The US stock market plummeted on Thursday after the Trump administration announced a slew of tariffs on almost every country and territory in the world.
The broad-based S&P 500 closed down 4.8% while the Dow Jones was down 4% — the biggest losses for each index since June 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic crashed the global economy.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq also had its worst trading day since March 2020, having dropped 6%.
The only sector not selling off was consumer staples, which consists of companies that sell basic food stocks.
Harvard University economist Jeffrey Frankel said reaction on Wall Street was "really bad."
"I think the stock market, particularly US stock market, perhaps was overvalued at the beginning of the year. I will say that," Frankel told DW.
"But what our president has has done is really destroy — or at least with regard to US participation if not the global system — the entire rules-based, multilateral open trading system that we've had for the last 80 years, which has given the world, including the US, an historic, unprecedented period of relative peace and prosperity."
He added: "I think he's damaged that very seriously."
Trump says 'things are going very well' as stock markets fall
US President Donald Trump has offered a rosy economic assessment despite stock markets dropping sharply on Thursday over his tariff annoucement.
"I think it's going very well," he said as he left the White House to fly to one of his Florida golf clubs.
"The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom," he said.
Trump's announcement of tariffs against much of the world jolted global markets.
Later, speaking with the reporters aboard the presidential plane, Trump said that he'd be open to using tariffs to negotiate with other countries.
Multiple White House aides have insisted that the new tariffs are not up for negotiation.
But less than an hour before Trump made his comments, his senior trade adviser Peter Navarro told business news outlet CNBC that the tariffs weren't being used to negotiate better trade terms with other countries.
"This is not a negotiation," Navarro said in the CNBC interview. "This is not that. This is a national emergency."
