Wall Street did its best this week to look past the tariff chaos unleashed by President Donald Trump. It wasn’t enough. Stocks were under pressure early Friday after Trump posted a letter to Canada on social media announcing a 35% tariff on Canadian imports into the U.S. The move will pull the S & P 500 and Nasdaq from the record levels reached Thursday. On top of that, Trump told NBC News that he would send a letter to the European Union, though it wasn’t clear if that would include a new tariff rate on European products or just a progress update. “Trump has been unleashing fresh tariff chaos all week with a series of ‘letters,'” wrote Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge. “As has been the case since January, the entire situation remains extremely fluid, and nothing is as it seems.” Indeed, Trump this week has sent letters to dozens of countries imposing tariffs that will go into effect in August. Vietnam, one of the countries that received a letter, was caught off guard by the tariff rate, according to a Bloomberg News report . For the most part, though, the market has been able to look past the tariff turmoil. The S & P 500 entered Friday’s session flat for the week after posting a marginal new all-time high on Thursday. .SPX mountain 2025-07-07 SPX this week Some on the Street expect the market to weather the tariff storm and continue moving higher. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America both raised their year-end S & P 500 targets this week. Thorne Perkin, president of Papamarkou Wellner Perkin, told me this week he sees the S & P 500 climbing to 6,700 — up 6% from Thursday’s close. “One thing to note, the stock market has demonstrated tremendous resiliency,” Perkin said. “It’s like every year the market has had to kind of deal with a real [wall of worry], and it just, it keeps bouncing back. … Markets typically bottom on bad news, and we’ve endured a lot of bad news with tariff policy headlines this year.” Stocks have staged a sharp rally off the post “liberation day” lows to make their way back to record highs. Since April 8, the S & P 500 is up 26%. However, Vital Knowledge’s Crisafulli thinks the market could be setting itself up for trouble. “Our view remains that markets are extremely complacent in light of all the tariff uncertainty, although (for now) investors are likely to continue shrugging off Trump’s bombastic threats and rhetoric,” he said.
Tariff chaos spoils new S&P record as traders brace for Trump’s EU letter
