Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
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Rachel has the night off, but she will be back tomorrow. I promise you that. And we're going to begin tonight with how the day began, and that is with the opening bell. As you know, every morning, Wall Street trading officially begins when someone rings the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in Lower Manhattan. We've all seen the images. It's quite important, quite symbolic. The Stock Exchange does have this long tradition of letting a different company ring the opening bell each day. And in some ways, it is a way of celebrating some kind of milestone that the company has just hit or a company that may have been going public. And today, because the news guides do have a sense of humor, the company with the distinct honor of actually ringing the opening bell today out of all days to officially start trading was the pro-Trump conservative media outlet Newsmax. Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy did the honors surrounded by several of President Trump's longtime associates. People, you know, people like Rudy Giuliani.
You see him there in the front. Trump's former labor secretary. Remember that guy, Alex Acosta? He was there as well. A little bit further back, though. And they all clapped and they cheered as it happens every morning. They rang tiny little bells as they officially kicked off. What we now know was an especially terrible day on Wall Street. Yeah, there's no sugarcoating it. This was the worst day on Wall Street since the early days of the COVID pandemic. Traders and world leaders, and yes, ordinary Americans, people with jobs and 401ks, reacted to the tariffs that have been imposed by President Trump just yesterday by pretty much freaking out. It was a massive sell-off. The Dow dropped nearly 1,700 points, its worst single session since June of 2020, nearly five years ago. The NASDAQ dropped nearly 6%, its biggest decline since, again, March of 2020. The S&P 500 dropped about 5%. And look, I should note that the New York Stock Exchange also has a tradition of letting another company ring the closing bell to mark the end of the trading day.
And today, that honor went to a company called Fiserv. The Fiserv CEO rang that closing bell, just happens to be Donald Trump's choice to run Social Security. So Trump's own allies, believe it or not, got to bookend this historic self-inflicted freefall of a day on Wall Street. They are now the face of this historic day. Their reaction to what Trump has just done went well beyond the U.S. markets. Just take a listen to how some of our closest allies reacted over the course of the day as this news broke.
Clearly, there will be an economic impact from the decisions that the US has taken, both here and globally. But I want to be crystal clear. We are prepared. The administration's tariffs have no basis in logic, and they go against the basis of our two nations' partnership. This is not the act of a friend. I deeply regret the United States' decision to impose 20% tariffs on imports from across the European Union. We see no justification for this. They are all unjustified, unwarranted, and in our judgment, misguided.
This is not the act of a friend. America's most important trading partners are allies. They clearly feel betrayed by Trump's actions and this decision. These tariffs have struck a nerve all across the globe. And importantly, this new Trump trade war has also struck a nerve here at home, surprisingly, even among Republicans. Yesterday, as Trump was announcing these new tariffs, the Senate was voting on a measure introduced by Democrat Tim Kaine to end Trump's tariffs on Canada. For the first time in Trump's second term, four Republicans actually broke with their party to pass that bill and push back against Donald Trump.
The price hikes that will happen for Maine families, every time they go to the grocery store, they fill their gas tank, they fill their heating oil tank. If these tariffs go into effect, we'll be so harmful. Tariffs are a terrible mistake. They don't work, they will lead to higher prices, they are a tax, and they have historically been bad for our economy.
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