Former President Donald Trump laid blame for poor stock market performance on the current administration, despite previously taking credit for record highs under President Joe Biden‘s leadership.
Global shares began collapsing at the end of last week when investors grew alarmed at the prospect of a U.S. recession. A U.S. Labor Department report released on Friday showed American employers added 114,000 jobs, a significant drop from the 179,000 in June.
Japanese stocks on its main benchmark Nikkei index fell sharply on Monday following the release of weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs data, and shares on the London Stock Exchange suffered the worst drop in more than a year. CBOE Options Exchange’s volatility index jumped more than 30 points to 53.55, the highest level since late March 2020.
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In the wake of the news, Trump posted on Truth Social: “STOCK MARKETS CRASHING. I TOLD YOU SO!!! KAMALA DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE. BIDEN IS SOUND ASLEEP. ALL CAUSED BY INEPT U.S. LEADERSHIP!”
In a following post, he said the market downturn was because of Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee running against him in the November presidential election.
“Of course there is a massive market downturn. Kamala is even worse than Crooked Joe. Markets will NEVER accept the Radical Left Lunatic that DESTROYED San Francisco and California, as a whole,” he wrote. “Next move, THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024! You can’t play games with MARKETS. KAMALA CRASH!!!”
In January, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased to 38,000 for the first time after a 1,000-point jump in 40 days, Trump posted: “THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN, AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP.”
Newsweek has contacted Trump’s campaign team for comment via email outside of normal working hours.
An X, formerly Twitter, account for Biden’s abandoned 2024 campaign—renamed Kamala HQ—posted a clip of Trump from a rally in which he says: “If Biden wins, you’re gonna have a stock market collapse the likes of which you’ve never had.”
It is followed by a separate image of a post made by Trump on Truth Social that says: “THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET.”
The Biden campaign post reads: “Right: Trump in 2020 claiming the stock market will collapse if President Biden wins. Left: Trump today desperately trying to take credit for the stock market hitting record highs under President Biden.”