Donald Trump just opened his mouth and sent the stock market plummeting
It’s official: the Trump economy is a dud. Donald Trump’s damaging trade war, pointless tax cuts for the wealthy, and other acts of general stupidity have poked giant holes in what had been a roaring Obama economy. The latest bad economic news surfaced today, and the stock market didn’t like it at all. Then Trump opened his mouth and made things even worse.
Donald Trump promised during his 2016 campaign that he had a plan to somehow magically bring American manufacturing jobs back, but like everything else he’s ever said, that turned out to be a lie. This morning’s ugly manufacturing report prompted stock market investors to begin selling off. Then came the inevitable Trump tweet about the market.
Trump posted this tweet, sending the stock market much lower and causing it to close down 343 points for the day: “As I predicted, Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve have allowed the Dollar to get so strong, especially relative to ALL other currencies, that our manufacturers are being negatively affected. Fed Rate too high. They are their own worst enemies, they don’t have a clue. Pathetic!”
What Donald Trump doesn’t get is that stock investors have more faith in Fed Chair Jay Powell than they do in Trump. Whenever Trump attacks Powell like this – or really whenever Trump says anything about the economy at all – investors take it as a sign that it’s time reduce their market exposure. The best thing Trump could do to boost the stock market at this point would be to announce his resignation.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report