Quote of the Day (Jen Wieczner, on ‘The Daily Whipsaw Induced by the Tariffs’)

“The daily whipsaw induced by the tariffs feels fundamentally different from crashes past, as if the deep-seated rules underlying the usual chaos of buying and selling no longer apply now that a single man has managed to instigate a financial crisis on an inane whim….

“As… traders were waiting [in early April] with a mix of dread and anticipation for the next headline or Truth Social post to drop, some had already declared the end of an era. Tom Lee, an investor who runs a firm called Fundstrat that distributes market analyses to more than 10,000 clients and manages $900 million, is known on the street for his evangelical enthusiasm that stocks would rise ever upward in the long term. But in a note to his clients, he admitted his zeal might have been misplaced. Trump, he said, had committed ‘a fundamental breach of capitalism's regulatory covenant.’ It's one that could reverberate with unpredictable consequences for a long time to come, even if the tariffs are eventually repealed and their champion replaced. Or as Spencer Hakimian, who manages a $78 million hedge fund called Tolou Capital, told me, ‘I did not think for one second he was going to go this crazy.’”— American journalist Jen Wieczner, “Nightmare on Wall Street,” New York Magazine, Apr. 21-May 4, 2025

The word that comes to mind when I read this passage—and the larger New York cover story from which it derives—is schadenfreude, the German term for joy felt at another’s misfortune.

Or, in the words of “Cell Block Tango,” the cynical, show-stopping number from the musical Chicago: “They had it coming.”

You’re not going to find much sympathy from me on the plight of Wall Street—or, more broadly, executives at America’s largest corporations—following the Trump tariffs, nor their higher costs because of fewer low-wage workers in the wake of deporting undocumented workers.

Far too many of these captains of industry shared what Financial Times reporters Sam Fleming, Harriet Agnew and Gregory Meyer have called “Trump’s belief that corporate animal spirits would be unleashed by deregulation, tax cuts and hacking back bureaucracy.”

The 1% were all too willing to disregard the evidence from the President’s first term of his chaotic management style and maddening caprice. And that “fundamental breach of capitalism's regulatory covenant”? How is that any worse than his violation of time-honored bipartisan norms about a seamless transfer of power on January 6, 2021?

As late as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the week of Trump’s second inauguration, one bank executive exclaimed, according to Fleming, Agnew and Meyer: “It’s five minutes to midnight for Europe,” adding, “Everyone is all-in on America.”

What a difference a few months—and stratospheric tariffs—can make.

Traders may have breathed sighs of relief after Trump scaled back his initial plans, pausing the stiffest tariffs on most countries for 90 days. But that would still leave a baseline 10% rate—and that’s not counting the threats he made to China.

And their heart palpitations surely returned with yesterday’s news that the President was now threatening to impose a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union and “at least” a 25% import tax on Apple iPhones not manufactured in the US.

In a Democratic administration, you could take it to the bank that cries of “creeping socialism” would ring across Corporate America at any such move that would add to the cost of doing business. But you’ll be lucky to hear a squeak, let alone a howl, from this crew today.

Nobody, but nobody, wants to get Trump mad, lest he denounce them on social media. 

I hope Jeff Bezos went to an ENT specialist after hearing the President complain in a phone call about Amazon’s projected, then hastily withdrawn, plan to display costs of US tariffs next to prices for certain products. And Doug McMillon surely have felt a bad case of acid reflux coming on when Trump urged the Walmart CEO to “eat the tariffs.”

Bezos, McMillon, their C-suite comrades, and Wall Street will likely get their tax cuts, all right, courtesy of the “big, beautiful bill” just passed by the GOP-dominated House of Representatives. But it’s part of a package that’s estimated to add $5.2 trillion to US debt, further destabilizing an already anxious bond market—not to mention jittery consumers.

So now, Wall Street waits…and wonders: What will this madman do next?