Photo of Wall Street (Matteo Colombo/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Stocks slid on Monday morning in the first trading session since President Donald Trump announced a new 15% tariff on most imported goods, intensifying his effort to impose levies that were struck down by the Supreme Court.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 90 points, or 0.1%, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.1%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 0.1%.
Cryptocurrency prices tumbled in early trading on Monday. The price of bitcoin fell nearly 2%, putting it at about $66,075.
Gold prices jumped to their highest level in three weeks as investors sought the safe-heaven asset amid heightened uncertainty.
In a social media post on Monday, Trump reiterated his criticism of the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court, Trump said, “accidentally and unwittingly gave me, as President of the United States, far more powers and strength than I had prior.”
Trump retains the power to levy a 15% tariff for up to 150 days under the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to address trade disparities with other countries.
Hours after the Supreme Court ruling on Friday, Trump said he would sign an executive order enacting a new 10% “global tariff,” invoking authority under Section 122. On Saturday, Trump escalated the tariff to 15%.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, February 20, 2026. (Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A 10% global tariff took effect on Tuesday, marking the first duty enacted by President Donald Trump after a recent Supreme Court decision invalidated most of his levies.
Within hours of the high court’s ruling on Friday, Trump signed an executive order imposing a 10% tariff on nearly all imports for up to 150 days. The directive called for enforcement of the duty to begin at 12:01 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Feb. 24.
Soon after signing the order, Trump vowed to hike the global tariff to 15%. As of Tuesday, however, the president had not issued an executive order formalizing that increase.
Stocks ticked higher Tuesday morning, recovering some of the losses suffered a day earlier in the first trading session since Trump announced the tariff increase.
Trump enacted the 10% tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the White House to address “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficits, or disparities between a country’s total payments in transactions with other nations and its total earnings.
Under the measure, the president can also impose levies to “prevent an imminent and significant depreciation of the dollar.”
The Section 122 tariffs will result in price increases amounting to $800 in additional costs for an average U.S. household over the next 150 days, the Yale Budget Lab projected. In order to extend the across-the-board 15% tariff beyond that time window, Trump would need to secure Congressional approval.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday that Democrats would oppose an extension of Section 122 tariffs, which could deny Trump the 60 votes necessary to overcome a potential Senate filibuster.
In a social media post on Monday, Trump affirmed what he said was his authority to issue tariffs, saying he does not need to consult Congress before erecting new trade levies.
Trump also reiterated his commitment to his policy approach, warning other countries that they may face a “much higher Tariff, and worse.”
The high court ruled in their February 20 decision that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEPPA) does not authorize Trump to impose levies, nullifying a major swathe of tariffs issued by the president on April 2 of last year, which he dubbed “Liberation Day,” and a host of other measures.
If the Supreme Court had opted to uphold tariffs issued under IEPPA, the nation’s effective tariff rate would have remained at 16%, the Yale Budget Lab said. Taking into account the Section 122 tariffs, the effective tariff rate now stands at 13.7%, the group said.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell attends a press conference in Washington, D.C., the United States, April 29, 2026. (Photo by Li Rui/Xinhua via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A global pandemic that put millions of Americans out of work within days. The highest inflation in four decades. An unprecedented federal criminal investigation.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell faced a succession of crises over his 8-year tenure atop the central bank, which ends on Friday. Powell’s decisions along the way held stakes as concrete as the budgets of everyday Americans and as heady as the political independence of a pillar institution.
President Donald Trump’s Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh is set to take the helm, inheriting a resilient economy by some measures, though one suffering from a renewed bout of inflation.
Powell said last month that he would take the unusual step of staying on at the central bank’s 12-person board of governors after his term expires. The move grants Powell a role in interest-rate policy that could last until 2028, though he says he will step down once a Fed inspector general’s investigation into a renovation of the central bank headquarters is closed.
The transition offers an opportunity to look back at Powell’s tenure, which spanned two presidents, three Treasury secretaries and 66 interest-rate decisions.
“You don’t choose your challenges, but you do choose how you respond,” Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors and a former Fed official, told ABC News. “In the end, Powell’s legacy will be judged by those outcomes.”
When Trump nominated Powell to become Fed chair, Trump described him as a “consensus builder” who “understands what it takes for our economy to grow.”
Powell, a former investment banker and Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush, assumed the role in 2018. At the time, the economy was humming, the unemployment rate clocked in at a historically low level and inflation stood just a tick above the Fed’s target rate of 2%.
Powell hiked interest rates four times in his first year, putting strain on the stock market but leaving the Fed in position to stimulate the economy with rate cuts in the event of a slowdown. Policymakers wouldn’t have to wait long.
In the early months of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put tens of millions of Americans into lockdown, halting business across industries like restaurants and hospitality, while putting a large swathe of the labor force out of work.
At an emergency meeting in March 2020, Powell slashed interest rates to near-zero levels in an effort to stimulate a battered economy.
“Families, businesses, schools, organizations, and governments at all levels are taking steps to protect people’s health. These measures, which are essential for containing the outbreak, will nonetheless understandably take a toll on economic activity in the near term,” Powell told reporters at the time.
The unemployment rate soared from 4.4% in March to 14.7% in April, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed.
To supercharge the recovery, Trump and President Joe Biden enacted economic stimulus meant to support people who’d lost their jobs or faced other hardship. Alongside low interest rates, that spending helped bring about a speedy economic recovery from the downturn.
The COVID-19 recession lasted only two months, making it the shortest in U.S. history, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The speedy recovery vindicated the Fed’s decision to slash interest rates, though it hadn’t been a particularly difficult choice, Alan Blinder, a professor of economics at Princeton University and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, told ABC News.
“The dropping of rates to the floor was both necessary and appropriate, and in a real sense, obvious,” Blinder said.
A bout of acute inflation soon took hold, however, emerging as a result of a supply shortage imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by the Russia-Ukraine war. Powell initially downplayed the price increases, describing them as “transitory.” It proved a consequential mistake — and Powell would later admit his error.
Annual inflation peaked at a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022. By then, Powell had begun to ratchet up interest rates and it would continue over the following year. The aggressive series of rate hikes put the central bank’s benchmark rate at its highest level since 2001. The move sent mortgage and credit card rates soaring.
By June 2023, annual inflation had plummeted to 3%, but Americans remained widely dissatisfied with price increases long afterward. Many economists forecast a recession and the type of job losses it typically entails. Fortunately, the downturn never came to pass.
“Inflation stayed high for too long but once it came down, it came down really fast. It came down without creating unnecessary pain in the labor market,” Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told ABC News.
In September 2024, less than two months before the presidential election, the Fed cut interest rates by 0.5%. The decision drew criticism from allies of Trump, who considered the move a potential boost for the economy that would benefit incumbent Democrats. Trump went on to win the election.
Within weeks of his return to the White House, in early 2025, Trump voiced public criticism of Powell, urging him to cut interest rates. The attacks intensified criticism of Powell that had begun in Trump’s first term.
Over the ensuing months, Trump began to slam Powell for cost overruns in a renovation project at the Fed’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Last July, Trump made the first official trip to the Fed by a sitting president in almost 20 years, donning a hard hat as he toured the renovation with Powell.
The Fed attributed spending overruns to unforeseen cost increases, saying that its building renovation would ultimately “reduce costs over time by allowing the Board to consolidate most of its operations,” according to the central bank’s website.
By January, the Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation into Powell, ratcheting up an extraordinary clash between the White House and the Fed. It was the first criminal probe of a Fed chair in the 113-year history of the central bank.
The probe centered on Powell’s testimony to Congress last year about the cost overruns. Powell issued a rare video message rebuking the investigation as a politically motivated effort to influence the Fed’s interest rate policy.
“No one — certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve — is above the law,” Powell said. “But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.”
Trump previously denied any involvement in the criminal investigation. The DOJ moved to drop its criminal probe into Powell last month. Washington U.S. Attorney Jeaninne Pirro said the investigation into the office renovation would be taken up by the Fed’s inspector general.
“The attack on the Fed chair was appalling,” Rebel Cole, a professor of finance at Florida Atlantic University who formerly worked at the Federal Reserve, told ABC News. “Powell stood up to it.”
Warsh, a former Fed official, will serve a 4-year term as chair. He is set to lead the Fed in a challenging period for central bank policymakers.
Inflation rose for a second consecutive month as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran continued to send gasoline prices surging in April, government data on Tuesday showed. Annual inflation jumped to its highest level in three years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Despite the disruption, some measures of economic health have proven resilient.
The unemployment rate held steady at a historically low level of 4.3% in April, leaving it little changed from when Powell began his tenure in 2018.
“The economy is pretty good but far from perfect,” Blinder said, faulting Powell in part for elevated inflation, while attributing much of the blame to the Iran war. At the same time, Blinder praised Powell for his commitment to the independence of the Fed.
“That’s the legacy that Warsh is inheriting,” Blinder said.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Stocks tumbled in early trading on Monday as oil prices soared above $100 per barrel in response to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 720 points, or 1.5%, while the S&P 500 dropped 1.3%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 1.2%.
Indexes fell worldwide on Monday as the spike in oil prices rippled through global markets. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index plunged 5.2%, while pan-European STOXX 600 index slipped 1.7%.
Oil prices soared as traders feared a prolonged blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a trading route that facilitates the transport of about one-fifth of the global oil supply.
U.S. crude oil prices topped $100 per barrel on Monday, marking a staggering 54% increase since late last month.
Oil prices climbed as high as nearly $120 per barrel overnight, but retreated after the Financial Times reported Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers would meet to discuss a possible coordinated release from their respective strategic petroleum reserves.
The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. soared to $3.47 on Monday from $2.99 a week earlier, AAA said.
In a social media post on Sunday night, President Donald Trump downplayed the rise in oil prices.
“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” Trump said.
Soon after the war with Iran began on Feb. 28, U.S.-Israeli forces killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran. His son Mojtaba Khamenei was chosen on Sunday to succeed him.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
