Wild market swings: Stocks volatile on Wall Street as tariff woes hit

The S&P 500 went from a 4.7% drop shortly after the start of trading all the way to a surge of 3.4%, a gain that would have counted as its best day in years. It then quickly gave up all of this momentum to revert to a drop of 1.3%, as of 10:30am Eastern Time (16:30pm CEST).

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 736 points, or 1.9%, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% lower. Both also whipped through intense reversals, with the Dow going from a loss of 1,700 points to a gain of nearly 900 points.

The intense swings come as financial markets strain to see hopes that Trump may let up on his stiff tariffs, which economists see raising the risks of a global recession.

Some investors are holding on to hope that Trump may lower his tariffs after negotiating with other countries, and Trump said Sunday that he’s heard from leaders “dying to make a deal”. A drop in tariffs relatively soon could help avoid a recession, but whether that can happen is still uncertain.

On Sunday Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he does not want markets to fall. But he also said he wasn’t concerned about a sell-off, claiming “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something”.

Trump has given several reasons for his stiff tariffs, including to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, which is a process that could take years. Trump on Sunday said he wanted to bring down the US' trade deficit: how much more the United States imports from other countries versus how much it sends to them.