Over the last year, while President Joe Biden was in office, Trump took credit for stock market rallies as a vote of confidence in his electoral prospects. When the market dipped, he blamed Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. And he predicted that if Democrats won the 2024 presidential election, the stock market would have crashed.

Second, the U.S. stock market recovered remarkably quickly from the tariffs imposed during the first Trump administration. Specifically, while the S&P 500 declined 19.8% over a three-month period between September and December 2018, the index had already recouped its losses and reached a new high by May 2019.

Donald Trump never told voters there might be a recession on the road to his new “golden age.” The president’s refusal – twice – to rule out an economic contraction this year set off a stock market plunge on Monday that hammered Americans’ retirement accounts.