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    What Is a Bear Market? Are We in One?

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    President Trump’s global tariffs have sent stock markets worldwide into a tailspin, and the S&P 500 on Monday briefly entered bear market territory for the first time since 2022.Mr. Trump has seemed unmoved by the decline. He signaled on Monday that he had no plans to back off on tariffs, insisting that they would bring in “billions of dollars” in revenue and that other countries had been “abusing” the United States with their trade policies.Here is what to know about a bear market.What is a bear market?A bear market is a Wall Street term for a sustained market downturn, when a stock index closes 20 percent from its last peak.The 20 percent threshold signals investor pessimism about the future of the economy.Are we in a bear market now?The S&P 500, the benchmark U.S. stock index, opened lower on Monday. The index was already down 17.4 percent from its last high, on Feb. 19, and if it closes Monday’s trading with a loss of at least 3.1 percent, that would tip it into a bear market. More

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    Media Outlets Face Fallout from Dubious 90-Day Tariff Pause Report

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    The news seemed big: That the Trump administration was considering a 90-day pause to his expansive tariffs.The problem was, it wasn’t true.But in a sign of the precarious nature of the markets right now, an unsubstantiated online report spiked shares sharply, albeit briefly, and continued to climb after CNBC and Reuters relayed the claim. The White House quickly responded saying that the report was “FAKE NEWS,” and CNBC and Reuters issued statements correcting the record.Stocks fell back down after those corrections. Still, the fallout continued to reverberate on Monday, and became a cautionary tale of the risk of using information drawn from the fast-moving echo chamber of social media without first confirming the news independently.Asked earlier in the day about the possibility of a pause on imposing the expansive tariffs announced by President Trump last week, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, said on Fox News: “I think the president is going to decide what the president is going to decide.”Walter Bloomberg, an influential X account that is unaffiliated with Bloomberg News, amplified a post on social media claiming Mr. Hassett had said Mr. Trump was considering a 90-day pause in tariffs.Minutes after the Walter Bloomberg account’s post, Carl Quintanilla, a CNBC anchor, read a headline on air echoing the reports about Hassett. “I think we can go with this headline,” Mr. Quintanilla said, without attributing the news. A person with knowledge of the editorial process at the network said Mr. Quintanilla had read a CNBC headline that was circulated prematurely by mistake.After that, Reuters flashed a headline, citing CNBC. The Walter Bloomberg account later deleted the post. In a direct message on X, the account said to The New York Times that the post had originated minutes earlier from another X account. “Given the market movement — plus 4.5 percent — I deemed the headline reliable and posted it at 10:13,” the Walter Bloomberg account said in the direct message. “A few minutes later, Reuters picked up the story, citing CNBC.”CNBC issued a correction soon after mentioning the potential pause, saying its “aired unconfirmed information in a banner,” adding that its reporters “quickly made a correction on air.” Reuters also issued a correction, saying its report relied on a headline from CNBC. “Reuters has withdrawn the incorrect report and regrets its error,” it said in a statement. More

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    JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon Warns of Economic Pain From Trump’s Tariffs

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    President Trump’s wave of tariffs threatens to bring both short-term economic pain, including lower growth, and long-term damage to America’s standing and trade relationships around the world, the chief executive of Wall Street’s biggest bank warned on Monday.“The recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, wrote in his annual letter to shareholders.The warning by Mr. Dimon, one of Wall Street’s most influential leaders, echoes the growing anxiety among corporate chiefs about how the tariffs will play out. Even those who had initially professed support for Mr. Trump’s trade plans are becoming increasingly worried about the consequences.Even before Mr. Trump’s tariff announcement last week, the U.S. economy had been showing signs of strain after years of healthy performance, Mr. Dimon wrote. Inflation was already a worry, he said, pointing to a yawning fiscal deficit and the need for more infrastructure spending. And stock valuations remain well above historical averages, even after the recent market sell-off.The potential consequences of the trade fight could make things worse, the letter said. Those include other countries’ efforts to fight back — as China has done by imposing 34 percent counterlevies — and a possible erosion of confidence among consumers and investors. Mr. Dimon also warned about the weakening of the American dollar’s role as the global reserve currency.“If America, for whatever reason, becomes a less attractive investment destination, the U.S. dollar and the economy could suffer if foreigners sold their U.S. assets,” he wrote.JPMorgan’s own economists have increasingly been saying a recession is more likely this year, though Mr. Dimon did not personally take a position on those odds in his shareholder letter.While he asserted that JPMorgan itself was strong enough to withstand the shocks that the levies posed — its traders have profited from previous whipsaws in the markets — the global economy may not be so fortunate. “It is not particularly good for the capital markets,” Mr. Dimon wrote of the tariff-linked volatility.For now, Mr. Dimon wrote, he is hoping for a speedy resolution to the trade battles. “The quicker this issue is resolved, the better, because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse,” he wrote.The longer-term worry, Mr. Dimon said, is that Mr. Trump’s fight could shred decades-old alliances that cemented the United States’ primacy in the global order. The JPMorgan chief wrote that he was worried that America’s trading partners might seek out deals with the likes of China, Iran or Russia in response to the tariffs.“America First is fine,” Mr. Dimon wrote, referring to Mr. Trump’s description of his policies, “as long as it doesn’t end up being America alone.” More

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    Oil Prices Tumble Further as Trump’s Tariffs Weigh on Economic Outlook

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    U.S. oil prices fell sharply, briefly dipping below $60 a barrel on Sunday — their lowest level in almost four years — as the economic fallout from President Trump’s latest round of tariffs reverberated around the world.The price of crude oil is down more than 15 percent since last Wednesday, just before Mr. Trump revealed his plans to impose stiff new tariffs on imports from most countries. That prices have fallen so far so quickly reflects deepening concern that high tariffs could slow economic growth and perhaps even cause recessions in the United States and the countries it trades with.The cost of U.S. benchmark crude continued to fall on Monday, down more than 2 percent. Cheaper oil is generally good for consumers and businesses that use gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. In fact, Mr. Trump and his aides have pushed for lower energy prices to curb inflation.But if prices remain around these levels or fall further, U.S. oil and gas companies are likely to slow drilling, cut spending and lay off workers. That would be especially painful to oil-rich states like Texas and New Mexico.Another big reason that oil prices have weakened is that the OPEC cartel and its allies announced last week that they would accelerate plans to increase production. That will increase supply of oil at a time when many analysts expect demand to weaken.U.S. energy companies are also getting squeezed by higher costs for essential materials like steel tubing, which is subject to a 25 percent tariff Mr. Trump announced in February.Smaller oil companies — a key constituency for Mr. Trump — are likely to be among the first to slow down, as they tend to be more nimble and have fewer financial resources. Natural gas prices have been more resilient, providing some cushion for producers.Last week, the share price of an exchange-traded fund composed of U.S. oil and gas stocks fell by 20 percent in the two days after Mr. Trump’s tariff announcement. More

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    Trump’s Tariffs Will Wound Free Trade, but the Blow May Not Be Fatal

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    Free trade has been so beneficial to so many countries that the world may find a way to live without its biggest player.President Trump’s self-proclaimed “liberation day,” in which he announced across-the-board tariffs on the United States’ trading partners, carries an echo of another moment when an advanced Western economy threw up walls around itself.Like Brexit, Britain’s fateful vote nearly nine years ago to leave the European Union, Mr. Trump’s tariffs struck a hammer blow at the established order. Pulling the United States out of the global economy is not unlike Britain withdrawing from a Europe-wide trading bloc, and in the view of Brexiteers, a comparable act of liberation.The shock of Mr. Trump’s move is reverberating even more widely, given the larger size of the American economy and its place at the fulcrum of global commerce. Yet as with Brexit, its ultimate impact is unsettled: Mr. Trump could yet reverse himself, chastened by plummeting markets or mollified by one-off deals.More important, economists say, the rise of free trade may be irreversible, its benefits so powerful that the rest of the world finds a way to keep the system going, even without its central player. For all of the setbacks to trade liberalization, and the grievances expressed in Mr. Trump’s actions, the barriers have kept falling.The European Union, optimists point out, did not unravel after Britain’s departure. These days, the political talk in London is about ways in which Britain can draw closer to its European neighbors. Still, that sense of possibility has come only after years of turbulence. Economists expect similar chaos to buffet the global trading system as a result of Mr. Trump’s theatrical exit.“It will not be the end of free trade, but it is certainly a retreat from unfettered free trade, which is the way the world seemed to be going,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University. “Logically, this would be a time when the rest of the world bands together to promote free trade among themselves,” he said. “The reality is, it’s going to be every country for itself.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Small Businesses Face a ‘Tornado’ of Challenges: Cuts, Freezes and Now Tariffs

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    President Trump vowed to aid entrepreneurs by reducing taxes and slicing red tape. But some owners say other policies have put them at a disadvantage.It was a bad week for Ben Coryell, who runs a wilderness guiding company in Golden, Colo.He got several calls from customers who wanted to cancel their climbing courses and mountaineering expeditions over the summer, often citing second thoughts about big purchases as the Trump administration has thrown the economy into turmoil with eye-watering tariffs.At the same time, Mr. Coryell is wondering how long his business, Golden Mountain Guides, can continue to offer those trips, as personnel cuts at the National Park Service have held up the processing of the permits he needs to operate along high-demand routes. And with those cuts leaving fewer rangers on patrol, he fears that unlicensed operators could run amok.So far he hasn’t laid anyone off, but it seems increasingly likely that he may have to.“It’s really starting to feel like a lot of the operations we’ve depended on might have to be bumped for the next number of years until we can find a healthy status quo,” he said.Helmets on display at Golden Mountain Guides.Rachel Woolf for The New York TimesThousands of entrepreneurs are finding themselves in similar positions as they confront the blizzard of changes from Washington over the last two and a half months. Funding freezes, staffing cuts to federal agencies and an immigration crackdown — along with, of course, tariffs — are throwing many into turmoil, with little certainty about how to proceed.“It’s feeling like a tornado to small-business owners,” said Natalie Madeira Cofield, chief executive of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, which supports initiatives to help companies with fewer than 10 employees. “This is an unprecedented moment.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Lesotho, a Small African Nation, Expects a Big Hit From Trump’s Tariffs

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    The amount of manufactured goods exported from Africa to the United States is minuscule. But for Lesotho, the impact of a stunning 50 percent tariff is enormous.The nation that the Trump administration slapped with the heftiest tariff this week is a small, rural, landlocked country in southern Africa that is among the world’s poorest.Lesotho, which makes denim that goes into American-branded jeans, was hit with a 50 percent tariff. It was among several lower-income countries on the continent that were shocked by levies high above the minimum 10 percent imposed on nearly all of America’s trading partners. Madagascar, where three-quarters of the population lives in poverty, now will be met with a 47 percent tariff when its apparel, vanilla and other exports enter the United States.Products from Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Libya and Mauritius all now have tariffs above 30 percent, as does South Africa, which has come under particular attack by the Trump administration.Mr. Trump has justified the across-the-board tariffs by declaring that the world trading system has played the United States for a chump who picked up the tab for the world’s moochers.But Lesotho is hardly a big player in global trade: It imported less than $3 million in goods from the United States and exported $240 million there last year.The tariffs come as much of the African continent is already reeling. Just weeks ago, the Trump administration ended billions of dollars in aid to Africa that undergirded many countries’ health care systems and disaster relief efforts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    7 Americans Weigh In on Trump’s Sweeping Tariffs

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    President Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs this week on dozens of countries, with some of the steepest tariffs levied on some of America’s biggest trading partners. The move, arguably the most far-reaching of his second term so far, sent stocks into a nosedive and substantially raised the prospect of a recession.Voters were bracing for the effects in their own lives, but some said they were, for now, waiting and watching to see how all of this plays out.— More