In what some are calling a “Trump Dump,” financial analysts are blaming a recent downturn in the stock market on remarks from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. They say the slump is happening because Trump has leveled criticism at certain companies and sectors of the economy.
Writing for Fortune Magazine, a research group say they’ve detected a pattern of stock market moves that track with Trump’s public statements. The group is made up of Whitney Tilson, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, and Steven Tian.
While Trump has treated the stock market as a way to measure his own successes, they wrote, the candidate has a significant negative effect on the overall value of the market. They point to “40 record highs” that the market has achieved during the Biden presidency, and contrast that with what they say is Trump’s “profoundly negative” effect on the market and certain companies and industries.
When Trump recently took Taiwan to task for overtaking the U.S. computer chip manufacturing sector, there was a large stock sell-off for companies operating in that industry. During the same remarks, Trump said that Taiwan, which is trying to fend off a a feared invasion from mainland China, should pay the United States cash money to get its military protection.
Shortly after he made those statements, Taiwan Semiconductor lost 17 percent of its value compared to where it was in July. The researchers also note that the wider technology sector lost 10 percent of its value at the same time.
Trump has a history of making public statements about companies he’s not happy with, and those companies seem to lose market value every time he speaks out. While he was in office from 2016 to 2020, Trump had harsh words for motorcycle maker Harley Davidson and airline Delta, both of whom saw stock values plummet after his remarks.
The three analysts also say that Trump’s negativity on the so-called “green energy” sector is harming the companies that compose it. As an example, they point to the 10 percent decline experienced this year by iShares Global Clean Energy ETF.
