Stock market skyrockets as White House hypes promising trade deals (2025)

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The stock marketis rallying as the White Housetalks up the potential for trade deals with over 100 countries that could settle escalating tariff wars.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2 percent Tuesday afternoon, about the same about as the broader S&P 500, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told investors about the potential to lower the temperature with China.

'No one thinks the current status quo is sustainable,' he said. President Trump slapped tariffs totaling 145 percent on the world's Number Two economic power, and China has hit back with a 125% tariff on U.S. products.

Although the administration has yet to announce any trade deals since Trump imposed his 'Liberation Day' tariffs April 2, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she spoke to the president on the state of play.

'There is a lot of progress being made,' she said Tuesday. 'We now have 18 proposals on paper that have been brought to the trade team.'

Leavitt said the 'entire trade team' was 'meeting with 34 countries this week alone. We are moving at Trump speed to ensure these deals are made on behalf of the American worker and the American people.'

The market rebound came after a jarring Wall Street Journal headline proclaimed 'Dow Heads for Worst April Since 1932.'

Some of those losses came Monday after Trump tore into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who he is pressuring to lower interest rates that have climbed amid the trade war, which also includes a 10 percent across-the-board tariff that Trump imposed on imports, plus tariffs on Canada and Mexico and individual tariffs on more than 60 countries that Trump paused after a steep market drop.

Trump fumed at Powell online, posting: 'Jerome Powell of the Fed, who is always too late and wrong, yesterday issued a report which was another, and typical, complete 'mess!'

'With these costs trending so nicely downward, just what I predicted they would do, there can almost be no inflation, but there can be a SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, now,' Trump wrote.

Leavitt fielded a question about Trump economic advisor Kevin Hassett, who in 2022 called the independence of the Fed 'super important.' Powell's term is not up until next year.

'I think the President has made his position on the Fed and on Powell very clea. President believes that they have been making moves and taking action in the name of politics, rather in the name of what's right for the American economy. President has the right to expect express his displeasure as a fed and he has the right to say he believes interest rates should be lower.

She also flagged Vice President JD Vance's meeting Monday with Indian PM Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

Modi's office said they 'reviewed and positively assessed the progress in various areas of bilateral cooperation' and that they 'welcomed the significant progress' in trade negotiations.

Leavitt called the announced 'terms of reference' a 'big deal.'

But she also called them 'essentially a framework to move the ball forward,' and complained that India had been 'ripping off the United States and American workers for a very long time.'

'I believe there is much that India and America can accomplish together,' Vance said on a trip to Jaipur that included his wife Usha and three children.

Donald TrumpWhite HouseChinaPolitics

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