Trump’s tariffs are continuing to wipe trillions off the stock market as the markets are experiencing an absolute bloodbath of red.
The Trump envisioned economy is firmly taking hold and, predictably, it is being marked with steep losses, growing fears of a recession, and an economy in turmoil – so pretty much on brand for your standard Republican government, really.
Already, much like Trump’s first term, Trump’s second term has already been marked by multiple stock market crashes. when Trump originally pushed the 25% across the board tariffs in February, the stock markets crashes, causing Trump to panic over the news broadcast on Fox News. In response, he delayed the tariffs for 30 days. After the 30 days expired in early March, the tariffs were back on, causing a 2 day market crash on the Dow Jones by 1,300 points. Trump, again, panicked when he saw the market reaction on Fox News and partially delayed the tariffs again.
At that point, he started experimenting with industry specific tariffs to see if one of them won’t cause a stock market crash. One target was dairy and lumber. When the markets crashed again by 1,400 points on the Dow Jones. This caused Trump to conveniently not implement those tariffs.
Then there was the steel and aluminum tariffs which sparked another 500 point crash on the Dow Jones. However, there was a marked change in tone. Trump decided that stock market crashes are acceptable and pushed the dumb talking point that there will be short term pain for long term gain (spoiler: there is no long term gain to be had). So, he basically psyched himself up and started ignoring the crashing stock markets and, instead, live even deeper into his own reality bubble.
So, he ditched the whole “tariff smaller segments of the economy and hope the markets don’t crash as hard” and just let the global economic destruction tour rip. This led to his so-called “Liberation Day” where he announced his trade war with the entire freaking planet. Analysts were stunned at the complete insanity with some describing the announcement as worse than the worst case scenario. Of course, the announcement was made after the markets closed, meaning that it would require a day before the markets reacted.
… and react they did.
Yesterday, the markets crashed with a 1,600 point drop on the Dow Jones in a single day. Stock traders have also realized that Trump doesn’t care what the markets do, marking the last thing holding Trump’s total insanity at bay on the economic part of the country. This as analysis concludes that the basis for the massive tariffs were completely bogus and not anchored to reality on how global trade even works. The numbers, in short, were completely made up to justify slapping massive tariffs on other countries for no real good reason – including an uninhabited island and a US military base.
The question at that point was just how much further the markets were going to crater. Were they going to crash going into day 2? The answer was an absolute yes. In fact, the stock market crash has even accelerated over the eye popping numbers coming out of the markets. Today, the Dow Jones crashed by 2,231.07 points or a drop of 5.50%. This means the two day losses total roughly 3,800 points on the Dow Jones. Over 7 days, there has been a loss of 7.44% on the index. According to Wikipedia, today’s loss is big enough to be the third biggest point loss ever.
In response, other countries are either planning on or moving forward with retaliatory tariffs against the US. China, for instance, announced a 34% retaliatory tariff against the US. From Al Jazeera:
China has announced a slew of countermeasures against tariffs imposed by United States President Donald Trump, including additional tariffs of 34 percent on all goods and curbs on the export of some rare earths, deepening an escalating trade war.
Canada, for their part, announced an array of counter-measures. From the Prime Minister’s Office:
Yesterday, the United States administration announced a series of unwarranted and unjustified tariffs that will fundamentally change the international trading system. While some important elements of the Canada U.S. trade relationship have been preserved, new tariffs on automobiles have now entered into force. These are on top of the previously announced tariffs, including those on steel and aluminum, which remain in place.
The U.S. tariffs will do harm to American workers and businesses, but Canada will also be impacted, with every Canadian feeling the effects. The Government of Canada’s position has always been clear: we will fight these tariffs, protect our workers, and build the strongest economy in the G7.
The Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, today announced new countermeasures to protect Canadian workers and businesses and defend Canada’s economy. These countermeasures include:
- Twenty-five per cent tariffs on non-CUSMA compliant fully assembled vehicles imported into Canada from the United States.
- Twenty-five per cent tariffs on non-Canadian and non-Mexican content of CUSMA compliant fully assembled vehicles imported into Canada from the United States.
- Canada’s intention to develop a framework for auto producers that incentivizes production and investment in Canada.
Most importantly, every single dollar raised from these tariffs will go directly to support our auto workers.
Multiple Canadian supporting premiers are supportive of the countermeasures as they back efforts to stand up for Canada as well (Alberta’s premier seems more interested in becoming the 51st state to appease her MAGA supporters).
Still, as the chaos unfolds from Trump’s global economic arson, it seems that Trump’s quest to burn everything to the ground is only heating up. Reports suggest that Trump is preparing for even more tariffs. From Gizmodo:
President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs have rocked the stock market since being announced on Tuesday, with just about every major tech company down double-digits. Semiconductors were largely spared from an immediate impact, however, as chips from Taiwan and other nations were exempted. Most electronics sold in the United States are powered by chips made in Asia, meaning tariffs would have a significant impact on prices. But Trump told a White House press pool on Thursday that tariffs on semiconductors will be imposed “very soon.”
Already, tariffs on foreign-made goods have led Nintendo to announce a delay in U.S. pre-orders for the Switch 2 while it assesses the potential impact of tariffs. And Klarna, the buy-now-pay-later startup made a meme for letting customers pay for food deliveries in installments, delayed its planned IPO on Friday. Global economic uncertainty probably hurts the business case for financing Chipotle burritos through zero-interest, unsecured loans.
President Trump had already threatened to impose large tariffs on semiconductors made abroad as the United States aims to build more crucial technology domestically. China’s closure of Shanghai in 2022 over a COVID-19 outbreak highlighted the risk of relying on long, international supply chains for essential manufacturing. TSMC, one of the major chipmakers that makes products for the likes of Nvidia and Apple, has committed more than $100 billion to open production and R&D facilities in the United States, but scaling takes a long time. Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, estimated it would take Apple three years and $20 billion to move ten percent of manufacturing to the U.S.
So, it seems that the destruction of the world economy is only going to continue as Trump dials his destructive efforts to 11. The only good news here is that it’s the weekend and the markets are closed. So, we won’t be seeing any more of this recent stock market crash until Monday. So, that’s something… which is nice… I guess?
