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"I’m not sure we’re going to be liberated from all the uncertainty," investor worries Wall Street is desperate for clarity on tariffs as President Donald Trump prepares to lay out his “Liberation Day” trade strategy on Wednesday. “We need the rules of the game, but we don’t even know what the playing field is. Is it a soccer pitch, a basketball court or a ping pong table?” Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, told CNN in a phone interview.
Trade war fears and confusion have rocked markets for weeks. US stock futures are pointing to a modestly lower open on Wednesday, hours before Trump’s Rose Garden event on tariffs. “I’m not sure we’re going to be liberated from all the uncertainty,” Sonders said.
The Schwab executive said that even once the broad trade plan is announced, key questions will remain, including how consumers and businesses will react, what happens to inflation and what the Federal Reserve will do in response. Still, market veterans told CNN said that if Trump announces tariffs short of the worst-case 20% universal tariff, US stocks could experience a short-term relief rally. “Better or worse often matters more than good or bad when it comes to short-term market reactions,” Sonders said.
Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth Management, told CNN that Wall Street is bracing for a “sledgehammer, not a scalpel” on “Liberation Day.” He said investors have been frustrated by the “haphazard” way tariffs have been rolled out by Trump.
“It seems like they’re making the rules up as they go along, and that’s probably not far from reality,” Hogan said. China says Beijing would "counterattack" if the US continues to engage in tariffs-related "blackmail" Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in comments published Tuesday by state broadcaster CCTV that Beijing would “counterattack” if the US continues to engage in “blackmail” over tariffs. “’America First’ should not be American bullying, and it should not build its own interests on the basis of damaging the legitimate rights and interests of other countries,” he was quoted as telling RT, a state-owned Russian news group.
What to expect on "Liberation Day" For weeks, President Donald Trump has promoted April 2 as “Liberation Day” in America, when a number of massive tariffs will be announced to fulfill the administration’s ambitious economic agenda. Trump is set to unveil his tariff plan at 4 p.m.
ET on Wednesday in the first Rose Garden event of his second term, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. “This is obviously a very big day,” Leavitt said. “He is with his trade and tariff team right now, perfecting it to make sure this is a perfect deal for the American people and the American worker.
” Leavitt said it is ultimately up to Trump to decide what tariffs to impose. He and his advisers have contradicted themselves over the past days and weeks as they have tried to set expectations about what would be announced on April 2. “He has a brilliant team of trade advisers,” Leavitt said Monday, listing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, trade adviser Peter Navarro, senior aide Stephen Miller and Vice President JD Vance.
Markets are jittery ahead of tariff rollout President Donald Trump’s tariff proposals have kept investors in a cloud of uncertainty, and stocks after coming off a dismal first quarter . The S&P 500 fell 4.6% across the first quarter, recording its worst start to a year since 2022 and its worst quarter since September 2022.
The Nasdaq Composite fell 10.4% across the first quarter, posting its worst start to a year since 2020 and its worst quarter since June 2022. The US dollar index, which measures the dollar’s strength against six foreign currencies, is down almost 4% this year, its worst start to any year since 2016.
That’s because traders had expected Trump to usher in a pro-business boom, enabling the stock market to continue its historic run. But his commitment to an economic agenda that prioritizes tariffs has left investors perplexed. “The uncertainty level is still high, and nobody really knows what to expect,” said Thomas Martin, a senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments.
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