Commentary: Team Trump trolls stock market investors
March 17, 2025
Rick Newman · Senior Columnist
Updated 4 min read
Investor disillusionment with President Trump’s economic agenda continues to mount. The surprising message from Trump and his top advisers: Bring it.
Two months into Trump’s presidency, stocks are down, and Trump and the investing community are unfriending each other. Wall Street expected the businessman-president to push market-friendly policies and put a floor under asset prices. Instead, Trump has imposed import tariffs more aggressively than anybody expected and dismissed the inevitable adverse reaction in markets.
Stock reversals highlight the whiplash. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) index hit a new high on Feb. 19, marking the moment of peak optimism in Trump 2.0. But Trump continued to amp up tariff threats that investors mistakenly interpreted as symbolic. By mid-March, new tariffs were in place on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, plus steel and aluminum from everywhere. And more tariffs are coming, Trump says. By March 13, the gloomy realization that the Trump trade war is real pushed stocks down 10.1% from the Feb. 19 peak, a market correction.
Trump’s advisers are now signaling that Trump won’t ride to the rescue. “Corrections are healthy,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on March 16. “I’m not worried about the markets.”
Chris LaCivita, co-manager of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, was more blunt. He told Politico recently that investors worried about stock declines are “a bunch of bedwetters,” and added, “There’s a lot of shock therapy going on right now. It’s very fast. It’s a lot.” LaCivita doesn’t work in the administration, but as a Trump insider, he’s familiar with the president’s thinking.
Trump himself has made a similar point. “You can’t really watch the stock market,” Trump said on March 9, amid a sell-off. He also dodged the question when asked if he was worried his policies might cause a recession, which spooked markets even further.
Read more: What is a recession, and how does it impact you?
If the goal is to dissuade investors that Trump prioritizes the stock market’s performance — as he seemed to during his first term — it’s working. “Trump 2.0 has signaled a reduced reliance on the stock market as a success barometer,” investing firm Evercore ISI explained in a March 16 analysis. “We attribute Trump 2.0’s initial impacts to … a President demonstrating a higher threshold for tolerating economic pain.”
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Markets are now assessing just how far to backpedal. When Trump took office two months ago, many investors believed there was a “Trump put” that would keep stocks buoyant. The theory then was that Trump would intervene however necessary to forestall a sharp decline, whether that meant pulling back from tariff threats or taking other steps to stanch any bleeding.
The debate now is whether the Trump put has disappeared completely or merely been delayed. The Trump message tilts toward delay. After Bessent dismissed correction concerns, for instance, he said, “Over the long term, if we put good tax policy in place, deregulation and energy security, the markets will do great.”
Some investors agree. Piper Sandler, for instance, has for several months been forecasting that the S&P 500 index will end the year at 6,600, which would be a robust 17% gain from current levels. The tariff tumult of the past several weeks hasn’t changed the firm’s outlook.
While Trump’s tariff policies are a headwind, it’s highly likely Congress will pass a huge package of tax cuts and tax-cut extensions by the end of the year, which would be market-positive. Other forecasters have trimmed their outlook for stocks while still expecting solid gains from current levels.
There’s one final cautionary note for anybody trying to guess how Trump’s actions will affect stocks: The president doesn’t have as much control over markets as many people think. If Trump’s trade war snowballs into a recession, for instance, falling profits and rising unemployment could swamp any action Trump could take to right the ship. It might still be a bit too early to claim the bedwetters are wrong.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman.
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