U.S. President Donald Trump meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the White House on April 17, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)
President Donald Trump continues to insist that his steep new tariffs will lead to a manufacturing renaissance in the United States and an era of widespread prosperity. But Wall Street is not responding favorably to either Trump's tariffs or his call for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to be fired.
Early Tuesday morning, April 22, MSNBC and other major media outlets reported that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was taking yet another nosedive. Moreover, some Wall Street insiders fear that Trump's economic policies could weaken the U.S. dollar.
MSNBC's Willie Geist discussed Wall Street's worries with CNBC financial correspondent Dominic Chu on the morning program "Morning Joe," noting the Wall Street Journal headline, "Dow Headed for Worst April Since 1932."
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Chu told Geist and "Morning Joe" host Mika Brzezinski, "So basically what we have is a situation where, over the course of the last several weeks, there's been an evolving narrative, if you will, right? We talked about this notion that with new policies, especially on the tariff front, what you have is a new degree of uncertainty brought to global markets, global trade that then manifests itself in the way that markets have reacted with some of that downside volatility. Now, I remember, over the course of the last few weeks, having this conversation kind of around the lead up to that so-called Liberation Day in the tariff announcement about the stabilization factor of the U.S. market and the U.S. economy."
Chu continued, "Over the course of the last several decades, the American economy and the markets, the capital markets, have been seen as a stabilizing force within the global economy and the global market — one that you can turn to no matter what, in good times and in bad. That narrative has shifted a little bit more. It started off a little bit more along the lines of: Can you still trust the U.S. dollar?"
The CNBC correspondent stressed that the U.S. dollar is still a reserve currency but noted that some Wall Street insiders are expressing concerns about the dollar's future.
Chu told Geist and "Morning Joe" host Mika Brzezinski, "In no way is anybody out there saying that the U.S. dollar is still not a reserve currency. There is in no way anybody saying that the U.S. Treasury market is not the place that you want to be. But when you have a possible paradigm shift, a change in thinking about the way that the dollar is valued and viewed in the global market — the way that our sovereign bonds, the U.S. Treasury market, is viewed in the market — that shift or potential shift is enough to have traders and investors, not just here in America, but around the world, questioning whether or not you have to change the way that you think about it."
Watch the full video below or at this link.