‘This is not good!’: Donald Trump blames Kamala Harris for US stock market dive

With the American stock market suffering its worst one-day fall in years and global markets faring even worse, one name keeps coming up.

Republicans in the United States are pinning the day’s disastrous stock market results on Donald Trump’s election opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and have labelled them the “Kamala Crash”.

Stock markets around the world have plummeted over the last 24 hours, with Wall Street suffering its worst day since 2022. The Dow fell by more than a thousand points, or 2.6 per cent, the S&P 500 by 3 per cent and the Nasdaq by 3.4 per cent.

The news was even worse in other parts of the world, with Japan’s Nikkei index diving by 12 per cent – its sharpest ever drop in a single day.

The global shudder in financial markets was sparked, primarily, by worse-than-expected job figures in the United States, whose unemployment rate rose to 4.3 per cent in July.

While that isn’t a terrible number by itself, absent of context, it does represent an unsettling increase from the 3.6 per cent rate America enjoyed at this time last year. That was roughly equivalent to what the country reported before Covid struck in 2020, and about as good an unemployment rate as it had registered since the late 1960s.

Other factors in the markets’ fall were concerns that the Federal Reserve, the American equivalent of our Reserve Bank, had acted too slowly on interest rates, and growing worries that investors’ bets on artificial intelligence would not pay off, given the failure of AI to generate profits thus far.

The US unemployment rate since 1990. The two biggest spikes came during Covid and the GFC. Picture: US Bureau of Labor Statistics

The movement of the Dow Jones index in recent history. You can see the current sharp downturn at the end. Again, the worst drop happened during Covid.

The subtext is a fear that the US might be heading towards a recession. Goldman Sachs bumped up its odds of that happening on Monday, putting the prospect of a recession in the next year at a one-in-four chance.

Those odds have risen 10 per cent since the latest US jobs report was published on Friday.

‘THIS IS NOT GOOD!’: Trump responds

Mr Trump, the Republican nominee for president, led his party in blaming Ms Harris, the Democratic nominee, and current President Joe Biden for the downturn.

“STOCK MARKETS CRASHING. I TOLD YOU SO!!! KAMALA DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE. BIDEN IS SOUND ASLEEP. ALL CAUSED BY INEPT US LEADERSHIP!” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“VOTERS HAVE A CHOICE – TRUMP PROSPERITY, OR THE KAMALA CRASH AND GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024, NOT TO MENTION THE PROBABILITY OF WORLD WAR III IF THESE VERY STUPID PEOPLE REMAIN IN OFFICE,” he added.

“REMEMBER, TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!!!”

Mr Trump claimed the markets would “NEVER accept the Radical Left Lunatic that DESTROYED San Francisco and California, as a whole”.

“Next move, THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024! You can’t play games with MARKETS. KAMALA CRASH!!!

“THIS IS NOT GOOD!!!”

For the sake of clarity, all the capitalisations above are Mr Trump’s, not mine.

“This is a preview of the world markets without Donald J. Trump in the White House. None of this happens if Trump is in,” he said.

“She’ll destroy the markets.”

Before the 2020 election, Mr Trump predicted the US economy would “go into a depression” if he lost to Mr Biden.

The Dow reached a peak of 34,503 during his presidency, in December of 2019. It peaked at 40,953 under Mr Biden, in December of 2021, and after today’s dive stands at 39,737.

Former president Donald Trump. Picture: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP

“People vote with their STOMACH, and food is now at an all time high because of Kamabla/Biden INCOMPETENCE,” Mr Trump wrote in another post.

“With them in charge, IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE!

“Kamabla has stated, over and over again, that she wants to DEFUND THE POLICE AND, WITHOUT QUESTION, BAN FRACKING. NO MORE FOSSIL FUEL. This will quadruple the cost of energy in America! DEPRESSION ANYONE!”

Ms Harris has backflipped on that pledge to ban fracking, which she made while trying to endear herself to the left flank for the Democratic Party during her failed 2020 presidential campaign. Now that she needs to win Pennsylvania, with its particularly large fracking industry, she has jettisoned the commitment. Cynically, it might be said.

It is as yet unclear whether Mr Trump’s repeated misspelling of her name as “Kamabla” was intentional or just a typo. He has been workshopping potential nicknames in recent weeks, but “Lyin’ Kamala” and “Laughin’ Kamala” didn’t seem to catch on.

‘Resign’: Conservatives unleash on Harris

Stephen Miller, a top political and policy adviser in Mr Trump’s White House during his first term, was also among those piling pressure on Ms Harris today.

“Kamala must hold a press conference or resign,” Mr Miller said.

“If she can’t answer a single question about an economic emergency she can’t be VP or POTUS.”

Stephen Miller. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

Kamala Harris. Picture: Elijah Nouvelage/AFP

Fox Business host Stuart Varney said the stock market results were a sign that “Wall Street doesn’t want to hear about tax hikes on corporations or the repeal of Trump’s tax cuts”.

“So here we are in white-knuckle territory,” said Mr Varney.

“The Federal Reserve is being hammered for not cutting rates, AI looks like a bubble that’s bursting. And the 162 million Americans who have a stake in the stock market are looking at a cut in their net worth. So when does the selling stock stop?”

He said the current slowdown “points to recession” and America’s housing market, in particular, was in “deep trouble”.

His Fox Business colleague Neil Cavuto, meanwhile, focused on Mr Trump’s claims about the state of the stock market.

“The Donald Trump thing and the market amazes me,” Mr Cavuto said.

“When they’re up, it’s all because of him, and they’re looking forward to him. When they’re down, it’s all because of the Democrats and how horrific they are.

“Yet, of our biggest point falloffs, three of the biggest top ten occurred during his administration. Now, a lot of those were in the Covid years. Get that. But you know, you either own the markets or you don’t. It does confuse me.”

Mr Trump speaking at the Republican National Convention last month. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

Earlier this year, in healthier times, Mr Trump explained the stock market’s rise to record-breaking levels by saying investors thought he would win the November election.

“They think I’m going to be elected,” he told Fox Business.

“If you take a look at Iowa, if you take a look at New Hampshire. The stock market has been going crazy since then.

“And long before then, when I announced I was running, I took the lead early, and I beat everybody.”

Mr Trump was referring to his victories in the early Republican primaries.

Originally published as ‘This is not good!’: Donald Trump blames Kamala Harris for US stock market dive