U.S. stocks endured another brutal day, with major indexes finishing around 6% lower as global markets struggled to digest President Donald Trump’s expanding trade war.
The broad-based S&P 500 closed down 6%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 2,200 points, or about 5.5%.
The Russell 2000 Index, which tracks the stocks of smaller U.S. companies, dropped by 4%.
It was the second straight day of turmoil on trading floors, adding to weeks of declines. On Thursday, the S&P had its worst day since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Nasdaq is now down 22% from its high in December, and the S&P is about 17% off its high in February.
“There was nowhere to hide for investors in the U.S. market,” Bankrate financial analyst Stephen Kates said in a statement Friday, after the trading day limped to a close. “Every single sector posted a heavily negative day.”
Among the biggest names falling Friday were Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle maker Tesla (down 10.4%), farm equipment giant Caterpillar (down 5.8%) and market-leading AI chipmaker Nvidia (down 7.4%).
Chevron, Boeing and 3M were among the Dow’s biggest losers, each dropping more than 8%. Apple, Visa, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs each lost more than 7%.
Even a surprisingly strong March jobs report, released Friday morning, did little to stanch the bleeding. Analysts largely brushed off the hiring gains as a snapshot of an economic reality the White House has since upended.
Heavy selling internationally preceded the U.S. declines Friday. Markets overseas were “caught up in the maelstrom, causing investors all over the world to face shocking losses,” Kates said. European stocks veered toward a correction, having declined 10% from recent highs. Asian markets also cratered.
The declines hit other assets as well. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell to 4%. While that will translate to lower mortgage rates, it reflects investors’ jitters about the economy as they trade out of the risks of stocks and into the safety of bonds.
Crude oil also slipped, falling nearly 8% to $61.71, indicating fears that fuel consumption will diminish as consumers pare back their spending.
The drawdowns mark a stunning turn for a presidential administration that was expected to have “business friendly” policies at its foundation. Instead, Trump is betting his tariffs will force businesses to bring more manufacturing and production to American shores, though many executives and economists say that’s virtually impossible at the scale the president desires and could lead to calamity instead.
“I can’t know what’s going on inside the president’s mind,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers financial group. “It’s a problem for investors. These are very specific policies that stemmed from opinions of a very specific person.”
The prospect of at least near-term economic disruption now appears all but certain. Early Friday, China unveiled 34% duties on goods brought in from the U.S. in response to Trump raising taxes on U.S. importers of Chinese goods by as much as 79%.
The president, however, has continued to project defiance in the face of market turmoil and criticism from global leaders. “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE,” he posted to social media Friday. Later, he wrote, “ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL.”
Many on Wall Street are forecasting major economic fallout. “The intensity of downside risks ... continues to be quite substantial,” Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, said in a presentation Friday.
JPMorgan analysts published a research note late Thursday titled “There will be blood” and raised their odds of a global recession to 60% due to White House trade policies.
“A turn towards caution by households alongside a slide in business spending could well push the economy into recession next quarter,” the bank analysts wrote.
Even before Trump’s tariffs rollout Wednesday, the uncertainty surrounding his policies had caused business and consumer sentiment to plummet. Now — with Wall Street reeling, analysts warning that the trade war may be just getting started and executives wondering how long the new levies and counter-levies could stay in place — fears of a dramatic slowdown are intensifying rapidly.
If tariffs aren’t dialed back soon, they risk triggering an “economic Armageddon,” Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities financial group, wrote in a note Friday.
“Never have we ... seen a self-inflicted debacle of epic proportions like the Trump tariff slate over the last 36 hours,” he said.
