🔒 Trump's tariff turbulence is worse than anyone imagined
Trump in Massive Backtrack on Tariffs After Stock Market Plunge
With Wall Street worried, the president pulls back from the brink.
Published Mar. 6 2025 5:13PM EST
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Wall Street tumbles as tariff whiplash and falling AI stocks drag Nasdaq 10% below its record
- The S&P 500 tumbled 1.8% to resume its slide after a mini-recovery from the prior day clawed back some of its sharp drop over recent weeks.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 427 points, or 1%, and
- The Nasdaq composite sank 2.6% to finish more than 10% below its record set in December.
- But Trump is still pressing ahead with other tariffs scheduled to take effect April 2.
- And the growing pile of dizzying back-and-forth moves on tariffs is only amping up the uncertainty.
- It was just on Monday that Trump said there was “no room” left for negotiations to avert the tariffs on Mexico and Canada that took effect Tuesday.
“These exemptions don’t do much to resolve the general air of uncertainty,” said Yung-Yu Ma, chief investment officer at BMO Wealth Management. “Businesses will still be cautious in the current environment until a lot more of the tariff picture is clear.”
U.S. businesses are already saying they’re confronting “chaos” because of all the uncertainty coming out of Washington. while U.S. households are bracing for higher inflation because of the tariffs, which is sapping their confidence.
- “Much will depend on whether these new tariffs prove temporary or are toned down,” according to strategists at BNP Paribas.
- “But even if they are ultimately removed, we anticipate lasting damage to global economic activity.”
- He earlier in the Oval Office blamed the falling prices on “globalist countries and companies that won’t be doing as well because we’re taking back things that have been taken from us many years ago.”
Next up for Wall Street is a report coming Friday from the U.S. Labor Department on how many workers U.S. employers hired last month. A solid job market so far, along with the solid spending by U.S. households that it’s allowed, have been linchpins in preventing a recession. Economists are expecting to see an accleration in hiring for February.
- Marvell Technology lost nearly a fifth of its value and dropped 19.8% even though it reported results for the latest quarter that edged past analysts’ forecasts. It also said it expects revenue growth in the current quarter of more than 60% from the prior year, give or take a bit.
- The poster child of the AI boom, Nvidia, fell 5.7%, while
- Broadcom lost 6.3% ahead of the release of its earnings report.
- They’re also facing threats as Chinese companies develop their own AI offerings, with DeepSeek famously saying it didn’t need to use the industry’s most expensive chips.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 104.11 points to 5,738.52. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 427.51 to 42,579.08. The Nasdaq composite tumbled 483.48 to 18,069.26.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe after the European Central Bank cut interest rates, as was widely expected.
- German stocks rallied 1.5% as the market continues to feel reverberations from an agreement by the two parties that will form the country’s next government to loosen constitutional limits on borrowing. It’s a major turnaround in German budget policy and opens the way for new borrowing and spending over the next decade.
- Stocks also rose in Asia, including jumps of 3.3% in Hong Kong and 1.2% in Shanghai.
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