NEW YORK — The U.S. stock market fell further Tuesday following President Donald Trump’s latest escalation in his trade war, briefly pulling Wall Street 10% below its record set last month. And like it’s been for most of the past few weeks, the market’s slide on Tuesday was erratic and dizzying.
The S&P 500 fell 0.8%, but only after careening between a modest gain and a tumble of 1.5%. The main measure of Wall Street’s health finished 9.3% below its all-time high after flirting with the 10% threshold that professional investors call a ‘’correction.”
Other indexes likewise swung sharply through the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 478 points, or 1.1%, and the Nasdaq composite ended up slipping 0.2%.
Such head-spinning moves are becoming routine in what’s been a scary ride for investors as Trump tries to remake the country and world through tariffs and other policies. Stocks have been heaving mostly lower on uncertainty about how much pain Trump is willing for the economy to endure in order to get what he wants.
And moves by Trump and comments by his White House on Tuesday didn’t clarify much.
Stocks began tumbling in the morning after Trump said he would double planned tariff increases on steel and aluminum coming from Canada. The president said it was a response to moves a Canadian province made after Trump began threatening tariffs on one of the United States’ most important trading partners.
Trump has acknowledged the economy could feel some ‘’disturbance” because of the tariffs he’s pushing. Asked on Tuesday just how much pain Trump would be willing for the economy and stock market to take, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to give an exact answer. But she said earlier in the press briefing that ‘’the president will look out for Wall Street and for Main Street.‘’
For his part, Trump said earlier on social media, ‘’The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear.‘’