The misleading news headlines that President Donald Trump claimed that his sweeping 90-day suspension of tariffs caused a brief surge on Monday fell apart when the White House denied the report.
The bill spread rapidly on social media, creating an estimated $2.4 trillion (2.2 trillion euros) at market value before being wiped out in just a few minutes.
The rumor appears to stem from a Fox News interview with White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Monday at 8:30pm (2:30pm).
When asked whether his administration would “consider” a “90-day suspension” with tariffs, Hassett replied, “I think the president will decide what the president will decide.”
“There are over 50 countries in negotiations with the president,” he added.
These comments were reported to be misleading as indicating that the Trump administration is actively considering such a suspension.
The first report detected by Euroverify is xPost It is published by an account named Hammer Capital, with just 800 followers, about two hours after Hassett’s interview.
Later that day, a now-deleted X post by “Walter Bloomberg” claimed that Trump “considered a 90-day suspension of tariffs in all countries except China.” Reuters quote.
Both of these X accounts have a blue verification “The” on X, but are not linked to established media or considered stock traders.
On CNBC, the stock can dramatically rebound, as anchor Carl Quintanira says in the air.
A Reuters headline read Wednesday, when Euroverify saw it, “reverses the course after comments on the suspension of customs duties in Hassett.”
Both Reuters and CNBC have issued corrections.
“We were following the news of market movements in real time, and we aired unconfirmed information on the banner. Reporters quickly corrected it in the air,” a CNBC spokesperson said in a statement.
White House denied the report and overturned the market
US Government X Account issued statement News reports say it’s “wrong.” In a video of Hassett’s original statement.
White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt called the report “fake news.”
This caused the rapid profit to evaporate in a few minutes.
In this news, Dow Jones Industrial Arage previously wiped out a loss of 1,700 points, shooting over 800, returning to a loss of 629 points.
The incident shows market vulnerability to fake news
Whatever the origins of the fake reporting, this episode has reminded me of how vulnerable the stock market has become to false news headlines.
In 2013, the official AP Twitter account was hacked and falsely posted that then-President Barack Obama was injured, falsely claiming there had been an explosion in the White House.
It caused a drop of nearly 150 points on the Dow Jones industrial average.
Two years later, Twitter was renamed X after being renamed X by South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, but it won over 8% of the shares after claiming that a fake story emulating the format of Bloomberg News has been awarded a $31 billion (34 billion euros) acquisition offer.
