STORY: :: Trump’s treasury secretary downplays Thursday’s stock market selloff as a trade war with China heats up
:: April 10, 2025
::Washington, D.C.
Jeff Mason, Reuters White House Reporter: “Mr. President, can you give us a reaction to today’s stock market drop and also give us a sense of the next steps with China?”
TRUMP: “Well, I haven’t seen it because I’ve been here for two and a half hours so I’ll be seeing it. So Scott, you want to have a statement on that?
MASON: “It’s down.”
:: Scott Bessent, U.S. Treasury Secretary
“Sure. Look the up two down one is not a bad ratio or up up 10, down five. And I think as we have talked about as we go through the queue and settle with these countries who are going to bring us their best offers. You know we will end up in a place of great certainty over the next 90 days on on tariffs. But we had very good inflation numbers today, oils down, they had a successful bond market. So I don’t think it’s see anything unusual today.”
U.S. stocks sank on Thursday, giving back some of the huge gains that followed President Donald Trump’s decision on Wednesday to temporarily lower his sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, as investors assessed the status of his global trade war.
The S&P 500 index .SPX was down 5.2% on Thursday afternoon, while the Nasdaq .IXIC dropped 6.1% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was down 4.5%.
The European Union said it would pause its first counter-tariffs, and more than a dozen countries have made offers to the United States, according to White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett.