Stock Market Plunges 223 Points in 5 Minutes After Trump’s Stunning China Tweets
President Donald Trump appears to have sent the stock market into a dive with a few flicks of his fingers, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged over 200 points in just five minutes following a series of unhinged tweets attacking China and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
At 10:57 Friday morning, Trump posted a tweet in which he asked “who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?”
Then two minutes later, Trump posted a series of tweets ranting against China in which he said, among other things, that “We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far better off without them,” and that American companies are “hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China.”
….better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019
….all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!). Fentanyl kills 100,000 Americans a year. President Xi said this would stop – it didn’t. Our Economy, because of our gains in the last 2 1/2 years, is MUCH larger than that of China. We will keep it that way!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019
Within five minutes of those tweets, the Dow plunged 223 points, then dropped another 150 points five minutes later.
Trump’s rant was a reaction to China’s announcement of retaliatory tariffs on $75 billion in U.S. goods. As of this writing, the Dow is down 431 points from its Friday opening.
