The White House on Monday downplayed the weeks long stock market sell-off, insisting that recent moves by business leaders suggest a brighter outlook for the U.S. economy.
“We’re seeing a strong divergence between animal spirits of the stock market and what we’re actually seeing unfold from businesses and business leaders,” a White House official told reporters Monday afternoon.
“The latter is obviously more meaningful than the former on what’s in store for the economy in the medium to long term,” said the official, who was granted anonymity.
In economics, the term “animal spirits” is used to describe situations where human emotions, rather than pure logic, dictate investors’ decisions.
The White House appeared to be using the term to suggest that the sell-off was being driven by irrational fears and negativity.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 900 points Monday and the Nasdaq clocked its worst session since 2022, while the S&P 500 lost 2.7%.
The dismal trading day extended and intensified a sell-off that has now entered its third week.
But experts pointed to several factors driving investors to shed stock, chief among them, massive 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. President Donald Trump imposed and then paused these tariffs last month, only to re-impose and partially pause them again last week.
Compounding the uncertainty around Trump’s trade policy are the mass firings of thousands of federal employees, an effort being overseen by billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk.
The result was an abrupt reversal of the aggressive optimism and high risk tolerance that helped drive huge market gains late last year.
“You’ve certainly seen some of the animal spirits that were fueling the stock market rally in the fall fading,” said Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and trade at the libertarian CATO Institute.
“Folks are now looking more at downside risks, at potential higher prices, and also just all the uncertainty,” Lincicome said in a recent interview with CNBC.
“And that, I think, can be directly traced back to the president.”
Trump, for his part, has largely stopped pointing to financial markets as barometers of the nation’s economic health, something he regularly did during his first term in office.
Instead, the White House has touted a series of recent commitments from business leaders to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. in the coming years.
Some of the biggest such pledges have come from Apple, which announced a $500 billion investment plan, Softbank, TSMC, and Eli Lilly.
In a separate statement on Monday afternoon, White House spokesman Kush Desai said those industry leaders were responding to Trump’s election victory and enthusiasm for his economic agenda.
“President Trump delivered historic job, wage, and investment growth in his first term, and is set to do so again in his second term,” said Desai.
