Merely 24 hours after Trump’s “Liberation Day” stock market crash ends, Trump’s Chinese tariff stock market crash begins.
Trump’s tenure as president has already been marked with numerous scandals, controversies, and very likely criminal activity. What’s more, it was another lesson on how misleading it is to refer to him as a “businessman”. This is because it is more accurate to refer to him as a “failed businessman” with the numerous bankruptcies associated with his legacy. The only real reason wealth came his way is how many other people gained wealth in the last few decades: inheritance. For Trump, part of that wealth also comes in the form of endless grifting as well with contractors not being paid and working the legal system to grind down anyone who dares challenge his thieving ways.
Yet, the media and some analysts constantly turned a blind eye to all of that and continued to refer to him as merely a “businessman” – part of a multi-year (multi-decade?) long effort to sane-wash him. He wasn’t the guy that steals and cheats his way through life as many who actually deal with him know him for. Instead, the media portrays, he’s the deal-making businessman always making big decisions. Just look at the carefully edited footage of Trump in his carefully controlled environment in the TV show, The Apprentice. Even some producers at the time were constantly trying to figure out how to make Trump look as good as possible as some of his decision making didn’t actually make sense. If someone who was promising as a finalist got fired early, then it was on the producers to figure out how to make that contestant look as bad as possible.
Of course, such things can only happen in TV and not real life. After all, there’s no edit button to cover up poor decision making when you are president. The best you can hope for is some kind of cover up. Even then, Trump isn’t exactly known for being a master at covering things up. This shone through with Trump’s first term in office which was marked with endless scandal, American’s being killed, and, of course, never ending stock market crashes.
Despite all of that, the media continues to sane-wash him up to the point where Trump won a second term. While the record speaks for itself, the mainstream media had collectively decided to have general amnesia and put Trump on the same pedestal of “businessman” and even just another normal politician – even though there was nothing normal about him. Now, much like Trump’s first term, Trump’s second term is marked with endless controversies, scandal, and, as is the theme for this article is, endless stock market crashes. Already, the markets have experienced crash after crash after crash after crash. It has already been made clear that Trump took a functioning economy and immediately sunk it – and took the stock markets along with it.
Of course, while all of that was bad enough, the worst was yet to come. This thanks to the Trump “Liberation Day” stock market crash. That kicked off when Trump announced that he was basically declaring economic war on almost the entire planet with exceedingly high tariffs. This while using completely fabricated numbers that basically had no bearing on reality. What ensued was the worst stock market crash yet. On day one, the Dow Jones crashed by 1,600 points. On day two, the Dow Jones lost another 2,200 points. Things did slow down by day three with another 350 point loss. Many wondered where the bottom was with this latest record setting crash, but on day 4, the Dow Jones lost another 320 points.
Of course, Trump, ever the crazy senile old guy, randomly decided to pull back his “Liberation Day” tariffs to the 10% baseline yesterday. It was an out of the blue announcement that took a lot of people off guard. This as he decided to focus his tariffs on China by ramping up the tariffs to what we know today as a 145% tariff (who knows what it’ll be later on down the road?). As a result, the Dow Jones shot up by just over 7%. While this does plainly show that this is the sort of thing the stock markets were hoping, it is worth noting that this isn’t even a full recovery for the week. After all, as we noted during the day 4 of the market crash, the 5 day trailing performance was hit with a 9.8% loss. Is the 7% increase a relief to see? Absolutely. Was it a full recovery? Not really. Still, yes, a good chunk of the losses for the last week has been recovered. Either way, the “Liberation Day” stock market crash did finally come to an end.
Of course, it seems as though the markets decided to only hear the first half of the announcement and reacted. Today, realization seemingly took hold about the other half of the announcement – which is the escalating trade war and increasing tariffs between China and the US. When that realization set in, that sent the stock market into the latest stock market crash. That, of course, being the Trump China tariff stock market crash.
With that realization setting in, the Dow Jones went back into stock market crash mode. Today, the Dow Jones plummeted by 1,014.79 (which is a loss of 2.50%). If the numbers are starting to sound confusing, here’s a chart as seen on Google for what the markets did in the last month.
So, yes, it did go up yesterday, but today, it also went down and, overall, the markets are still down considerably for the last month (down 5.53%). While yesterdays jump was good, we are by no means out of the woods at this stage.
The other thing worth bringing up is that while some are speculating that all of this is just in response to countries that are doing retaliatory tariffs against the US, that argument is on shaky grounds. After all, other countries have issued retaliatory tariffs. For example, Canada still has the automobile counter tariffs in place. So, who really knows what insanity will come down the pipe next? After all, yesterdays announcement was quite unexpected.
