How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
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What triggered the recent market turbulence?
Monday was yet another dark day on Wall Street, as global stocks whipsawed over President Trump's universal tariffs. A bear market briefly became official in the U.S., and tit-for-tat retaliation with China intensified.
President Trump is doubling down, now threatening even bigger tariffs on imports from China, 50%, if the country does not revoke its retaliatory tariffs on American products sold there.
Now, as trillions of dollars in corporate value evaporates, Trump's support in the business world is cracking. And even Republican members of Congress are debating whether to take away Trump's power to wage a trade war.
There's no escaping the fact that business leaders are really losing confidence. Bill Ackman, a billionaire who helped to fund the Trump campaign, has called for a pause in tariffs, warning of what he calls a self-induced economic nuclear winter. This is Wall Street screaming at the White House. If this is help, we don't want your help. Please stop now.
Today, Andrew Ross Sorkin with the view from the stock market and Jonathan Swan with the view from the White House. It's Tuesday, April 8th. Andrew, thank you for coming in the studio.
Thanks for having me. What a day.
Another what a day day.
Why are Trump's tariffs causing such a massive impact on stocks?
Another what a day day.
Yeah. Well, when things go really haywire in the markets, We like to bring you in. We reserve you for the— For the crises. Yeah, for the crises. And I think we should start by talking about really the scale of the stock market sell-offs that we have witnessed over the past few days. Just put that into some perspective.
Well, look, if you just look at how much money has been lost, we're talking about trillions of dollars with a T. But in percentage terms, you can look over just even the last week, we're down 10%. Peak to trough from the sort of heights of where we were near the election to now, you could argue we're over 20% off, maybe more, depending on how you do the math.
Right, and that's just worth pausing on. One-fifth the value of certain entire stock indexes. That's just a tremendous amount of wealth.
Poof. It's a tremendous amount of wealth poof in the sort of broader scheme of the universe. But to make it feel personal, let's just say you had a portfolio and you were a retiree and 20% of your wealth went poof overnight. And it went poof overnight because of a... man-made crisis. You know, most of the crises that I've come in to talk to you about, whether it's in 2008 or it's the pandemic or whatever, there's been something that has happened ostensibly beyond our one human's control. Right. This is a panic that has been brought on by a particular person with a particular decision around, in this case, tariffs.
Right. Donald Trump's decision to impose what are being described as universal tariffs have essentially crashed global stock markets. There's no other way to put it. So explain exactly why Trump tariffs equals the stock price of some of the most admired and financially seemingly well put together companies in the country.
Well, let's go through a couple of specific stocks and then let's talk about why it's impacting virtually every company in America and frankly the world.
How are major companies like Apple and Meta affected by tariffs?
Mm-hmm.
So the easiest example is to look at a company like Apple. Its stock has dropped, by the way, about 18% in the last five days alone. Wow. That is about $700 billion of value destruction, $700 billion wiped out. And you might say to yourself, why? Well, Apple's a company that manufactures a lot of its goods in a combination of places like China, increasingly in places like Vietnam and India. In fact, Apple moved a lot of its manufacturing out of China to places like Vietnam and India, in part because of pressures from the U.S. government over the last several years in the relationship between the U.S. and China. And one of the reasons they did that was because there was always a concern that perhaps there would be tariffs in the future or national security issues.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What triggered the recent market turbulence?
0:14–1:46
2
Why are Trump's tariffs causing such a massive impact on stocks?
1:46–4:15
3
How are major companies like Apple and Meta affected by tariffs?
4:15–9:14
4
What is the business community's reaction to the tariffs?
9:14–12:21
5
Are there any notable exceptions in the business community's stance?
12:21–16:47
6
What are the long-term implications of Trump's tariff strategy?
16:47–35:39
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