Trump's tariff tweets tank markets, and maybe the economy

No sooner had President Trump helped reinvigorate a badly listing stock market by finally talking nice about trade with China than he utterly ruined it by pronouncing himself “Tariff Man” in an astonishingly wrongheaded tweet.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 800 points (3.1 percent) for the day, almost entirely in response to Trump brandishing his trade-warrior regalia by saying that trade amounts to foreigners “raid[ing] the great wealth of our Nation.”