Mark down March 3, 2025. That was the day Wall Street finally realized that US President Donald Trump was serious about tariffs. On Monday, the S&P 500 fell nearly 2 percent as Trump confirmed what we at the Atlantic Council predicted in February—that the tariffs on Canada and Mexico were not mere threats, but actually likely to be implemented. The stock markets continued to fall on Tuesday as investors processed the news.
Yeah, but let’s consider what happens:
That’s why the Dow Jones and S&P are lower - this shrinks company profits and US GDP.
But the tariffs also pay the tax cuts that allow rich people to spend more and to invest more.
We saw how the stock market had nothing to do with the actual economic situation during Covid. While all indicators went down, stocks still went up.
As long as the core principal “US oligarchs get to profit of poorer people in the US and abroad” stays in place, probably the stock values will recover.
No. That assumes the US cannot operate on a deficit. It can and will. We don’t “fund” tax cuts unless someone responsible is overseeing the budget.
Not to mention, every billionaire has their money in the market somehow, they don’t have Scrooge McDuck gold piles. Inflation and market losses erode their money just like it erodes ours. Perhaps even more.
COVID resulted in a marked recession for the global economy, and the US was no exception. But people still had money and spent it regularly, so it didn’t freefall the entire time and at times had rallies. The US stock market is mostly run by a series of competing trading algorithms with tight guardrails these days, for better and for worse. Generally though it does mean that modern nose-dives rarely result in true crashes.