Stocks tumble ahead of Wednesday’s ‘liberation day’ tariffs announcement

Markets tumbled as trading opened Monday morning, with investors continuing to unload holdings in anticipation of President Donald Trump “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement Wednesday.

The broad S&P 500 fell 1.3%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 2.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.7%.

Weekend reports suggested that while Trump was still making up his mind about what form his long-promised rollout of global trade duties would take, he was now leaning toward a heavily punitive regime targeting most U.S. trading partners.

Later Sunday, Trump himself confirmed in remarks aboard Air Force One that the tariffs would “start with all countries.”

Stocks had already suffered their second-worst day of the year Friday as investors digested worrisome inflation and consumer-confidence data alongside growing concerns about a slowdown in artificial intelligence investments.

With those losses, the S&P 500 officially lost about 5% of its value for the year and about 6% since Trump’s November election. Today, it is at levels last seen in September. The tech-heavy Nasdaq has declined even further — down 10% on the year and about 9% since Trump’s election.

Stocks are now likely to close out their worst quarter in three years.

Unlike his first term, the president has shown far less willingness to respond to investors’ concerns and market actions. Trump has mostly waved away the major resistance his tariffs plan has met in the business community, even as the mere threat of higher duties is already causing businesses and consumers to expect an economic downturn.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News on Sunday, Trump said he “couldn’t care less” if automakers raise their prices due to tariffs.

Later Sunday, he was asked about the rising threat of stagflation — faster inflation amid lower growth, a scenario that a growing number of analysts have said has begun to emerge.

“I haven’t heard that term in years,” he said. “I don’t know anything about it … this country is going to boom. We’re going to have boomtown. We’re going to boom.”

A survey of 14 economists from CNBC now predicts first quarter GDP — the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. — will rise 0.3%. In the first quarter of 2024, gross domestic product rose 2.4%. 

Economists at Goldman Sachs on Sunday downgraded their first-quarter GDP estimate to just 0.2%, stating they expected tariffs to be “more aggressive” than what may have been assumed. The firm now expects GDP for the entire year to be just 1.5%, down from 2%; and has raised the odds of a recession to 35% from 20%.  

They said that change reflected “the sharp recent deterioration in household and business confidence, and statements from White House officials indicating greater willingness to tolerate near-term economic weakness in pursuit of their policies.”

Goldman also downgraded its expectations for how much S&P 500 companies would earn this year due to “higher tariffs, weaker economic growth, and greater inflation than we previously assumed.” The bank sees the broad-based index ending the year around 5,700, only about 120 points higher than where it was trading Monday.

At Deutsche Bank, economists estimate that Trump’s tariffs, if kept in place, would raise the U.S.’s tariff rate to “the highest since WWII.”

The Trump administration remains undeterred. In weekend remarks, Vice President JD Vance repeated Trump’s contention that the U.S. had turned into the world’s “piggy bank” while stating, inaccurately, that middle-class wages have declined.

“The days of closed factories, the days of people not being able to get a middle class job in this country, they’re over,” Vance said.