President Trump calls tariffs ‘medicine’ as stock market plunges
President Donald Trump spent the weekend at a golf tournament in Florida as the stock market continued to plunge.
The stock market plunged Oct. 10 after President Donald Trump threatened to increase tariffs on China in response to new restrictions on natural resources.
The Nasdaq Composite was down as much as 2.6% early in the afternoon, according to CNBC, while the S&P 500 fell 1.9% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1.3%. Those numbers had rebounded slightly but returned to approximately the same levels as of 2 p.m.
Among other popular stocks Vanguard was down 1.73%, Nividia 2.43%, Amazon 3.64%, Tesla 3.85%, Apple 2.6% and Invesco QQQ 2.28%.
The shift was apparently the result of a Truth Social post by Trump in which he alleged that China was “becoming very hostile” in restricting rare earth metals, which are key components in producing a variety of technological items.
“Our relationship with China over the past six months has been a very good one, thereby making this move on Trade an even more surprising one,” Trump wrote. “I have always felt that they’ve been lying in wait, and now, as usual, I have been proven right! There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the World ‘captive,’ but that seems to have been their plan for quite some time.”
Trump noted that he was scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea in two weeks, but now “there seems to be no reason to do so.” The administration is considering a “massive increase” on tariffs among other countermeasures, he said.
“I never thought it would come to this but perhaps, as with all things, the time has come,” Trump wrote. “Ultimately, though potentially painful, it will be a very good thing, in the end, for the U.S.A.”
The stocks had been considerably higher before Trump’s post. According to CNBC, the Nasdaq reached a new all-time high within the day prior to the president’s comments.
