Why Charles Payne Is Bringing a Pro-Tariff Stance to Fox Business

It’s been a wild two weeks for the stock markets as President Donald Trump‘s new slate of tariffs stoked the embers of a global trade war.

The ensuing roller coaster ride through the market’s peaks and valleys has been a ratings-driver for CNBC and Fox Business, as well as the big three cable news networks. Trump administration officials have made numerous appearances on those outlets to argue the case for calm amidst the chaos—frequently in the face of skeptical reactions from anchors and economic experts.

But some on-air talent weren’t skeptical in the slightest. During the height of the tariff drama—which spanned a week from Trump’s Rose Garden announcement on April 2 to his 90-day pause on all tariffs except for China on April 9—Fox Business anchor Charles Payne was an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s market moves.

Even as a majority of business executives and economists forecast calamitous outcomes as stocks plunged, the Making Money host stuck to his pro-tariff stance, a position echoed by other quarters within the Fox News Media universe.

“I’m really thrilled at what I’ve done personally, and what I’ve seen on Fox Business,” Payne tells TVNewser about the tenor of his coverage, which he says draws on his four decade career as a financial analyst.

“I’m more than just a journalist,” he adds. “No one understands investors better than I do, and I take that expertise with me everyday.” (Payne was suspended by Fox Business in the summer of 2017 following an investigation into sexual harassment claims. He returned to the airwaves that September after being cleared of the claims.)

Far from feeling the need to defend Fox, Payne points the finger at other media outlets for “fanning the flames” of investor and consumer fear through their reporting. “I think it’s unfair to the viewer when only one potential worst case scenario is presented,” he argues.

But other media watchers feel that non-Fox networks more accurately captured the damage Trump’s tariffs inflicted on both the American and global markets.

“While not a fan of Fox News, their financial coverage is typically fair,” Les Rose, a professor of broadcast and digital journalism at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, notes to TVNewser. “To suggest what has happened on the markets in the past week is anything but insane flies in the face of what most other financial analysts are saying and, from a broadcast perspective is, unfortunately, what I have come to expect from Fox.”

Looking back

Payne’s tariff defense started in earnest the day after “Liberation Day,” as Trump has described April 2. During his April 3 broadcast of Making Money, the host credited Trump with dropping an “economic MOAB” on global markets, a reference to the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb that’s colloquially known as the “mother of all bombs.”

Asked whether he considers that phrasing extreme, Payne counters that it reflected the initial shock that greeted Trump’s announcement. “Nobody had gamed the formula out to that degree, and it was pretty mind-boggling,” he says. “It angered a lot of people, even on the right. But that’s the way Trump does things—he’s a counter-puncher and he punches hard.”

Over the next few days, Payne advanced his own case by drawing on his reading of American history, referencing how consequential figures like Alexander Hamilton and William McKinley were also pro-tariff. “Historically tariffs have helped this country more than it’s hurt,” he says. (McKinley’s use of tariffs has been frequently cited by Trump as well.)

Payne also notes that he sought to separate “soft data” like consumer surveys from “hard data” like mortgage applications and job numbers, which didn’t appear to be as severely impacted by the tariff fallout. “The hard data was largely ignored,” he claims. (Other outlets have noted that the Labor Department’s most recent jobs report covered the pre-tariff period.)

“All the touchy-feely [soft data] stuff that may or may not morph into hard data was what was killing the market,” Payne argues.

As the week progressed, though, it grew increasingly clear that pro-tariff arguments weren’t finding purchase amidst the grim headlines and grimmer forecasts. At one point, reports spread that that Fox News removed its onscreen stock ticker as the markets plunged, although fact-checking outlets like Snopes have labeled those claims as false.

For his part, Payne claims that he was unaware of the stock ticker controversy. “First time I’ve heard of it,” he remarks.

On April 9, Trump put the majority of his tariffs on pause, a reversal that’s widely been interpreted as a sign that the administration recognized the severity of the economic stakes in play. “I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line,” Trump told reporters. “They were getting yippy… a little bit afraid.”

Directly following the pause, Payne spoke with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, and notably slipped some criticisms into the conversation, at one point suggesting that Navarro and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick might have been “mucking up the public relations aspect” of the tariff roll-out. Asked about that back-and-forth, Payne emphasizes that it didn’t reflect any change of heart on his part.

“My thing with Peter wasn’t about the tariffs as much as the messaging,” he says. “I have a lot of respect for everyone on Trump’s team… I just think that communication is really vital.”

Looking ahead

The next beat in the tariff story involves the U.S. and China—long a source of ire for Trump and his inner circle of advisors. Both countries are in the midst of a rapidly escalating trade war with no immediate end in sight. Payne has placed China at the center of his coverage in recent days, largely endorsing the administration’s hard line approach.

“I do believe we are in a much better economic position than China,” Payne says, before going on to suggest that many in America’s executive class—as well as many in the media—are acting as an “ally” for China.

Asked whether he really feels that there’s a concentrated effort within this country to see China succeed, Payne replies that he’d like to see Americans re-embrace fairness and “making things” when it comes to the subject of trade. “There’s a reason that the election outcome was what it was,” he remarks.

Besides the ongoing subject of China, Payne’s upcoming programming plans include an April 24 town hall that directly addresses the next generation of investors. Fox Business reports that the show has seen its own ratings bump since with a 50% increase in viewership versus the week prior to April 2 and a +33% rise in 2025 so far.

Those results reinforce that there’s an audience for financial news coverage that comes from a pro-tariff perspective. But both the immediate and lingering impacts of the Trump tariffs have also demonstrated the importance—and ratings value—of more critical reporting.

Asked whether there are any moves the administration could make that might lead him to break with the president, Payne admits that he was “throw[n] off a little bit” following recent reports that Trump had floated the idea of raising tax rates on highest-earning Americans.

“I’m just willing to give it more than a week,” he stresses.