Donald Trump, throughout his life and especially now in his political life, has been obsessed with the stock market.
He views the performance of the markets as a critical gauge of how he’s doing. As the New York Times put it late last year:
During his first four years in Washington, Mr. Trump saw the stock market as more powerful a measurement than any poll, obsessing over it and watching it closely.
In the immediate wake of his 2024 victory, Trump touted the market’s rise as a sign that the economy was coming back strong — and companies were excited about his presidency. He was #winning.
Now? Not so much. Here, via Axios, is a look at the performance of the three major stock indexes since Trump’s inauguration:
Not great! In fact, as Felix Salmon noted earlier this week, not only are the markets lower than on the day Trump was inaugurated, they are lower than they were on election day 2024.
Publicly, Trump insists he doesn’t care. “I'm not even looking at the market,” he said on Thursday.
To which I say:
If you think Trump’s decisions to (again) pull back on tariffs against Mexico and Canada on Thursday was unrelated to the ongoing stock market tumble, then you don’t know how Trump’s mind works.
Of course, as any economist will tell you, the performance of the stock market is an imperfect measure of the overall strength or weakness of the economy. The stock market is not, after all, the economy.
But Donald Trump isn’t an economist. He’s a much more black and white thinker. For him, a stock market surge = good. A stock market stumble = bad.
And so, the tariffs came off.
My advice: Keep one eye on stock market performance day by day and week by week. Because you know the president is — and will act accordingly.
This is a FREE post. But all of this only works if you are willing to invest in independent journalism. Which is why I hope today is the day you become a paid subscriber to this newsletter. It’s $6 a month or $60 for the year.
Share this post