Stock Market Plummets as Trump’s Extreme Tariffs Take Effect

The stock market took a downturn Monday morning after Donald Trump’s planned tariffs went into effect at midnight Monday.  

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 all hit two-week lows of 43,921, 19,196, and 5,932, respectively. High performing companies like Apple and Nvidia slumped, along with American car companies like General Motors and Ford. Investors fled to safer investments like bonds and gold, with the precious metal jumping in value. 

The markets are struggling with Trump raising 25 percent tariffs on Canada and 10 percent on China. Trump had also planned to impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexico—but announced a one-month delay at the last minute on Monday. Still, the news wasn’t enough to save the stock market from plunging.

Canada has retaliated with 25 percent tariffs of its own on $107 billion of U.S. goods, with tariffs on $20.4 billion worth of goods on Tuesday and the rest following within 21 days. Prices on everything from beer to gas have gone up in the U.S. The Canadian province of Ontario is banning American companies from contracts with the province, including a $68 million contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink company to deliver high-speed internet to remote areas. 

Meanwhile, China pledged to take “necessary countermeasures to defend its legitimate rights and interests” on Saturday, including bringing a case against the U.S. at the World Trade Organization.

This morning’s market plunge comes after stocks took a dive Friday after the Trump administration announced that he would sign an executive order on tariffs the next day, sparking fears among investors. Those fears will not be easily assuaged in the coming days, as the full scale of Trump’s ill-thought economic plans have yet to hit Americans.

Trump is elevating a known racist to one of the highest positions in the State Department. 

Darren Beattie, a conservative journalist who was fired from the Trump administration in 2018 after revelations about his attendance at a conference with white nationalists, will serve as the acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ABC News reported.  

Beattie has a long list of public viewpoints that range from problematic to despicable. 

“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” Beattie wrote on X in October. “Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” 

“Britain treats its own native white people far worse than China treats its muslim Uighur population,” he wrote in August of that same year. 

“I have more respect for Jeffrey Epstein than Bill Barr,” he tweeted in 2020, referring to the infamous sexual predator and former attorney general, respectively. “At least Epstein wasn’t a pussy.” On January 6, 2021, he spent the day on X warning Senator Tim Scott, “BLM,” Ibram X. Kendi, and Kay Cole James to “learn their places” and “take a knee” to MAGA. 

Beattie’s appointment—along with those of Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, and others—is another indication that white supremacists are flooding Trump’s White House.

Negotiations between Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum have delayed U.S. tariffs on America’s neighbor by at least a month.

The news came Monday after Trump reportedly spoke with Sheinbaum about her country’s commitments at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We had a good conversation with President Trump with great respect for our relationship and sovereignty; we reached a series of agreements,” Sheinbaum posted on X Monday morning.

“1. Mexico will immediately reinforce the northern border with 10,000 members of the National Guard to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, particularly fentanyl. 2. The United States is committed to working to prevent the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico,” she continued.

“3. Our teams will begin working today on two fronts: security and trade. 4. They are pausing tariffs for one month from now.”

The White House has not yet released an official statement on the sudden deal, but Trump did post about it on Truth Social.

He called the discussion a “very friendly conversation” and revealed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick would participate in negotiations with Mexican officials during the one-month pause on the tariffs.

“I look forward to participating in those negotiations, with President Sheinbaum, as we attempt to achieve a ‘deal’ between our two Countries,” Trump wrote.

Trump signed an executive order on Saturday imposing a 25 percent tariff on goods and a 10 percent tariff on energy products from Canada and Mexico, as well as a 10 percent tariff raise on goods from China for the country’s purported failure to intervene in the dissemination of chemicals used to develop the lethal drug fentanyl. Practically overnight, the tariffs launched America and its biggest trading partners into a multinational trade war that raised prices on everything from gas to beer.

Canada immediately announced retaliatory tariffs of its own, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing an equal tariff hike on $20 billion in U.S. goods starting Tuesday. China, meanwhile, has vowed to bring a case against the United States before the World Trade Organization, the entity that oversees global commerce.

On Sunday, China’s Foreign Ministry threatened to take “necessary countermeasures to defend its legitimate rights and interests.”

“China calls on the United States to correct its wrongdoings, maintain the hard-won positive dynamics in the counternarcotics cooperation, and promote a steady, sound and sustainable development of China-U.S. relationship,” the ministry said.

The FBI is investigating more than 2,400 agents and employees who worked on cases related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

According to an internal FBI document obtained by NBC News, the agency is using its own case file management system to track down agents who worked on January 6–related cases. Targeted employees are being asked to fill out a questionnaire about their role in the investigation.

Employees must provide the information by Tuesday afternoon, ABC News reported. The request for information came from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove just days after the Justice Department swept its own agency of prosecutors who worked on January 6–related cases.

The FBI questionnaire asks agents what role they had in any of the cases, whether they made any arrests, and whether they appeared in court, among other things. It was sent to employees on Friday, the same day six senior FBI officials were ordered to resign if they didn’t want to be fired.

But the agency of more than 38,000 employees is pushing back against the Justice Department’s incessant witch hunt for Donald Trump’s enemies, urging affected agents to hold their ground.

“Do NOT resign or offer to resign. While we would never advocate for physical non-compliance, you need to be clear your removal is not voluntary,” the FBI Agents Association wrote in an email obtained by CNN.

In a letter to Bove released Sunday, lawyers for implicated FBI agents warned that the firing of agents who worked on cases involving Trump is a “direct assault on the national security of American citizens.”

“If you proceed with terminations and/or public exposure of terminated employees’ identities, we stand ready to vindicate their rights through all available legal means,” the letter reads.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump are trying to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

In a live broadcast on his social media site X Sunday, Musk said the Trump administration was in the process of getting rid of the entire agency, saying, “It’s beyond repair.”

“As we dug into USAID it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. If you have an apple with a worm in it, you can take the worm out. If you have a whole ball of worms, it’s hopeless,” Musk told his online audience. “USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple … that is why it’s gotta go. It’s beyond repair.”

USAID staff were sent an email telling them not to come into the office Monday unless they had  essential on-site duties. Trump seems to agree with Musk’s plan, telling reporters Sunday that the agency had “been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out … and then we’ll make a decision (on its future).”

Staffers at the agency say about 600 employees lost access to USAID computer systems overnight, and the Trump administration placed two security chiefs at the agency on leave over the weekend after they refused to turn over restricted classified information to Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” henchmen. On Saturday, the USAID website was taken down. 

Abby Maxman, president and CEO of prominent charity Oxfam America, said in a statement that “dismantling USAID would be a callous, destructive political power play that would have deadly consequences for millions of people living in dire humanitarian emergencies and extreme poverty.”

If Trump and the tech mogul–fascism enthusiast succeed in destroying the agency, it could have devastating results. USAID is the largest single contributor of humanitarian assistance worldwide, and the president’s foreign aid freeze last week has already wasted thousands of dollars’ worth of perishable food and forced international organizations to make hard decisions regarding their beneficiaries’ lives.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to walk back the aid freeze last week, only to cause more confusion, and this latest news about USAID is going to cause shock waves across the U.S. and the world. With the president’s ill-advised tariffs kicking in over the weekend as well, America’s international image is taking a nosedive.