Trump tariffs live: US markets see worst day in five years as president claims ‘stock is going to boom’
Stock Exchange closes on worst day since 2020 but Trump insists stocks will ‘boom’
The New York stock exchange has closed on its worst day of trading since June 2020 – during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The main indices saw their worst one-day falls in five years as Donald Trump claimed that “the markets are going to boom” in response to his sweeping tariffs.
The S&P 500 index is down 4.9% at the close, which Reuters flags is the biggest one-day drop since June 2020.
The Dow has also posted its biggest one-day drop since June 2020, down 4%.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq tumbled 5.9%, its worst single-day performance since March 2020.
The scale of the sell-off, wiping trillions of dollars off the value of US companies, highlights just how alarmed investors are by the tariffs, and the fears they could lead to a recession.
Speaking to reporters earlier on Thursday, Trump denied market turmoil presented a problem. The president said:
I think it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is … We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.
Key events
19 Democratic AGs sue Trump over elections EO
Lauren Gambino
A coalition of 19 Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday, arguing that a recent executive order signed by the president seeking to overhaul the nation’s elections was unconstitutional.
The lawsuit accuses the president of overstepping his authority with last week’s action, which they say amounts to an ”unconstitutional, antidemocratic, and un-American attempt to impose sweeping voting restrictions across the country”.
The lawsuit is the latest challenge to the president’s order, which includes proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration and new ballot deadline rules. the order threatens states that don’t comply with federal funding cuts.
It lists President Trump, the attorney general Pam Bondi as defendants. The attorneys general are asking a judge to declare the provisions “unconstitutional and void”.
“My fellow attorneys general and I are taking him to court because this Executive Order is nothing but a blatantly illegal power grab and an attempt to disenfranchise voters, California attorney general Rob Bonta said in a statement. “Neither the Constitution nor Congress authorize the President’s attempted voting restrictions. We will not be bullied by him. We will fight like hell in court to stop him.”
Trump’s elections order also faces legal challenges brought by the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and Senate and House Democratic leaders, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by two nonprofit organizations, The Campaign Legal Center and the State Democracy Defenders Fund. Both of these lawsuits were filed in the US district court for the District of Columbia.
When Trump signed the order, Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, called the order “the farthest-reaching executive action taken” in the country’s history.
Despite Trump’s public anti-tax stance, his decision to sharply increase tariffs would amount to the largest tax hike in decades, Reuters reports.
The intel comes from a JP Morgan note, which concluded that the tariffs account for a 22% increase and warns that “sustained restrictive trade policies and reduced immigration flows may impose lasting supply costs that will lower U.S. growth over the long run”.
Trump’s trade policies have spiked risks of a global recession according to the bank, which raised chances to 60% from 40%.
The US stock market closed today on the worst day of trading since 2020, with all three major index funds down as Apple and Nvidia lost a combined $470bn.
Our colleagues have more on the financial fallout of Donald Trump’s massive “reciprocal” tariffs announced yesterday:
Today so far
Thanks for joining our coverage of US politics, and particularly the fallout from Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs announcement yesterday. Here are the key headlines we’ve been following so far today:
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The New York stock exchange closed on its worst day of trading since June 2020 – during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. The main indices saw their worst one-day falls in five years as Donald Trump claimed that “the markets are going to boom” in response to his sweeping tariffs.
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Canada will retaliate against “unjustified, unwarranted” tariffs imposed by the United States with a 25% taxes on US vehicles, Mark Carney announced on Thursday. The US has placed 25% taxes on Canadian steel, aluminum and vehicles.
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Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican senator and former Senate majority leader, has criticized Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, saying that they are “bad policy and trade wars with our partners hurt working people most”. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One today that tariffs on imported semiconductor chips and pharmaceuticals will be coming “soon”.
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The US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said that the administration is “months away” from making a decision about whether to make payments to farmers to offset any impact from tariffs. Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs were mostly criticized by farm and food groups for their potential to shrink markets for farmers and raise prices for consumers.
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A federal judge said she will temporarily block the Trump administration from cutting $11bn in federal public health funding. US District Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island said she will approve a temporary restraining order while hearing a case brought by 23 states and the District of Columbia.
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Mike Pence will receive the John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in May for his refusal to go along with the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. The JFK Library Foundation shared the announcement today, saying the award will recognize Trump’s former vice-president “for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021.”
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The Pentagon’s inspector general’s office announced it was opening an investigation into defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of an unclassified commercial texting application to coordinate the 15 March launch of US strikes on Yemen’s Houthis. Hegseth outlined details of a US airstrike in Yemen in a Signal group chat that included the vice-president, JD Vance, as well as Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, to the chat.
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Several members of Donald Trump’s embattled national security council have been fired, Axios reports. The firings come a day after conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed Trump to fire specific NSC staffers for disloyalty.
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US secretary of state Marco Rubio told Nato allies on Thursday that Washington remained committed to the alliance but expected them to spend far more on defence and would give them some time to do so. Rubio met fellow Nato foreign ministers gathered in Brussels, with some European officials saying they were reassured by the renewed commitment to the alliance at a time of rising tensions over Trump’s new trade tariffs.
A federal judge said she will temporarily block the Trump administration from cutting $11bn in federal public health funding.
US District Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island said she will approve a temporary restraining order while hearing a case brought by 23 states and the District of Columbia.
New York Attorney General Letitia James reacted to the judge’s decision on social media, saying: “We’re going to continue our lawsuit and fight to ensure states can provide the medical services Americans need.”
The $11bn in cuts that the Trump administration had proposed would have predominantly affected funding for Covid-19 related initiatives, mental health and substance use treatment.
While speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump also mentioned tariffs could give him the power to make a deal with China over TikTok.
“We have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say we’ll approve a deal but will you do something on the tariffs. The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” he said. He then clarified that he was not currently in talks with China and was just using TikTok as an example.
He added “we’re very close to a deal with a very good group of people” with “multiple” investors interested in the social media platform.
Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One today that tariffs on imported semiconductor chips and pharmaceuticals will be coming “soon”.
He added that the “reciprocal” tariffs he announced yesterday have put the US “in the drivers seat.”
“Every country is calling us. That’s the beauty of what we do,” he said. “If we would have asked these countries to do us a favor. They would have said no. Now they will do anything for us.”
The Senate has confirmed Mehmet Oz – a former heart surgeon and TV personality – as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Oz will take the lead at the agency, which provides health care coverage to more than 160 million Americans – but which is facing significant changes as Congress debates cuts to the Medicaid coverage.
For more, read on below:
Volkswagen will add an import fee to its cars sold in the United States, the German automaker told its dealers today according to the Wall Street Journal.
The news comes the same day Donald Trump’s 25% tariff on foreign automobiles went into effect. Volkswagen said it will announce the exact fee by mid-April.
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the manufacturer said it wanted to be “very transparent about navigating through this time of uncertainty.”
While countries around the world grapple with the meaning of the United States’s new “reciprocal” tariffs, two countries that were exempt from those particular duties – Mexico and Canada – are still preparing for the fallout of other trade decisions.
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum announced plans to counter Trump’s tariffs earlier today, with a focus on increasing domestic production of items it has historically imported from the US, including natural gas.
Although Mexico was not named in Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs announcement, the country is still subject to a 25% tariff on automobiles, steel and aluminum.
“Yesterday, something very important happened: the recognition of the free trade agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States, which is fundamental at this moment,” she said during a speech in Mexico City.
Meanwhile, in Canada, prime minister Mark Carney announced that Canada had introduced a 25% tariff on automobiles made in the United States.
“We take these measures reluctantly,” he said. “And we take them in ways that’s intended and will cause maximum impact in the United States and minimum impact here in Canada.”
Newly appointed as the Canadian prime minister, Carney added that he hoped to bring together a “coalition of like-minded countries” in search of an alternative to the US: “If the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will.”
Mike Pence will receive the John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in May for his refusal to go along with the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.
The JFK Library Foundation shared the announcement today, saying the award will recognize Donald Trump’s former vice-president “for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021.”
After Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Trump put pressure on Pence to reject the results. When a mob of the president’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the election, some chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence.” Secret Service agents removed the vice-president from the Capitol, but Pence returned later to continue certifying the election results after the building was secured.
Stock Exchange closes on worst day since 2020 but Trump insists stocks will ‘boom’
The New York stock exchange has closed on its worst day of trading since June 2020 – during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The main indices saw their worst one-day falls in five years as Donald Trump claimed that “the markets are going to boom” in response to his sweeping tariffs.
The S&P 500 index is down 4.9% at the close, which Reuters flags is the biggest one-day drop since June 2020.
The Dow has also posted its biggest one-day drop since June 2020, down 4%.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq tumbled 5.9%, its worst single-day performance since March 2020.
The scale of the sell-off, wiping trillions of dollars off the value of US companies, highlights just how alarmed investors are by the tariffs, and the fears they could lead to a recession.
Speaking to reporters earlier on Thursday, Trump denied market turmoil presented a problem. The president said:
I think it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is … We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.
As news of Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs settles in today, the president’s allies on the far-right are reacting to news that their countries will face higher duties.
In Italy, premier Giorgia Meloni told state television that she believes Trump’s decision to impose 20% tariffs on exports from Europe was “wrong”, but “it is not the catastrophe that some are making it out to be”.
She added that the government will meet next week to discuss its response: “We need to open an honest discussion on the matter with the Americans, with the goal – at least from my point of view – of removing tariffs, not multiplying them”.
Meanwhile, Argentinian president Javier Milei – who gifted tech billionaire Elon Musk a chainsaw at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February – said he hoped to meet Trump this evening at the “American Patriots Gala”. In response to the tariffs, Milei posted a link to the Queen song Friends will be Friends on social media.
California’s Democratic representative Eric Swalwell has joined in a handful of lawmakers in criticizing Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, writing on X:
“Trump’s tariffs are a slap in the face to hardworking Americans, jacking up prices, straining small businesses, and risking jobs. This isn’t America first; it’s families last.”
Donald Trump is continuing to face criticism from US lawmakers after his tariffs reveal on Wednesday included tariffs on barren islands near Antartica that are populated by penguins.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called the tariffs “one of the dumbest decisions [Trump] has ever made as president”, adding: “And that’s saying something.”
Schumer went on to say that “Donald Trump slapped tariffs on penguins and not on Putin,” in apparent reference to Trump’s 10% tariffs placed on the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands.
Similarly, Adam Schiff, Democratic senator of California, released a video address on X of featuring a baby penguin he called “George.”
The Trump administration just put a tariff on this guy. That’s right, this guy. This is George. George lived on an uninhabited island called Heard Island … and Trump just put a 10% tariff on this island which begs of course the question, ‘What did George ever do to Donald Trump and his buddies?’
This is how nonsensical these tariffs are. This is how absurd and capricious and uncoordinated these tariffs are. And while it might seem absurd and funny that they put a tariff on penguins, it shows just the reckless nature of what they are doing. They are crashing the economy and it could just not be more self-destructive. We are alienating our friends and allies and even going after poor George.
Trump on tariffs: ‘The stock is going to boom’
Speaking to reporters on Thursday amid tumbling US stock markets and $2tn wiped off Wall Street after his tariffs reveal on Wednesday, Trump said:
I think it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is … We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.
He went on to add:
The rest of the world wants to see is there is any way they can make a deal. They’ve taken advantage of us for many years … I think it’s going to be unbelievable …
Over the last nearly 24 hours, Trump has faced widespread backlash from US lawmakers and global leaders over his tariffs plan, with senior Republican senator Mitch McConnell calling it “bad policy” while Canada – a traditional American ally – called the tariffs “unjustified” and “unwanted”.
Here is the latest chart of the S&P500 as of 2pm ET on Thursday:
Mitch McConnell calls Trump’s tariffs ‘bad policy’
Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican senator and former Senate majority leader, has criticized Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, saying that they are “bad policy and trade wars with our partners hurt working people most”.
In a statement on Thursday afternoon, McConnell went on to say:
They are a tax on everyday working Americans. Preserving the long-term prosperity of American industry and workers requires working with our allies, not against them.
With so much at stake globally, the last thing we need is to pick fights with the very friends with whom we should be working with to protect against China’s predatory and unfair trade practices. That includes what we do on trade.
