Last Friday, financial analysts lost it on live TV over the stock market meltdown in the wake of President Donald Trump’s April 2nd announcement of an aggressive new tariff regime. He gleefully called it “Liberation Day.”
Reuters estimated that the S&P 500 lost $5 trillion in market value in the two days following Trump’s unveiling of the tariffs last Wednesday. By closing bell on Monday, the losses were estimated at $6.4 trillion.
The nosedive was particularly bad news for Black Americans, since they’d only recently begun to regain momentum in the market following sharp losses from the Great Recession of 2007 and 2008.
Roughly 40% of Black families had money in the stock market in 2022, the most recent data year available from the triannual Survey of Consumer Finances by the Federal Reserve Board.
That ratio could be even higher today, given the trend of more African Americans investing in the wake of the pandemic. Data from the 2025 survey won’t be available until late 2026.
But we know that from 2019 to 2022, Black Americans saw a larger increase than whites, Hispanics and others in the share of households in the stock market.
If the trend continued, as many as 45% of Black households have stocks in their portfolios as of April 2025 (see Table 1 below).
Using the 2022 ratio, however, we can conservatively estimate Black America’s losses:
In the aggregate, black households saw their stock portfolios shrink by about $77 billion over the three trading days since Trump’s Liberation Day celebration.
Where things go from here is uncertain. As I write, a growing number of Republican lawmakers are joining Democrats to propose legislation that would override Trump’s currently unchecked power to set tariffs. Corporate CEOs and investors are also beginning to speak out against the tariffs or Trump’s roughshod approach to tariffs, including some Trump allies.
On Sunday, billionaire hedge fund manager and Trump ally Bill Ackman took to social media to ask Trump for a 90-day pause on the tariffs to think through a less catastrophic approach. Elon Musk has also posted prodding notes on X, asking Trump for zero tariffs on European countries.
Yet the president appears unfazed.
To lend your voice to the debate, find and contact your federal representatives at https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials.
Notes
Table 1: Change in percentage of families with stock holdings
| 2019 | 2022 | Change | Avg Yearly Change | Est. 2025 (if trend continued) | |
| White, non-Hispanic | 60.8% | 65.6% | 4.8% | 1.6% | 70.4% |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 33.5% | 39.2% | 5.7% | 1.9% | 44.9% |
| Hispanic | 24.2% | 28.3% | 4.2% | 1.4% | 32.5% |
| Other | 53.8% | 56.8% | 2.9% | 1.0% | 59.7% |
