Analysts say Trump's import tariffs expose vulnerabilities in the US bond market, highlighting Bitcoin's unique economic properties

Trump's 90-day pause on higher reciprocal tariffs, reverting them to a 10% baseline for most countries except China, has exposed vulnerabilities in the US bond market

A development that some say highlights Bitcoin’s unique economic properties during times of global uncertainty.

President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause on higher import tariffs and a return to a 10% baseline for most countries has exposed vulnerabilities in the U.S. bond market, according to critics.

suggesting the administration’s hand was forced.

“Trump fought the bond market and the bond market won,” said economist and author of The Bitcoin Standard, Saifedean Ammous, in an April 23 X post.

“The gambit seemed to work for the first day, and the huge crash in the stock market was presented as a small price to pay for fiscal sustainability. But then the bonds began to crash, and it became clear how disastrous the tariffs were, and how wrong it was to expect that deliberately crashing the stock market would boost the bond market.”

Following Trump’s tariff announcement, CNBC data shows that the 10-year Treasury yield surged from 4% to 4.5% as part of a sell-off driven by inflation and recession concerns.

“The rise in yields was the exact opposite of what the administration wanted, and reversing course on the tariffs half a day after they go into effect was absolutely devastating for Trump’s negotiating position,” said Ammous.

Some analysts, including Global Macro Investor founder Raoul Pal, have suggested the tariff maneuvering may only be “posturing” for the U.S. to reach a trade agreement with China.

“All of the talk about China buckling under the threat of Trump now sounds hilarious in retrospect, when Trump could not keep his tariffs in place for two days,” said Ammous, adding that China “showed absolutely no inclination” to reach out and strike a deal.

Delays in reaching a trade agreement may limit the recovery of both equity and cryptocurrency markets, which are closely linked to the outcomes of the trade negotiations, according to Nansen analysts.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) is acting “less like a tech stock and more like a hedge against economic uncertainty,” after Trump signaled a “substantial reduction in the tariffs on Chinese goods,” said Nexo dispatch analyst Iliya Kalchev.

The situation has also renewed proposals to back the U.S. dollar with Bitcoin.

According to Ammous, the U.S. should keep buying BTC until the government has enough to fully back the dollar supply, ultimately switching to a Bitcoin standard.

Historically, the dollar was backed by gold and was convertible for a fixed amount of the precious metal until 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt suspended gold convertibility in response to the Great Depression.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon halted the dollar’s convertibility into gold, aiming to protect the U.S. gold reserves and stabilize the economy, beginning the fiat currency system that stands today.

Bitcoin’s fixed supply, which is hard-coded in its tokenomics, makes it a popular digital competitor to gold.

Joe Burnett, director of market research at Unchained, predicted that Bitcoin may rival or surpass gold’s market capitalization in the next decade, projecting that the Bitcoin price will reach $1.8 million by 2035.