Jesus Christ. I've been staring at these market numbers for three hours and they still don't make sense. £6.6 TRILLION gone. Poof. Just like that.
The orange man is at it again, folks. While global markets were having their collective meltdown yesterday (worse than 9/11, Covid, and nearly half as bad as teh 1987 crash), our fearless leader was... wait for it... posing with the LA Dodgers and telling them they're "the best-looking people I've ever seen." Not a word about the economic hurricane he just unleashed. Classic Don.
What the hell just happened?
So here's the deal. Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" (whoever named it that deserves to be fired) has now wiped more than $8.5trillion off international markets. My retirement account is down 17% in THREE DAYS. My financial advisor texted me this morning with just a GIF of a dumpster fire. Poor guy.
And what does Trump do? Doubles down, of course. He's now threatening to slap ANOTHER 50% tariff on China after they retaliated with their own 34% levies. This is on top of the 54% he already announced last week.
I remember back in 2018 when we thought his first trade war was bad. That looks like a friendly handshake compared to this economic cage match.
The medicine might kill the patient
Friends are apparently begging Trump to delay what billionaire Bill Ackman called an "economic nuclear war," but Trump dismissed the market carnage as "medicine." Medicine? My neighbor lost $43K from her 401(k) yesterday. That's some expensive medicine.
Some markets dropped 13.5% in a single day.
There was a brief moment of hope yesterday when rumors circulated about a possible 90-day delay to the tariffs. Markets actually rallied for about 45 minutes... until the White House called it "fake news" and everything crashed again. I almost bought in during that little uptick. Thank god I was stuck in a meeting.
Dodging economic reality with... the Dodgers
While Wall Street was having a collective panic attack, Trump was hanging out with the World Series champions. Look, I love baseball as much as the next person (Go Yankees!), but maybe... just maybe... when you've caused a market crash that's worse than the start of World War II, you might want to address it?
Nope. Instead, he's complimenting baseball players on their looks. His press conference didn't mention a single word about the unfolding economic disaster. Not. One. Word.
Netanyahu shows up at the worst possible moment
In what has to be the most awkward timing ever, Benjamin Netanyahu became the first foreign leader to visit Trump since the tariff bomb dropped. I bet that was a fun conversation. "Hey Bibi, welcome to America! Don't mind the economic collapse, have some Diet Coke!"
During their joint press conference, Trump confirmed he wouldn't be pausing the tariffs, saying: "We're not looking at that." Translation: buckle up, it's gonna get worse.
The rest of the world is freaking out
Meanwhile, across the pond, Sir Keir Starmer is calling for "cool heads" (British understatement at its finest), and the European Union made an unprecedented offer to reduce ALL their tariffs for US goods to zero if they're spared the 20% import taxes.
Trump's response? "They want to talk but there's no talk unless they pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis." My editor bet me $20 that this strategy would backfire spectacularly within a month. I took that bet... and I'm already regretting it.
Asia got absolutely demolished
The carnage in Asian markets was even worse. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index crashed 13.7% – the fourth biggest plunge in its entire history. Countries like Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea are getting absolutely hammered because they're caught in the crossfire of this US-China showdown.
As investment director Russ Mould put it: "This market sell-off feels brutal because it is relentless." Usually we see a couple bad days followed by a rebound. Not this time. We're on day three and things are getting worse, not better.
Goldman Sachs now puts the chance of a global recession at 45%. Fantastic.
Even Trump's cheerleaders are nervous
Bill Ackman, who's been a major Trump supporter, is now warning that these tariffs have caused a "self-induced economic nuclear winter" and is begging for a 90-day pause.
But not everyone's panicking. BlackRock's Larry Fink called the sell-offs a "buying opportunity." Easy for him to say when he's sitting on billions. My cousin Dave who works in construction and just watched his 401(k) implode might disagree.
The damage has been brutal across Europe too. Germany's DAX lost 4.13%, France's CAC dropped 4.78%, and London's FTSE 100 fell 4.38% (now down 11% over three days).
I feel stupid now for not moving more to cash last month when my gut told me to. Hindsight and all that...
As Tom Stevenson from Fidelity put it, "The scale of the falls either side of the weekend evoke memories of the 1987 crash." And if you're too young to remember that one... trust me, it wasn't pretty.
So here we are. Three days into Trump's tariff experiment, and the world economy is already on fire. But hey, at least the LA Dodgers got some nice photos at the White House.
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