Key stock markets in Asia and Europe surged in Thursday trading, reacting to President Donald Trump's 90-day pause of most planned tariffs on American trade partners.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 was up 9% and the broader TOPIX index was up 8%. South Korea's Kospi was up nearly 6%. Taiwan's Taiex index jumped 9.25% and Australia's ASX 200 rose 4.6%.

Key Chinese markets were also in the green, despite Trump's decision to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to a cumulative total of 125%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index climbed 3%, the Shanghai Composite Index jumped 1.29% and the Shenzhen Component Index rose 2.7%.

In Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 climbed 6%, France's CAC 40 6.4%, Germany's DAX 8%, Italy's FTSE MIB 7.5% and Spain's IBEX 7.2%.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called President Donald Trump's 90-day pause on the "reciprocal" tariffs a "welcome reprieve for the global economy," in a post on X Wednesday evening.

“As President Trump and I have agreed, the U.S. President and the Canadian Prime Minister will commence negotiations on a new economic and security relationship immediately following the Federal election," Carney added.

Carney was named as Canada's prime minister-elect in early March, after Justin Trudeau announced his intention to resign on Jan. 6.

-ABC News' Aleem Agha

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on Fox News on Wednesday, where he provided the backstory on how President Donald Trump's administration decided to initiate a 90-day pause on tariffs.

"Two days ago, the president truthed out that he was willing to negotiate with all these different countries that were interested. And then yesterday, he said he would do it in a bespoke fashion, one by one, individually. And the calls were unbelievable," Lutnick said.

Lutnick conveyed that he and Secretary Scott Bessent walked into the Oval Office on Wednesday and asked Trump how he’d like to handle the trade negotiations. Together, they agreed that they would single out China. According to Lutnick, the president issued his social media post with Lutnick and Bessent standing beside him.

When pressed on when deals might come to fruition, Lutnick said the deals will take some time; however, he said he immediately got to work making calls after the president’s announcement.

“Well, I think the real deals will take some time... but we're going to start meeting with countries. I started calling them right after we walked out of the Oval Office today, started calling countries, talking to them and telling them, okay, this is the time,” he said.

-ABC News' Kelsey Walsh

When pressed on when he decided to move forward with his change on tariffs, given he himself had said one was not being considered, Trump said the discussions had taken place over a "period of time" but ultimately pulled the trigger this morning.

"I think it probably came together early this morning, fairly early this morning. Just wrote it up. I didn't we didn't have the use of, we didn't have access to lawyers, or it was just brought up. We wrote it up from our hearts right," Trump claimed.

"So, but this was something certainly we've been talking about for a period of time, and we decided to pull the trigger, and we did it today, and we're happy about it," Trump added.