After a week of intensifying market turmoil, President Donald Trump stepped back from the brink of financial crisis Wednesday, announcing a 90-day “pause” on the exorbitant tariff levels he’d imposed on dozens of countries.

It was not a total climbdown: Trump intensified a trade war with China by hiking its tariff level up to 125 percent. And he is also keeping in place a 10 percent tariff for other countries. (Details on exactly which countries remained murky as of mid-Wednesday afternoon.)

But it was a significant step back.

So why did he do it? Why make such a dramatic........

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