The Dow Jones Industrial Average took a huge hit on Friday after President Donald Trumpresponded to retaliatory tariffs imposed by China. Trump tweeted, “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China.”
The Dow dropped about 2%, or 700 points, after Trump posted a string of tweets claiming that the U.S. has lost “trillions” to China.
“Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China,” the first of four tweets said.
In an odd twist, Trump ordered companies to find “an alternative to China,” though presidents don’t have such a power.
He also ordered shipping companies FedEx, Amazon, UPS and USPS to search for and send back all packages from China containing the drug fentanyl, noting that China’s President Xi Jinping told him the shipments of fentanyl would stop.
Before the stock market opened on Friday, China had announced a retaliatory tariff that would affect around $75 billion on goods from the United States, which sparked Trump’s tweets.
Trump also mixed his rant about China with his attack on the Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell, tweeting “my only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi.”
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