US president’s international trade war spooks investors, with drops in US share prices after European losses
Stock markets stumbled on Monday as Donald Trump pushed ahead with fresh tariffs on the US’s trading partners despite a supreme court strike-down and growing opposition from domestic voters.
Uncertainty over the status of global trade deals spooked investors, trigging a drop in US shares prices including on the Dow Jones industrial average, which tumbled 1.4% in morning trading. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 also fell 0.9% and 1.1%, after losses for European stock markets.
Shareholders were struggling to discern the next steps in Trump’s global trade war, after the US supreme court ruled on Friday that the president overstepped his legal authority by using emergency measures to impose tariffs on countries across the world last year.
“Stock market surges on news…”
“Stock market tumbles due to…”
“The Dow is over 9,000”
It doesn’t matter when it’s up. It doesn’t matter when it’s down. Imagine if media started reporting on the wellbeing of actual individuals instead of the fake money wheel.
The stock market will continue to have very little bearing on the lives of average citizens. Tariffs killing small businesses? Let’s see those stories.
Except it does matter, even if you don’t like it.
If the stock market falls a lot, people with money don’t want to invest it. (Paradoxically, that’s when you should invest…) If investment dries up, big businesses can’t spend that investment on projects, so they don’t contract with smaller businesses to help do them. Those smaller businesses have lower turnover and less work so make redundancies. Those redundancies are ordinary people who now don’t have a job.
Do you think it doesn’t matter that people lose jobs, and struggle to find new ones? It was a line from the Big Short which brought it home to me: 40,000 people die when unemployment goes up 1%. (The actual figure is apparently a little less but the point is unaffected). About 1000 of those are suicides.
The stock market taking a little dip isn’t a recession, but I think anti-capitalists are ridiculously naive about the seriousness of “the economy” and the role the stock market plays in it.
Wish it weren’t so by all means, but don’t mistake wishes for reality. The difference is life and death.
Absolutely.
This is just “here’s how the boomers’ portfolios are doing, and also those pension plans that are totally going to be there when you retire, for reals.”