How did Trump tariff pause misinformation cause trillion-dollar market moves?

Rumors spread that the Trump administration's mutual tariff policy, the so-called 'Trump tariffs,' would be temporarily suspended, causing trillions of dollars of market fluctuations in just two hours. As a result, this rumor was wrong, but the public broadcaster NPR reports on what happened.

How a false post on X about tariffs swung the stock market : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/07/nx-s1-5355055/tariffs-markets-x-social-media

The trigger was a 'FOX News' broadcast on the morning of Monday, April 7, 2025 (local time). When asked by host Brian Kilmeade, 'Would President Trump consider a 90-day suspension of tariffs?', National Economic Council Chairman Kevin Hassett avoided a direct answer, saying, 'I think it's up to the president to decide what to do.'

Trump administration official refuses to deny 90-day suspension of tariff measures | NHK | America
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20250407/k10014772901000.html

KILMEADE: Would Trump consider a 90 days pause in tariffs?

HASSETT: I think the president is gonna decide what the president is gonna decide ... even if you think there will be some negative effect from the trade side, that's still a small share of GDP pic.twitter.com/3KymvgOwQG

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 7, 2025

Hassett never said 'we will pause' or 'we won't pause,' but the message was spread on Twitter (formerly Twitter) in a different form, saying, 'We are considering a 90-day pause on tariffs on all products except China.' According to NPR, verified accounts started spreading the information, leading to news outlets like Reuters and CNBC reporting on the information.

The following post was made by journalist Aaron Ruper. It shows that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has turned positive after CNBC reported that 'Hassett is considering suspending tariffs on all goods except China.'

the Dow turns positive as CNBC talks about reporting that Kevin Hassett is saying Trump is considering a 90 day pause on tariffs for all countries other than China pic.twitter.com/ODJOsGVqWU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 7, 2025

CNN reporter Vanessa Yurkevich reported from the scene, saying, ' Cheering erupted as stock indexes, which had been recovering from early morning lows, soared .'

In addition, 'tariff suspension' was pushed to the top of the trending list by an account called 'Walter Bloomberg' on X, which has 850,000 followers and spreads news headlines, though it is not related to the famous business newspaper Bloomberg. As a result, analysts commenting live on CNBC saw the trend and started talking about 'tariff suspension.'

As a result of this information, the stock market moved by $2.4 trillion (about 354 trillion yen) in just 10 minutes from 10:08 to 10:18 a.m.

However, the false information has been denied by the White House, Reuters and CNBC have retracted their reports, and Walter Bloomberg has deleted the post in question.

'Social media, and X in particular, is designed to allow rumors to spread quickly and corrections to come much later. The origins of particular claims are often hard to pinpoint and they're also hard to verify. And changes to account verification implemented after the acquisition by Elon Musk make it harder for people to know which accounts to trust for what information,' Kate Starbird of the University of Washington, who studies fake news, told NPR.