S&P 500 · April 3, 2025

The day after the tariffs were announced

-4.84%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The 2025 tariff shock

near the end of it · 2025-02-19 → 2025-04-08, -18.90% over the whole period

What happened that day?

The S&P 500 fell 4.84% on the day
The day before, the US had announced tariffs across its trading partners. Rates differed by country and the scale was larger than expected
What startled the market was less the rates than how they were calculated. They were set from trade deficits, which is hard to explain in economic terms
If you cannot read the rule, you cannot predict the next move. Companies were left unable to decide where to move their supply chains
Tariffs raise prices while lowering growth — the combination that leaves a central bank unsure which to address
The decline ran to 8 April, and the next day's 90-day pause produced one of the largest gains on record

Sources

Every figure on this page is recomputed from the original daily closing prices and checked against them at build time. The account of what happened is written from the sources listed above.