When it comes to Donald Trump’s massive tariffs, announced on Wednesday, the market has spoken: The Dow dropped 2,000 points on Friday, after falling more than 1,000 the day before. China announced Friday that it was retaliating against Trump’s tariffs.
The early results are historically bad.
CNN election analyst Harry Enten went on the air Friday and noted that Trump is the first president since the advent of the S&P 500 in the 1950s to inherit a bull market and show a loss of 5 percent by this point in his presidency.
“Uh oh… Trump’s making history”: he’s the 1st president since the S&P 500 was created in 1957 to inherit a bull market & turn in a loss of at least 5% at this point in his presidency.
This isn’t like other early declines. Trump took a bull & is turning it into a bear. pic.twitter.com/q0zcVASHam
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) April 4, 2025
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Enten also noted that while the market dropped in the early days of George W. Bush’s presidency in 2001, Bush had inherited the collapse of the dot-com bubble the year before, while Trump “inherited a bull market from Joe Biden.” He added that more than 60 percent of Americans now own stock, meaning it isn’t only wealthy Americans who are affected.
Meanwhile, a recession is now believed to be more likely than it was a few days ago. According to J.P. Morgan, as cited by CNN, “America’s economy and the broader world economy both had a 60% chance of sinking into a recession this year”—odds that were likely to increase if other countries retaliated, as they now have.
It was bad enough when Trump was going back and forth on tariffs, as he was for the first two months of his presidency, and the big problem was uncertainty.
Fox Business News is being forced to talk about some of Today’s horrible Trump-driven news.
The US Stock Market is ready for another huge dip this morning after China announced 34% tariffs on US goods, and after JP Morgan increased odds of a global recession to 60%. The Dow, S&P… pic.twitter.com/NcW2TF4AoC
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) April 4, 2025
“Markets may actually be underreacting, especially if these rates turn out to be final, given the potential knock-on effects to global consumption and trade,” Matt Burdett, head of equities at Thornburg Investment Management, told CNN. “The tariffs have injected a level of uncertainty and volatility we haven’t seen since the early days of the pandemic.”
Indeed, Thursday was the worst day for the stock market since the opening days of the COVID pandemic in 2020,
Photo courtesy of X screengrab
