Watch live from the New York Stock Exchange as the opening bell rings. Credit: NYSE
Stocks are sharply swinging down, up, then down again on Wall Street as markets try to assess the potential damage from President Donald Trump‘s global trade war. European and Asian shares saw dramatic losses, the leading U.S. index is flirting with bear market territory, and oil prices are sagging.
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After holding relatively stable during last week’s global market turmoil, cryptocurrencies have joined the sell-off.
Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency dipped below $75,000 Monday morning before seeing a slight rebound.
Bitcoin’s prices haven’t been this low since just after President Donald Trump’s Election Day victory last year launched a bull run in crypto prices.
Bitcoin’s backers say it is a type of digital gold that can act as a hedge against volatility. But Garrick Hileman, an independent cryptocurrency analyst, said bitcoin’s price slide shows that thesis still hasn’t proven to be true.
“It’s just not there today,” he said. “[Bitcoin] trades like a risky tech stock.”
Other major digital assets, like ether, XRP and solana, saw even bigger one-day percentage drops on Monday morning.
Treasury yields are mixed in Monday morning trading on the bond market after briefly rallying in the early going.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.09% from 4.01% late Friday. It had fallen as low as 3.88% overnight.
The yield, which influences interest rates on mortgages and other consumer loans, was nearing 4.8% in mid-January.
The two-year yield, which closely tracks expectations for action by the Federal Reserve, was steady at 3.68%.
The account, @RapidResponse47, weighed in shortly after the market spiked, then dropped again.
The stock market briefly spiked on a report that Kevin Hassett, a top White House economic adviser, said the president was considering a 90-day pause on tariffs.
The supposed remark from Hassett circulated on social media, but no one could pinpoint where it came from even as the market flashed from red to green.
Hassett had spoken to Fox News earlier in the morning, when he was asked about a potential pause. However, he was noncommittal.
“I think the president is going to decide what the president is going to decide,” he said.
The episode showed that traders were operating on a hair trigger and eager for any sign of encouraging news for the market.
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, April 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly erased a morning loss of 1,700 points, shot up more than 800 points, then went back to a loss of 629 points.
The S&P 500 likewise made sudden up-and-down lurching movements and was down 0.7% in the first hour of trading. The Nasdaq composite was up 0.2% That followed sharp drops around the world as worries rise about whether Trump’s trade war will torpedo the global economy.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives says Elon Musk’s association with President Trump and his tariffs will turn off potential Tesla buyers in China, the company’s second largest market. Ives writes that Musk’s embrace of right-wing politics is destroying demand for his electric vehicles in the U.S. and Europe, too.
“This could be a brutal year ahead if Musk does not exit stage left or take a step back on DOGE in the coming month,” Ives writes, referring to the Tesla CEO’s leadership of the government cost-cutting group. “With major protests erupting globally at Tesla dealerships, Tesla cars being keyed, and a full brand crisis tornado turning into a life of its own, this has cast a dark black cloud over Tesla’s stock.”
Even before Trump’s tariffs, Tesla stock had plunged more than 40% from its mid-December high.
Ives’ new price target of $315 still assumes big gains. Tesla was trading Monday morning at $229, down more than 4%.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said he spoke on the telephone with Trump on Monday night and told him he is “strongly concerned” that U.S. tariffs would discourage investment from Japan, which has been the world’s biggest investor in the United States in the past five years.
Ishiba said he urged Trump to seek a more mutually beneficial bilateral cooperation, and that Japan will keep negotiating to get the U.S. government reconsider the measures.
The two leaders reaffirmed their efforts to resolve the issue, and agreed to appoint a team of representatives on each side for further negotiations.
Shigeru Ishiba, member of House of Representatives of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and one of candidates for LDP leadership election speaks during his press conference Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, in Tokyo. In response to Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s suggestion Japan should change its defense policy, Ishiba explained that Japan does not have a capability, and it would take a lot of time and cost to be able to acquire such a capability, and Japan would have to rely on the U.S. for surveillance. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Ishiba said his government will hold a first ministerial taskforce meeting to tackle what he called “a national crisis.”
The prime minister told a parliamentary session earlier Monday that he doesn’t think the problem can be resolved unless Japan makes a counter proposal and that Japan needs to propose how the two countries can make a new relationship as a package. Ishiba, however, said he is not considering a retaliatory measure because it only makes things worse.
Ishiba said the government will do everything it can to help the industries affected, especially small and medium sized business owners.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the European Union is looking to do more business elsewhere in the world as President Trump’s tariffs hit international trade.
She said Monday that the EU is also is setting up a taskforce to monitor any dumping on its markets that might happen as trade patterns change.
“We will focus like a laser beam on the 83% of global trade that is beyond the United States. Vast opportunities,” von der Leyen said. After deals already done with Mexico and Switzerland, she said, “we’re working on India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and many others.”
Von der Leyen says the taskforce will help to monitor any unexpected surges in imports and “protect ourselves against indirect effects through trade diversion.”
The European Commission negotiates trade deals and disputes on behalf of the 27 EU member countries.
Von der Leyen insists the EU still wants a deal with the Trump administration, but that “we are preparing a potential list for retaliation, and other measures for retaliation, if this is necessary.”
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says the Trump administration’s trade policies will likely result in higher prices for both imported and domestic goods and services, weighing on an already slowing U.S. economy.
FILE – In this April 4, 2017 file photo, Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, discusses his Annual Letter to Shareholders at the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America in Washington. (Paul Morigi/AP Images for JPMorgan Chase)
In his annual letter to shareholders, released Monday, Dimon said the U.S. economy already faced a number of challenges: sticky inflation, geopolitical tensions, Federal Reserve policy including still-high interest rates and high fiscal deficits. Dimon also said that many stocks in the market have been priced too high.
The outspoken and influential CEO often comments on both domestic and international issues.
“Whether or not the menu of tariffs causes a recession remains in question, but it will slow down growth,” Dimon wrote, while also saying “I still have an abiding faith in America.”
The financial firm said a recession has become more likely even if Trump retreats from his trade policies.
Goldman Sachs also reduced its expectations for economic growth “following a sharp tightening in financial conditions, foreign consumer boycotts, and a continued spike in policy uncertainty that is likely to depress capital spending by more than we had previously assumed.”
But even meeting those expectations “would now require a large reduction in the tariffs scheduled to take effect on April 9.”
In a Truth Social post Monday morning, the president showed no interest in changing course despite turmoil in global markets.
He said other countries had been “taking advantage of the Good OL’ USA” on international trade.
“Our past ‘leaders’ are to blame for allowing this, and so much else, to happen to our Country,” he wrote. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump criticized China for increasing its own tariffs and “not acknowledging my warning for abusing countries not to retaliate.”
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends his trial on corruption charges at the district court in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, March 12, 2025. (Yair Sagi/Pool Photo via AP)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington Monday. Whether his visit succeeds in bringing down or eliminating Israel’s 17% tariff remains to be seen, but how it plays out could set the stage for how other world leaders try to address the new tariffs.
Netanyahu’s office has put the focus of his hastily organized Washington visit on the tariffs, while stressing that the two leaders will discuss major geopolitical issues including the war in Gaza, tensions with Iran, Israel-Turkey ties and the International Criminal Court.
In a preemptive move last week, Israel announced that it was removing all tariffs on goods from the U.S., mostly on imported food and agricultural products.
- Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost nearly 8% shortly after the market opened and futures trading for the benchmark was briefly suspended. It closed down 7.8% at 31,136.58.
- Germany’s DAX index briefly fell more than 10% at the open on the Frankfurt exchange, but recovered some ground to move down 5.8% in morning trading.
- France’s CAC 40 shed 5.8% in morning trading.
- Britain’s FTSE 100 lost 4.9% in morning trading.
- Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 13.2% to 19,828.30.
- Shanghei’s Composite index lost 7.3% to 3,096.58.
- Taiwan’s Taiex plummeted 9.7%.
- South Korea’s Kospi lost 5.6% to 2,328.20.
- Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 4.2% to 7,343.30, recovering from a loss of more than 6%.
- India’s benchmark BSE Sensex and the Nifty 50 index both dropped about 5% after trading opened but then recovered slightly.
- Dubai’s Financial Market exchange fell 5% as it opened for the week.
- Abu Dhabi’s Securities Exchange fell 4%.
- Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul stock exchange, which opened Sunday, fell over 6% in trading. The giant of the exchange, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Aramco, fell over 5% on its own, wiping away billions in market capitalization for the world’s sixth-most-valuable company.
- Pakistan’s stock exchange suspended trading for an hour after a 5% drop in its main KSE-30 index.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he won’t back down on his sweeping tariffs on imports from most of the world unless countries even out their trade with the U.S., digging in on his plans to implement the taxes that have sent financial markets reeling.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One late Sunday, President Donald Trump said he didn’t want global markets to fall, but also that he wasn’t concerned about the massive sell-off either, adding, “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
“I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world,” Trump said. “They’re dying to make a deal. And I said, we’re not going to have deficits with your country. We’re not going to do that, because to me a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or at worst, going to be breaking even.”
Global stock markets extended a severe plunge Monday, fueled by fears that U.S. tariffs would lead to a global economic slowdown. European and Asian shares saw dramatic losses, the leading U.S. index flirted with bear market territory in pre-market trading, and oil prices sagged.
The massive sell-off in riskier assets at the start of the trading week follows President Donald Trump’s announcement of sharply higher U.S. import taxes and retaliation from China that saw markets fall sharply Thursday and Friday.
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