
The CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a measure of the performance of the world’s largest digital assets, is up 2% on the news.
Sam Reynolds
Sam Reynolds is a senior reporter based in Asia. Sam was part of the CoinDesk team that won the 2023 Gerald Loeb award in the breaking news category for coverage of FTX’s collapse. Prior to CoinDesk, he was a reporter with Blockworks and a semiconductor analyst with IDC.
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Sam Reynolds