Nobody’s surprised anymore that financial markets are throwing such a fit over Donald Trump’s tariffs. If you think about it, this is the most natural, most rational response to the realisation that global trade is being forced back to the hyper protectionist madness of a century ago; whose endgame intensified the greatest depression on record.

What is surprising, however, is that it took markets this long to wake up to the reality of Donald Trump’s world view. The sharp downturn in US equities, triggered by sweeping tariffs and mounting investor anxiety, has now debunked—perhaps permanently—the myth of the so-called “Trump put”.

The term itself was always a stretch—an attempt by Wall Street to impose a familiar logic onto a figure who has never shown much regard for economic orthodoxy.

The “Trump put” was modelled on the well-known “Fed put,” which refers to the belief that the US Federal Reserve will intervene to prop up markets when needed, typically by cutting interest rates or injecting liquidity. Trump, according to this logic, would similarly never let the markets fall too far, if only because he views, or at least viewed, the stock market as a referendum on his leadership.

But this interpretation was willfully blind to what Trump has always made abundantly clear: his economic instincts are not driven by market efficiency or global integration, but by protectionism, bilateralism, and a deeply transactional, even greedy view of trade.

During both his 2016 and 2024 campaigns, Trump made no secret of his disdain for multilateral trade agreements, his suspicion of global supply chains, and his preference for tariffs as a tool of statecraft.

That his supporters on Wall Street clung to the idea of the Trump put says more about their own wishful........

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