Donald Trump is known to be a heavy consumer of television and a close follower of the stock market as a barometer of the economy.
Both of those channels appear to be sending the president a clear message when it comes to his faith in tariffs: stop it.
Monday turned into another bleak day on Wall Street, which saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average decline by 890 points, or more than 2%. The sharp drop sent shivers through the economic community, while reinforcing just how unpopular those policies are among investors.
To buttress the point, even outlets known for their overall friendliness to Trump, including Fox News, featured pundits who warned of the effect that the president’s tariffs were having and urged him to change course.
Stephen Moore, a longtime Trump supporter and his former senior economics advisor, called the emphasis on tariffs “misguided” during an appearance on Fox Monday, citing “a very wobbly economy.”
At another point, Fox anchor John Roberts gently mused that the hit taken by the market during Trump’s term thus far was “not a good look.”
Not surprisingly, critics also pounced on those economic indicators, with Bloomberg Opinion editor and Trump biographer Tim O’Brien posting on X, “Verdict rendered on economic mismanagement and Trump’s self-inflicted wounds,” accompanied by a chart from the market close.
Yet as MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has noted, despite Trump’s protestations to the contrary — telling reporters he wasn’t paying attention to the market as it dropped last week — the president closely follows the Dow, and the business community can essentially communicate directly with him through its fluctuations.
“Wall Street did its job today and forced Donald Trump to back down,” O’Donnell stated on his show last week, when Trump postponed the implementation of tariffs on Mexico and Canada. “Wall Street does that by reacting defensively to the Trump tariffs.”
Of course, it can be argued that Wall Street’s surprise is itself surprising, given that Trump made tariffs a centerpiece of his economic policy throughout the presidential campaign. As Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economic research at Renaissance Macro Research, colorfully told Politico after investors’ reluctance to take Trump at his word, “He finally shot the hostage.”
Given the assumption that Trump might be more inclined to heed advice from friendly sources, the mix of guests on Fox, and what they say about economic policy, will merit watching in the days ahead, particularly if the market continues to slide.
Tech leaders have enjoyed significant access to Trump, including those who conspicuously attended his inauguration.
