POLITICO Nightly: A ride on Trump’s wild market rollercoaster

 

By Charlie Mahtesian Richard Cohen works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York on April 9, 2025. | Seth Wenig/AP MARKET MADNESS — Another day, another wild rollercoaster ride for U.S. stocks. President Donald Trump’s announcement today that he was pausing most of his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days sparked a surge on Wall Street, causing the stock market’s main indexes to skyrocket . After days of stunning swings and lows, the S&P 500 finished up over 9 percent, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite gained over 12 percent — both of which rank among the highest daily percentage gains ever. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained nearly 3,000 points. Even so, the stock market is still down nearly 4 percent since Trump’s April 2 ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs announcement. Trump, who paused new tariffs against every country but China Wednesday, didn’t explicitly concede that days of market chaos and bond market fallout forced his decision to reverse course . But Trump’s recent statements, along with private and public GOP handwringing, made it clear he was acutely aware of the pressure to step back from the brink. Hours before he announced the tariff retreat Wednesday, Trump implored the nation to “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!” He followed up with a second, equally nonchalant post from his Trump Social account. “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” Later in the day, when asked by a reporter why he decided on a temporary pause , Trump pointed to the jumpy stock and bond markets. “They were getting yippy,” he said. “They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.” In their thorough account of today’s events, POLITICO’s White House team noted that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent disputed the suggestion that Trump’s walkback was a recognition of the turmoil he’d created. “No, President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” Bessent said. He added that the nation’s financial markets failed to understand that Trump’s tariffs had been a maximal opening salvo in a negotiation. “Until the president’s announcement Wednesday afternoon, neither Trump’s promises of better times ahead nor his aides’ and often contradictory reassurances and rationales had calmed the markets,” write POLITICO’s Eli Sotkols, Adam Cancryn, Dasha Burns and Daniel Desrochers . “If anything, they added to the uncertainty that caused trading indexes to spiral out of control and other countries to respond in kind.” Feelings of relief — at both the policy climbdown and the markets’ reactions — swept Capitol Hill. In Congress, report POLITICO’s Meredith Lee Hill, Ben Jacobs and Daniel Desrochers , Republican lawmakers exhaled Wednesday. “I think jubilation is too strong a word, but ... it was positive,” said Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who described fellow senators checking in on the balances of their retirement account as stocks surged. “I think everybody can sort of identify with that going up.” Wall Street’s pro-Trump investment titans, who have had a rough week, are now taking a victory lap as well. Bill Ackman, whose investment firm Pershing Square Holdings stock dropped almost 15 percent since last Wednesday before spiking up today, posted on X this morning before the announcement that “Our stock market is down. Bond yields are up and the dollar is declining. These are not the markers of successful policy. I am receiving an increasing number of emails and texts from small business people I do business with or have invested in, expressing fear.” By the early afternoon, he was singing a different tune. “This was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump,” he wrote . “Textbook, Art of the Deal.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie . What'd I Miss? ****ICE GESTAPO HAVE BEEN RECKLESS!***** — 2 judges limit Trump’s bid to deport ‘alien enemies’ in back-to-back rulings: A federal judge in Texas blocked the Trump administration today from deporting people designated as “alien enemies,” citing a Supreme Court ruling earlier this week and warning of the potential for “irreparable” mistakes. The ruling by a Trump-appointed judge, which appears limited to defendants currently confined in Texas, came moments after a Clinton-appointed federal judge in New York said he would order the administration to guarantee those alleged “alien enemies” in his Manhattan-based district a chance to challenge their deportations. ****THIS IS STILL MOVING FORWARD IN LAWSUITS BY THOSE WITH STANDING!**** — Appeals court clears way for Trump to restart mass firings of probationary workers: A federal appeals court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume firing thousands of probationary government employees , lifting a lower-court judge’s order that had blocked most of the mass terminations. A divided three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded today that the coalition of Democratic attorneys general who brought the case appeared to lack legal standing to challenge the firings.  ****THESE PEOPLE ARE WARPED! SPEAKING OUT FOR GAZA & PALESTINIANS IS NOT ANTI-SEMISTISM AS SOME PRETEND! THE WORLD KNOWS WHAT ISRAEL HAS DONE EVEN IF US CORPORATE MEDIA DOES NOT REPORT IT!***** — US to check social media as it seeks to bar non-citizens suspected of antisemitism:   U.S. authorities will examine the social media of foreigners seeking to enter the country as the Trump administration seeks to bar people it believes have engaged in antisemitic activity, the Department of Homeland Security announced today. DHS will apply the scrutiny to foreign students, people applying for legal residency or any other kind of immigration benefit as part of a plan to “protect the homeland from extremists” and comply with executive orders issued by President Donald Trump, the agency said in a statement announcing the measure. ****WATCH SCOTUS! AGENCIES WERE GIVEN INDEPENDENCE TO ASSURE IMPARTIALITY!***** — Trump asks Supreme Court to let him fire Biden-appointed federal labor regulators: President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to allow him to fire two Biden appointees on U.S. labor boards , despite federal laws that protect members of those panels from being dismissed without cause. If the justices side with Trump, they could pave the way for him to summarily fire dozens of other regulators who run so-called independent agencies — and install loyalists in their place. AROUND THE WORLD The U.S. and China national flags wave as a person passes by in the Chinatown area in New York on April 8, 2025. | Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP WARNING — The Chinese government issued a new travel advisory for the United States today amid growing tensions between the two nations sparked by President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs. The Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism cited a “deterioration of economic and trade relations” and the “security situation” with the U.S. in its risk advisory, which it issued the same day Washington and Beijing levied retaliatory tariffs on one another. Trump took to Truth Social today to up the ante again, saying he’d be levying 125 percent tariffs charged to China “effective immediately.” He also issued a 90 day pause on tariffs on other countries — charging a universal 10 percent tariff in the interim while singling out Beijing in his post. “At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. PARTY OF TOMORROW — The center-right European People’s Party President Manfred Weber, who is cruising toward reelection, announced he would nominate Spain’s People’s Party European lawmaker Dolors Montserrat as secretary-general of the EPP. Weber called Montserrat, the first woman to hold the role, a seasoned politician who symbolized a “younger” and “modern” party. “This is what I see as the EPP of tomorrow,” the German conservative said. With Montserrat, Weber, who also runs the EPP group in the European Parliament, will be able to further centralize power. Top leadership of the party will now be composed of sitting MEPs instead of national party officials, as was traditionally the case. Montserrat will likely keep her other jobs as head of delegation of Spain’s People’s Party and the EPP group vice chair in Parliament, while taking on the extra full-time job as secretary-general. DIVIDED WE FALL — French Industry Minister Marc Ferracci warned Wednesday that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s upcoming trip to meet U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to undermine European unity against American tariffs . "We need to be united because Europe is strong if it's united," Ferracci told broadcaster FranceInfo. "If we start having bilateral talks, of course it'll break this momentum [on European unity]." The right-wing Meloni has presented herself as a possible bridge between Europe and the Trump administration, and will meet with the U.S. president at the White House on April 17. But Ferracci argued that such a visit risks playing into Trump's strategy, which the French minister claimed is aimed at preventing a united European response to the U.S. president's severe tariff regime that has brought the world to the brink of an all-out trade war. Nightly Number $1 billion The amount of money that the Trump administration froze in federal funding for Cornell University, along with $790 million for Northwestern University, the White House confirmed today. RADAR SWEEP NATURAL DISORDER — When the Hawaiian islands formed from volcanic eruptions more than 500,000 years ago, a unique mix of plants and birds found themselves on the remote archipelago. They evolved in isolation before the arrival of humans, predators, and mammals. Today, however, O’ahu is “almost entirely devoid” of the native plants and animals that used to call it home. In their place are novel ecosystems, or wild ecosystems that deviate from their natural order caused by human intervention, as in O’ahu, that may overtake half the world’s land by the next century, writes BBC’s Matthew Ponsford. Parting Image On this date in 2003: A statue of Saddam Hussein is toppled in Firdaus Square in downtown Baghdad. | Jerome Delay/AP Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   Follow us

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