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.
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.”
Stocks pared their losses later in the day, even briefly eliminating them altogether, after Ontario’s premier said he had agreed to remove the surcharge on electricity that had enraged Trump so much. Trump afterward returned the steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada to 25%.
After that brief tilt higher, though, stocks would go on to slide again into the end of trading.
Tuesday’s swings followed more warning signals about the economy as Trump’s on-again-off-again rollout of tariffs creates confusion and pessimism for U.S. households and businesses.
Such tariffs can hurt the economy directly by raising prices for U.S. consumers and gumming up global trade. But even if they end up being milder than feared, all the whipsaw moves could create so much uncertainty that U.S. companies and consumers freeze, which would sap energy from the economy.
Helping to keep the market in check were several Big Tech stocks, which steadied a bit after being walloped in recent months. Elon Musk’s Tesla rose 3.8%, for example, after Trump said he would buy a Tesla in a show of support for “Elon’s ‘baby.'”
Tesla’s sales and brand have been under pressure as Musk has led efforts in Washington to cut spending by the federal government. Tesla’s stock is down 42.9% for the year so far.
Other Big Tech superstars, which had led the market to record after record in recent years, also held a bit firmer. Nvidia added 1.7% to trim its loss for the year so far to 19%. It’s struggled as the market’s sell-off has particularly hit stocks seen as getting too expensive in Wall Street’s frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 42.49 points to 5,572.07. The Dow dropped 478.23 to 41,433.48, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 32.23 to 17,436.10.
