US Stock Markets See Worst Day Since Covid Pandemic (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0176917985
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/04/03/2241220/us-stock-markets-see-worst-day-since-covid-pandemic
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/trump-tariffs-stock-market
> The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 6%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow dropped 4.8% and 3.9%, respectively. [...] Meanwhile, the US dollar hit a six-month low, going down at least 2.2% on Thursday morning compared with other major currencies and oil prices sank on fears of a global slowdown. Though the US stock market has been used to tumultuous mornings over the last few weeks, US stock futures -- an indication of the market's likely direction -- had plummeted after the announcement. Hours later, Japan's Nikkei index slumped to an eight-month low and was followed by falls in stock markets in London and across Europe.
>
> Multiple major American business groups have spoken out against the tariffs, including the Business Roundtable, a consortium of leaders of major US companies including JP Morgan, Apple and IBM, which called on the White House to "swiftly reach agreements" and remove the tariffs. "Universal tariffs ranging from 10-50% run the risk of causing major harm to American manufacturers, workers, families and exporters," the Business Roundtable said in a statement. "Damage to the US economy will increase the longer the tariffs are in place and may be exacerbated by retaliatory measures."
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/trump-tariffs-stock-market
National sales tax (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what this is. Trump wants to do 5 trillion dollars in tax cuts for the richest people in America. Not for you of course or me just the rich people. But he has a very very slim margin in the house of representatives so he can't ram those cuts through and just add them immediately to the national debt like he did in his first term.
So somebody's going to have to pay those taxes and it's not going to be the rich because that's the whole point of electing Trump.
So it's going to be you and me. We are going to pay for it. Come hell or high water and there's nothing we can do.
I've yet to meet a single Trump voter that really admitted that they were wrong and really took the time to understand why they were wrong. So in 4 years we're going to be right back here, probably electing Trump to a third term so the supreme Court can rubber stamp it for God only knows what reason.
Meanwhile millions of Americans couldn't vote last year thanks to various nasty little suppression techniques and the same tactics will be used in the midterms.
I think the problem is the enormity of the situation is too large for most people to comprehend. We are heading into at best a deep deep deep recession. We may be going into another Great depression and looking at food shortages. And that's just so far beyond what we can comprehend that I don't think we can handle it and face it head on. It's looking like we're going to put our heads in the sand again.
Re: National sales tax (Score:2)
Think about moving to Canada.
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Canada has a national sales tax.
It's called the GST.
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That's why it's a much better place to live than the US.
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The problem is you still have to file taxes and pay taxes as long as you are a US citizen regardless of where you live on the planet. Canada's income taxes and value added taxes are higher and even though you might get a foreign income tax credit from the US, you'd probably still pay more effective taxes as after a certain amount of time, most countries will tax your worldwide income.
Of course, you could renounce your US citizenship, but then you have to pay for the privilege of doing so, and then you might
Re: (Score:2)
> When might I consider doing this?
> 1. If I lost my Social Security Benefits, Medicare, and retirement nest egg due to them going insolvent and could no longer afford to live in the United States.
> 2. If a totalitarian regime came to power.
I don't mean to alarm you, but you may want to check the news.
Re: (Score:2)
Your point 1 is the prelude to point 2, and it's already on the way. You would be better off leaving sooner rather then later. If you wait too long you might be left with nothing and be trapped here.
If you're moving to Canada at this point (Score:1)
You are probably going to renounce your American citizenship because you are fleeing. We are at the point where some people are legitimately going to have to flee the country unless something drastic changes. At the very least trans people are going to be looking at being rounded up and put in camps. Conversion therapy will be brought back and they will be treated as mentally ill again like we did in the '40s and '50s. lobotomies will be back on the table. Among other horrors.
The same right wingers tha
Re: (Score:3)
> The problem is you still have to file taxes and pay taxes as long as you are a US citizen regardless of where you live on the planet.
You have to file income taxes if you are a US citizen. Whether you have to pay taxes depends on your situation. Generally if income earned overseas is tax exempt. Any income earned domestically is taxed. You have to file for a foreign income exemption.
> If you remain a US citizen and live abroad, you'd have to file taxes in 2 countries for the rest of your life as long as you remain outside of the United States.
For some countries, filing taxes is more about checking you are paying the right amount. Basically "filing" is looking over your already filled out tax statement the government sends you and making sure it is correct. The US sounds insane compared to this sys
I would if I could (Score:2)
Ignoring the fact that at best that would buy me some time since fascist dictatorships inevitably have to invade and loot other countries when their policies crash the economy, it would be difficult bordering on impossible for me to have that option. Countries don't just let you migrate to them.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that a national sales tax would be helpful, well, that and taxing billionaires, for a change.
How? (Score:2)
Do you not know what a regressive tax is or why it's a problem? If not I encourage you to Google the phrase regressive taxation and read.
Re: (Score:2)
It used to be that the United States funded its government on Tariffs alone prior to the ratification of the 16th amendment to the US constitution. That would not work today, but there has been some mention that "The Regime" would love to go back to this funding method and eliminate income taxes completely.
Even if you eliminated Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, and eliminated 90 percent of federal jobs, tariffs would raise the price of goods so much that most middle class people would be living in p
Re: National sales tax (Score:3)
It was 30x years ago when I was a young man, but Christ we were not such whiney pussies back then. Not sure how/why that changed.
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Yeah, 90s culture wasn't about whining at all. Nirvana and Green Day were loved by hardly anyone.
Either that or maybe you're remembering things completely wrong?
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You never once mention specifically what you think the Dems did to the young male voters to push them away.
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> So somebody's going to have to pay those taxes and it's not going to be the rich because that's the whole point of electing Trump.
> So it's going to be you and me. We are going to pay for it. Come hell or high water and there's nothing we can do.
It's really amazing how gullible some American voters were. Trump promised to lower inflation, and he has gone out of this way to artificially increase inflation. Trump promised tax cuts, and he is going out of his way to extract money in the form of pass-on tariffs on Americans.
Wait, foreign companies will pay for the tariffs! Yep, just like Mexico paid for the wall.
Re: (Score:2)
As far a I can tell he is trying to crash the global market, create a Great Depression, enact Martial law, then do what ever he wants. This is how you get to a World War 3.
Question (Score:3)
Interesting to know if any of Trump's inner circle have been shorting stocks... Hmm...
Re: (Score:2)
Can't hit the "short" button if you've got both hands on the rug.
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You don't have to short stocks to make money in a recession. Rich people generally make even more money in a recession. They are fucking *wistful* about the pandemic-era economy.
Golden Age (Score:4)
We're in a golden age, remember that. At the inauguration, and a few times after that, Trump declared that we're now in a golden age. This was seconded multiple times by our President, Elon Musk. Remind yourself of that whenever you're feeling blue, remember this is the golden age. For billionaires.
Re: (Score:3)
Golden ^H^H^H^H^H uilded age
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
It'll be the Golden Shower Age once Russia releases the pee-pee tape.
Trump: Flagwaving, but Chaotic and Pro-Russian (Score:3)
A good day for Putin. Yes, you can fool some of the people, twice.
Viral stupidity (Score:3)
Well, that's what you get from a severe bout of viral populist policy syndrome.
Re: (Score:2)
Shanghai obviously. Who would trade on the Beijing one. It's 100x smaller than Shanghai.
Remember folks (Score:3, Insightful)
You voted for this.
Re: (Score:3)
> You voted for this.
The ones that did have been very quiet about that.
Re: (Score:2)
Have they?
I see a lot of "trump just gave you back $x billions" (whatever the trade deficit is). And "finally we'll bring back the jobs with this and no foreigners" and what not.
There is jubilance about the protectionism protecting America from the average Trump voter from what I can see.
Perhaps some of the Republican because upper middle class voters feel regret, but that's a small percentage. There aren't that many upper middle class people by definition.
Re: (Score:2)
Nearly 70% of voters didn't vote against it.
They used ChatGPT (Score:5, Interesting)
ChatGPT is running the country now. [1]https://www.theverge.com/news/... [theverge.com]
Tariffs are now applied to uninhabited islands. [2]https://www.wired.com/story/tr... [wired.com]
But hey aren't we owning those libs so hard!
[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/642620/trump-tariffs-formula-ai-chatgpt-gemini-claude-grok
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tariffs-antarctic-islands-heard-mcdonald/
"Liberation Day" (Score:2)
If I were writing some post apocalyptic novel with political commentary like The Hunger Games then "Liberation Day" would be perfect. I can hardly think of a more offputtingly insidious sounding holiday the fascist overlords would force on the populace than Liberation Day. Celebration is mandatory citizen!
Re: (Score:3)
LOL, the cultists are so cute... even when they're lined up at the soup kitchen, they'll lick their saviour's boots...
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Classic abuser behavior. “Look what you made me do!”
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I look forward to your severe case of measles, struggling to make ends meet, losing your job and health coverage, and eventual homelessness.
MAGA is a disease (Score:4)
It's fitting that the Trump criminal administration is having the same impact on the US economy as the last pandemic. In both cases there is extreme hardship and people will die. I expect the impact of Trump/MAGA on the US will be larger and more long lasting then COVID-19.
He's burning down the country (Score:4)
Trump is consumed by petty grievances and has no interest in governing the nation. He just wants retribution for any perceived slights.
Hate to say it, but ... (Score:2)
I'm tired of "all the winning." /s
Trump is an idiot (Score:3)
A vile, petty, petulant, orange creep.
I hope he dies soon.
Do try not to panic (Score:2)
The Media treats the stock market graph the same way they treat the global temperature graph.
They'll cherry pick a very narrow range of data and say " Look ! Look ! We're Doomed ! The graph data proves it ! "
Whereas, if you open the range up a bit, you might note things aren't quite as bad as the VERY manipulative Media tries to make it out to be.
( Well, unless you're a day trader vs a long term one. Then you might actually be somewhat f*cked )
For example, if we only look at the data from today, the DJ
It's like... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like they're intentionally trying to inflict maximum harm on the American public.
Re:It's like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask yourself a simple question: IF he were a Russian agent sent to destroy and sabotage the USA - what would he be doing any different from what he has done so far? (The answer is: Nothing.)
Re:It's like... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not at all conspiracy prone but I can't help but look at your post and think "Yeah, you're right". He's in the middle of handing Russia what it wants in Ukraine while diminishing and casting doubt on NATO and alienating our allies. He's pulling us completely out of the global order and creating such utter economic and governmental chaos we'll leave a nice global power vacuum for quite some time that very likely wont be filled by the good people of the EU. As we speak his cronies in congress are using blatantly crooked accounting to try to push through massive tax cuts for the wealthy we cant afford that will send us further in debt.
This administration is doing absolute wonders in diminishing the US to the favor of Russia and our other adversaries.
Re:It's like... (Score:5, Informative)
Noteworthy is only Russia and North Korea did not get tariffs imposed on them. The justification given was simply lame.
Re: (Score:2)
> Noteworthy is only Russia and North Korea did not get tariffs imposed on them. The justification given was simply lame.
According to [1]this Newsweek article [newsweek.com] there are 11 countries whose imports will not receive reciprocal tariffs:
Belarus
Burkina Faso
Canada
Cuba
Mexico
North Korea
Palau
Russia
Seychelles
Somalia
Vatican City
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/reciprocal-tariffs-countries-not-hit-donald-trump-2054674
Re: (Score:2)
>> Noteworthy is only Russia and North Korea did not get tariffs imposed on them. The justification given was simply lame.
> According to [1]this Newsweek article [newsweek.com] there are 11 countries whose imports will not receive reciprocal tariffs:
> Belarus
> Burkina Faso
> Canada
> Cuba
> Mexico
> North Korea
> Palau
> Russia
> Seychelles
> Somalia
> Vatican City
One more to add to the list. The map of the countries shows Greenland in gray, suggesting that the US has already annexed Greenland, thus allowing Greenland to bypass these new tariffs. Trump really is enjoying the power he gets from tariffs, as well as from PowerPoint.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/reciprocal-tariffs-countries-not-hit-donald-trump-2054674
Re: (Score:2)
> One more to add to the list. The map of the countries shows Greenland in gray, suggesting that the US has already annexed Greenland, thus allowing Greenland to bypass these new tariffs. Trump really is enjoying the power he gets from tariffs, as well as from PowerPoint.
Yeah lol. Remember he thought his sharpie could [1]command the course of hurricanes. [wikipedia.org]
I'm not sure what "power" Trump thinks he derives from tariffs. I wonder if he just likes to break things and see the consequences.
I'd rather these guys not play with matches like this. They should have learned from the past (Smoot-Hawley, cough cough.) [2]Or even the recent past. [investopedia.com]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alabama_controversy
[2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/voodooeconomics.asp
Re: (Score:3)
First, no country is getting "reciprocal" tariffs. The announced tariffs have nothing to do with reciprocity. Trump made a napkin calculation taking the commercial deficit as a ratio of that country's exports to the USA (giving a number up to 100%) And then divided by 2 (giving a number up to 50%). He also set a minimum tariff of 10%, on countries where the calculation gave 10% or less (or even negative when the USA has a trade surplus with that country).
Israel tried to avoid reciprocal tariffs by removing
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for all of this.
Just FYI, I was quoting from Newsweek. It's not my own opinion. "Reciprocal tariffs" is the Trump administration's term for them, and yes, it's doublespeak to imply that they're responding to some perceived offense from all of the other countries in the world.
My understanding is that just about every country in the world got at least a "baseline" tariff of 10% (aside from possible reciprocal tariffs) but I could not confirm this. The Newsweek piece had the most comprehensive list of c
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Yea, the reporting I saw left them off, so I wasn't aware. My guess is trump didn't know of most of those places and AI, or whatever he used, to create that list didn't know them either. Maybe Mexico and Canada where left off since they are now meant to be new states in the USA?
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Does the US buy anything from NK or Russia? I suspect nothing of consequence. How do you place tariffs on goods/services that you don't buy?
Re:It's like... (Score:5, Interesting)
Like this:
"Trump imposes tariffs on uninhabited islands near Antarctica"
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/donald-trump-tariffs-antarctica-uninhabited-heard-mcdonald-islands
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Such a trivial necessity is not an impedance for someone with the great intellect of Trump. He put tariffs on the [1]Heard and McDonald Islands [thelondoneconomic.com] which are only inhabited by penguins. It might be that he was advised by Microsoft.
[1] https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/donald-trump-puts-tariff-on-island-only-populated-by-penguins-391607/
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The only sense I can make of that (and other head-scratcher locations) is that it discourages businesses from relocating to there, or from making them pass-through locations for goods on their way to the USA. Someone who knows more about trade may want to comment.
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Literally, it's because they used some sort of LLM to generate the targets. The list is even grouped by top-level domain names, because that's the info that was available to Grok.
These people are not even slightly serious about running a country - it's edgelords and sociopaths all the way down.
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The figure I saw for Russia as only $0.5B but that is still $50M of extra tax on the citizens of the USA that trump could have extracted from them.
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Why is North Korea notable? It's already pretty illegal to trade anything between them and the US; the US can also lock anyone out of its financial system who trades with North Korea, even if they're not a US person or entity. The US could set tariffs on North Korea to 0% or 1000% and there would be no real difference because there's no trade in the first place.
Since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia [1]has become [axios.com] the world's most sanctioned country -- by a long shot, with the US alone responsible dor alm
[1] https://www.axios.com/2022/03/08/russia-most-sanctioned-country
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It is notable because Russia, NK are both run by dictators that trump likes and wants to be like, so he gave them special treatment.
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Is there any importing from NK happening?
This isn't rhetorical, I'm just assuming they didn't get any new tariffs because they're completely black listed. I'm not sure about Russia, but I assume they're already pretty heavily blocked.
This isn't defense of Trump, just that it seems redundant to pretend trade with them isn't (currently) pretty much blocked.
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I gather the trade with NK is close to zero but but given trump did put tariffs on places with no people living in them then why leave NK off the list? For Russia I have seen varying figures but it sounds like there is still somewhere from $50M to $350M of tariff taxes that trump has chosen not to collect, so special treatment for Russia.
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> Noteworthy is only Russia and North Korea did not get tariffs imposed on them. The justification given was simply lame.
The US sanctions on Russia have tanked trade with Russia already. Imports from Russia have been in steady decline for years. From what I've seen the US imported $3.5 billion worth of goods from Russia last year. That's a tenth of what it was in 2021. Russian imports were mainly fertilizer, uranium for power plants and metals. The US exported $525 million to Russia in 2024. Trump also threatened an additional 50% tariff on any country who purchased Russian Oil.
The US has a complete trade embargo against Nor
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"From what I've seen the US imported $3.5 billion worth of goods from Russia last year."
That still places Russia about 25th in trade imbalance with the US.
"Already under sanctions" is not a criterion under either the stated metric nor the actual metric for computing the tariffs. So yes, Russia is getting leniency.
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He saw fit to tariff "an uninhabited spot in the Arctic Ocean called Jan Mayen, part of a Norwegian territory with the islands of Svalbard near the North Pole." so the volume of trade is not the reason. Using your $3.5B figure that would be $350M of income trump has left on the table.
> I''m not defending the tariffs, but to try to make is sound like Russia and North Korea are getting some kind of leniency is disingenuous.
It may sound disingenuous but lets be clear what I am implying is trump has given special treatment to Russia and NK because they are both run by dictators that trump is on record for confessing his love of, and as a fellow di
Re: (Score:3)
But but Trump is "angry" with Putin!
He told us that!
Trump is a Russian asset. Or as good as.
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Let's see what countries escaped the tariff wrath of orange jesus.
Russia
Belarus
Concerning. Especially for the penguins and seals inhabiting McDonald island. [1]https://www.wired.com/story/tr... [wired.com]
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tariffs-antarctic-islands-heard-mcdonald/
Re: It's like... (Score:2)
He knows which industries are going to have the steepest drops so he and his buddies can short sell stock for those companies, then they can buy cheap stock and push the tariffs back so the stock recovers. There's nobody left to call them on it.
Re: (Score:1)
> Trump is clearly trying to end the war in Ukraine.
"Trump is clearly trying to let Russia win their war against Ukraine" is really valuable insight. Thank you.
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What flavor was the kool aid?
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> It was already overinflated before the pandemic and became even more artificially inflated since then. Between the start of the pandemic and now the market literally doubled.
I don't disagree that the stock market has been overvalued, many with extremely high price/earnings ratios like 592 for BP, 191 for Lyft, and 131 for Tesla. But the DOW has "only" gone up 50% since the beginning of the pandemic. The (almost) doubling was since the bottom of the crash caused by the pandemic.
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Going up 50% in 5 years is actually a bit below average for the stock market. The long-term average is about 10% per year.
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You mean like what the "Weekend at Bernie's" administration did for 4 years?
Seriously....fuck off.
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How's your 401k doing this week? Hope you're not dependent on social security either. [1]https://www.wired.com/story/do... [wired.com]
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/
Re: (Score:2)
Are we feeling "great again" yet?
I just saw two year's income go away from my retirement account today.
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Tonight were gonna party like it's 1929!
Re: (Score:3)
I was thinking that it was on purpose, but based on the numbers, it looks like Trump doesn't know the difference between a tariff and a trade deficit. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93gq72n7y1o
It looks like this is an example of "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence,"
It doesn't make anything better... if anything, it makes it way way worse.
Destroy the middle class (Score:3)
The goal is to destroy the middle class.
It is a big tent; the Heritage folks want a theocracy; Donnie wants fawning serfs and all the money; the fascists want to hurt people and feel powerful.
They can all agree that free thought and speech enjoyed by a polity of people with enough wealth to feel agency is a threat to their goals, so they're destroying anything that enables those things.
They've already destroyed most medical research in the US, along with a huge amount of other research. From WWII unti