US stock market crashes, sees huge sell-off amid Donald Trump’s tariff plans

The US stock market saw a huge sell-off on Monday, losing trillions of dollars in value, as Wall Street questioned how much pain President Donald Trump will let the economy endure through tariffs and other policies to get what he wants.

The S&P 500 tumbled 2.7 per cent to drag it close to 9 per cent below its all-time high from last month. At one point, the S&P 500 was down 3.6 per cent and on track for its worst day since 2022. That’s when the highest inflation in generations was shredding budgets and raising worries about a possible recession that ultimately never came.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 890 points, or 2.1 per cent in value, after paring an earlier loss of more than 1,100, while the Nasdaq composite skidded by 4 percent.

It was the worst day yet in a scary bear run stretch where the S&P 500 has swung more than 1 per cent, up or down, seven times in eight days, reportedly due to Trump’s tariff plans. The worry in the investors is that the whipsaw moves will either hurt the economy directly or create enough uncertainty to drive US companies and consumers into an economy-freezing paralysis.

What is the reason behind the crash?

The reason behind the US stock market crash is said to be Wall Street being jittery after Donald Trump warned that Americans may feel a “little disturbance” stemming from trade wars with Canada, Mexico and China. Strategists and economists across Wall Street have been raising their odds for a US economic downturn, Bloomberg reported.

The losses come after a selloff in US equities led by technology stocks picked up steam. Among the biggest losers in Monday’s market-wide selloff were exchange-traded funds that seek to offer juiced-up returns on digital assets or crypto-linked themes. Two ETFs used to make leveraged bets on Strategy, the Bitcoin-holding company formerly known as MicroStrategy, fell more than 30 per cent for the day.

What do the experts say on the crash?

Experts suggest that an absence of a clear plan to replace the international economic regime that Donald Trump is seen pulling away from is driving up the investor fears.

“It took a few weeks for Trump to break the international economic regime, presumably with a plan to fix and replace it with something ‘better,’” Michael Rosen, chief investment officer of Angeles Investment Advisors, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.

“Absent a clear idea of what ‘better’ is, investors are just left with the detritus of the broken global economic framework. Unless and until we see what replaces it, investors will be cautious, at best,” he added.

As the carnage piled up, investors took refuge in shares of energy, consumer staples and utility companies, industries less susceptible to consumer-spending cutbacks that tend to fare well during slowdowns.

“If you’re a long-only equity investor, you still have to put your money somewhere. If investors perceive that there’s rough weather ahead, these are the places where investors tend to hide out. Shelter from the storm,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers.