How a game of broken telephone added then subtracted $4 trillion in market value
The news may have been fake, but the market’s desire for tariff relief is very, very real.
President Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, appeared on Fox News on Monday morning and said nothing particularly remarkable. Then the stock market ripped, adding roughly $4 trillion in value, before giving it back.
Markets reacted to a headline that appeared on Bloomberg terminals, X, and other forums where investors have been watching the value of stocks sink as Trump’s tariff policy threatens to upend global trade and push the US economy into a recession. The alert — which according to 404 Media originated from Benzinga, leaning on misquotes of Hassett on X — said: “HASSETT: TRUMP IS CONSIDERING A 90-DAY PAUSE IN TARIFFS FOR ALL COUNTRIES EXCEPT CHINA”
Often headlines for important, fast-moving news will appear on Bloomberg terminals or other market data services first before details are available. (Misattributing the sourcing of this headline amid the frenzy was something our markets editor dropped the ball on, too.)
Eager for good news, traders (and algorithms set up to respond to headlines) bought back stocks, temporarily erasing some of the heavy losses global markets have withstood since “Liberation Day.” The problem was, the administration hadn’t actually budged on tariffs.
When asked by Fox News if the president would consider a 90-day pause, Hassett responded, “I think the president is going to decide what the president is going to decide.” Somehow that was misconstrued, more than an hour after the interview, to mean tariff relief is on the table.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNBC the headline going around was “fake news,” a term Trump’s camp uses often but was unusually appropriate today.
The headline spread like wildfire on X, where it was picked up by a class of day trader accounts that tweet breaking news headlines, usually from real news sources, but don’t include attribution or a link. One of them, who goes by the name Walter Bloomberg, has been catching some of the flack for the mistake and said they got the headline from Reuters.
the most remarkable thing about this clip is that, in this moment of massive volatility, CNBC was fine with running with speculative language about a Hassett quote they couldn't source. "I think we can run with this headline," "we'll try and source that exactly" — huh! https://t.co/8Uju01mGZO
— Corbin Bolies (@CorbinBolies) April 7, 2025
A spokesperson for Reuters told Sherwood News that its headline was “drawing from a headline on CNBC.” The network did run that headline on air, but its unclear if it was drawing from its own newsroom’s reporting or if it was the same headline everyone else was fooled by.
“Reuters has withdrawn the incorrect report and regrets its error,” the spokesperson said. Comcast, which owns CNBC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment but confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that it ran “unconfirmed information in a banner” on air.
The finger-pointing over who’s responsible for the $4 trillion screwup will likely continue, but one thing it did make clear amid the chaos and confusion is that investors desperately want relief from tariffs, and any easing on those import taxes stands to reverse some of the stock market’s hefty losses.
