When President Donald Trump wanted to make the case for his first term’s success in an interview last month, he turned to the stock market.
“I was very proud to have handed over the country when the stock market was higher than it was, previous to the pandemic coming in,” he said in a Fox News interview Feb. 9. “It was an amazing achievement.”
And in his second term, he has promised that trend would continue.
“The stock market is going to be great,” he told the crowd at an investor conference Feb. 19.
But after stocks began a downward spiral last week on fears Trump’s use of tariffs will tip the United States into a recession, his tone has changed.
“You can’t really watch the stock market,” Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News. “If you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective. We have a quarter. We go by quarters.”
On Monday, stocks sank further, erasing all of their gains since Trump’s election. The S&P 500 had its worst day since September, and shares of technology companies were among the hardest hit as the Nasdaq had its biggest one-day drop since 2022, wiping out $1 trillion in value.
None of the more than two dozen posts on Trump’s Truth Social account Monday addressed the market sell-off. A White House official downplayed the market moves in a statement to reporters.
“Since President Trump was elected, industry leaders have responded to President Trump’s America First economic agenda of tariffs, deregulation, and the unleashing of American energy with trillions in investment commitments that will create thousands of new jobs,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “President Trump delivered historic job, wage, and investment growth in his first term, and is set to do so again in his second term.”
The White House cited several surveys showing improved confidence among business leaders, though the surveys were conducted before Trump imposed the tariffs on Canada and Mexico last week.
After Trump’s first term in office, he frequently used the stock market like an EKG tracking the health of his presidency with posts like “Stock Market at all-time high. That doesn’t just happen!” At rallies, he would often cite the market and talk about workers’ thanking him for making them rich because their stock portfolios were doing so well.
While the stock market had its ups and downs during Trump’s first term, including a dramatic fall at the start of the pandemic, it was largely on an upward trajectory, with the S&P 500 index increasing nearly 70% during Trump’s first term. The market continued its overall rise during President Joe Biden’s time in office.
