'Tariff Man' tweet threatens renewed trade war, rattles markets

On December 4, 2018, two days after announcing a 90-day trade truce with China at the G20 summit, Trump tweeted "....I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so," adding that the U.S. was "taking in $billions in Tariffs." The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 800 points that day, a decline market analysts attributed largely to the tweet undercutting confidence in the truce Trump himself had announced days earlier. Economists who examined 2018 tariff data found the cost was passed on to U.S. importers, retailers, and consumers rather than paid by foreign governments, contradicting the framing in Trump's tweet that other countries were being made to "pay for the privilege" of trading with the U.S. Conflicting statements from administration officials, including Larry Kudlow walking back parts of Trump's account of his dinner with Xi Jinping, compounded market uncertainty in the days that followed.