Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday blamed Vice President Kamala Harris for the stock market’s dramatic plunge, months after claiming she deserved credit for the stock market’s then-record rally.
“Of course there is a huge market downturn. Kamala is even worse than Crooked Joe,” Trump wrote in a post on Truly Social about Harris, the de facto Democratic presidential nominee.
The night before, as Asian markets plummeted, the former president wrote: “THE FINANCIAL STOCKS ARE DOWN. I TOLD YOU SO!!! KAMALA HAS NO CLUE. BIDEN IS FAR ASLEEPER. IT’S ALL CAUSED BY OUR INCOMPETENT LEADERSHIP!”
US stocks fell sharply on Monday, apparently in reaction to recession fears fueled in part by Friday’s weaker-than-expected jobs report.
But in January, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 hit record highs, Trump said the surge was because investors believed he would beat President Joe Biden.
“THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD INVESTORS PREDICT I WILL WIN,” he wrote on Truth Social that month.
The Harris campaign pushed back Monday with its own attack on Trump’s financial record.
“Donald Trump had the worst jobs record of any modern president and oversaw some of the worst stock market days in history while spending his presidency lining the pockets of his rich friends who were shipping American jobs overseas,” the spokesman said. campaign Harris, Amar Musa. in a statement. “What middle-class families need is solid financial management, not chaotic lies.”
Trump’s comments reflect the political risk of tying a campaign to ever-changing market behavior, Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi told CNBC.
“Throughout history, I think politicians have shied away from trying to pledge their wealth to the stock market as a token of their policies or whatever, because the market goes up and down everywhere,” Zandi said.
“Former President Trump is the first to do it,” Zandi added. “I’m confused about this.”
When Trump was president in March 2020, the S&P 500 experienced several sharp declines, including a 12% plunge on March 16, 2020, as fears of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States grew. This was one of the worst declines in S&P history.
The former president has lost his lead in the polls since Biden dropped out of the race in July and endorsed Harris to be the Democratic nominee.
ONE CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday found Harris one percentage point ahead of Trump with likely voters in a matchup, a lead that is within the survey’s margin of error. The poll involved 3,102 registered voters from Tuesday to Friday.
As Harris rides that early surge of support, Trump is working to tie her candidacy to the record of Biden, whom some voters blame for their high cost of living.
Trump, as a result, tried to spin Monday’s market crash and the ensuing recessionary panic into a larger case against Harris’ economic record.
But Zandi said markets are in correction territory and that Monday’s decline did not necessarily reflect the broader economic downturn that Trump described on social media.
“The stock market, based on my experience, could end up in the green by the end of the day,” Zandi said, noting that the market is still bullish for the year.
“Well, I would say, what recession?”
The Harris campaign, when asked to comment on Trump’s posts, pointed to a campaign speech the vice president gave last week in Atlanta.
Trump “is going to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations. He’s going to destroy our investments in clean energy jobs. He’s going to end the Affordable Care Act,” Harris said in that speech.
“To take us back to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with pre-existing conditions,” the vice president said.
“Kids remember what that was? Children with asthma. Breast cancer survivors. Grandparents with diabetes. Georgia, America has tried these failed policies before and we’re not going back. We’re not going back. We’re not going back.”
— Additional reporting from CNBC Kevin Breuninger.
