The White House has dismissed reports that Donald Trump is considering a 90-day pause on tariffs as ‘fake news.’
On Monday, reports emerged that Kevin Hassett, the president’s senior economic advisor, had suggested the administration is considering a pause on all tariffs ‘except for China.’
This prompted a very brief surge in US markets, which had been sliding on opening on Monday.
However, the White House has now dismissed these reports, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling CNBC’s Eamon Javers the reports were “fake news.”
Summing up how the brief story affected markets, CNBC said: “Stocks mounted a short-lived rally shortly after the open that took the Dow Jones Industrial average into positive territory. Speculation of some sort of tariff pause circulated on trading floors and social media and may have contributed to the pop.”
On Monday, markets in Asia and Europe plunged, and the trend was predicted to continue when Wall Street opened later in the day.
This is exactly what happened, with the S&P 500 is down 3.4%, the Dow Jones is 3.1% lower, and the Nasdaq has fallen 4.1% when the bell rung on Wall Street.
But it wasn’t long before things got even worse, with the Dow Jones is sliding down to 4.4%, the S&P 500 losing 4.7% and the Nasdaq falling by 5%.
Trillions of dollars have been wiped off the stock market since Trump announced the tariffs on what he dubbed ‘Liberation Day’ last week.
But the even Trump and his staunchest allies can’t have foreseen just how bad the impact on markets would be, and now some Republican donors have turned against the president.
Shortly before the markets opened on the New York Stock Exchange, Trump took to Truth Social to seemingly try and call for calm by coining a new term – PANICAN, which he said was a “new party based on weak and stupid people.”
In the post, the president wrote: “The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO. Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!). Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be the result!
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