‘Tariffs Are Coming’: Markets Brace for Another Bleak Trading Session as Trump Vows No Retreat From Global Trade War

President Trump, his senior aides and Cabinet members say his new tariffs aren’t going anywhere despite market uncertainty. Investors are already bracing for what could be another Black Monday-style event as a result of the tax increases and the lack of clarity about which countries or companies may get relief from the administration — though they are finding some comfort in CNBC’s Jim Cramer potentially being wrong once again.Speaking with reporters late Sunday, Mr. Trump suggested he was unconcerned about the market selloff, explaining that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”The president added that “I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world.” The leaders, he said, are “dying to make a deal. And I said, we’re not going to have deficits with your country. We’re not going to do that, because to me a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or at worst, going to be breaking even.”In what could be an early warning sign for Wall Street investors, stock markets in Asia were down significantly in Monday trading. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 13. 2 percent, while the Shanghai Composite index dropped 7.3 percent, the AP reported. Middle Eastern markets, too, were rocked Sunday. The Tadawul index in Saudi Arabia tumbled nearly 7 percent, the worst single-day loss since the Covid pandemic in 2020. Stock in the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, lost nearly 5 percent of its value. Major indices in Qatar, Kuwait, Israel, and Egypt also fell.Even the price of Bitcoin — which has largely avoided volatility since the tariff announcement — cratered on Sunday to its lowest price since November of last year.As international markets soured on the rising possibility of a widening trade war — the European Union said Sunday it was preparing some $28 billion in retaliatory tariffs to be announced in the coming days — some traders are embracing gallows humor following Mr. Cramer’s assertion that an even worse crash could be on the horizon.Mr. Cramer predicted another Black Monday during his show on Saturday, warning that investors will know early Monday morning if that will be the case. “If the president doesn’t try to reach out and reward these countries and companies that play by the rules, then the 1987 scenario — the one where we went down three days and then down 22 percent on Monday, has the most cogency,” Mr. Cramer said.“If President Trump stays intransigent and does nothing to mitigate the damage that I saw these last two days, I’m not gonna be constructive here. I will contain my anger but only because I lived through ‘87 and in the end, I came out okay,” he said.Mr. Cramer’s prediction for a Black Monday redux has actually prompted many to predict that markets will actually rebound over the course of the day, considering how wrong the commentator has been in the past. Mr. Cramer is the source of some of Wall Street’s most notoriously wrong predictions, among them telling investors in 2010 to avoid Tesla stock, comparing Elizabeth Holmes to Steve Jobs, and declaring that imprisoned crypto kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried was a “visionary.”The smart money, goes the saying on Wall Street, does the exact opposite of what Mr. Cramer says to do. Members of Trump’s cabinet spent much of the weekend brushing off market concerns about the tariffs. Several members of the administration took to the Sunday shows to declare that no one should be panicked and surrogates were telling reporters that dozens of countries have already come forward seeking to make deals with the president. “This is President Trump’s desired policy. He’s been arguing for it ever since, I think, he was on ‘The View’ 30, 40 years ago,” the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, told ABC News. “He’s trying to deliver for American workers.”The commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan that the tariffs are “definitely” going to stay in place going forward as the administration tries to close America’s trade deficit. “That is sort of obvious. The president needs to reset global trade. Everybody has a trade surplus and we have a trade deficit,” Mr. Lutnick said.“There is no postponing,” Mr. Lutnick added. “The tariffs are coming.”Treasury Secretary Bessent went on Tucker Carlson’s YouTube show on Saturday to similarly dismiss the host’s concern about volatility in the markets. Mr. Bessent said that it should not concern the average American to a great extent, considering the country’s wealthiest individuals are the ones who own the vast majority of equities. “I’m not happy with what’s going on in the market today, but the distribution of equities across households — the top ten percent of Americans own 88 percent of equities, 88 percent of the stock market,” Mr. Bessent said. He claimed that the tariffs will provide “some relief” for “the bottom 50 percent.”“We are going to fix the system” the secretary said in defending the tariffs.The wealthy have suffered immense losses since the imposition of the tariffs last week, with America’s billionaires losing more than half-a-trillion dollars last week. According to Bloomberg, the double-digit losses over the course of Thursday and Friday cost Elon Musk alone $31 billion. One man did come out a winner from last week’s brutal market losses, however. Billionaire Warren Buffet has seen his net worth increase by more than $10 billion this year. In February, Mr. Buffet raised eyebrows when he announced that his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, had amassed more than $300 billion worth of cash and cash-equivalent products. The figure is double what his firm had at the end of 2023.

‘Tariffs Are Coming’: Markets Brace for Another Bleak Trading Session as Trump Vows No Retreat From Global Trade War

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