Donald Trump just broke the stock market
Investors have opened up a can of whoopass on Donald Trump, after he opened up a can of dumbass on them. Trump decided today to further escalate his idiotic trade war, which has harmed the U.S. economy at least as much as it’s harmed the Chinese economy. As a result, the smart money is fleeing the stock market, with the expectation that Trump’s gibberish policies are sending the market toward a crash.
The Dow Jones Industrial is currently down around 550 points at the time of publication, and was down more than 700 points earlier this afternoon. Wall Street is sending a loud and clear message to Donald Trump: knock off the trade war nonsense. But Trump doesn’t seem to be getting the message. He spent all morning posting tweets which incorrectly characterized what a tariff is and who pays it.
Then this afternoon, after investors kicked him around, Trump told the television cameras that this is all somehow part of his genius plan to defeat the Chinese economically. Trump needs to be careful here, because he’s doing the one thing that actually could cause the Republican establishment to finally turn against him.
For Republican politicians, the first rule is that you don’t mess with rich people’s money. Billionaires and mega-corporations fund Republican politicians for the sole purpose of protecting their ability to keep getting richer. With his nonsensical tariffs and idiotic trade war, Trump is setting wealthy donors’ money on fire. We’ll soon see those donors use their Republican puppets in Congress to loudly push back against Trump’s tariffs. Then what will Trump do?
