Nothing good happens at midnight… unless you count bad life choices and texts you wish you could unsend. But now, we can add “trade war escalation” to the list. While normal people were drooling on their pillows, Trump went full tariff mode (again), punching Canada and Mexico right in the face with a 25% tax and cranking up China’s tab to 20%.

Naturally, America’s neighbors were thrilled (not even close). Justin Trudeau, still trying to convince everyone he’s the alpha in this trade war, fired back with a 25% tariff on $30 billion worth of U.S. goods… plus another $125 billion worth on deck in three weeks. He also threatened that Canadians would boycott American products (nothing scares the U.S. economy like Tim Hortons refusing to sell us donuts). Ontario’s Premier even threatened to cut off power to the U.S. (as if they have that kind of leverage).

China, on the other hand, went straight for America's Achilles’ heel: food. They hit American farm products with a 15% tax, ensuring that bacon and chicken nuggets might soon require a second mortgage. If anything will send the U.S. into a blind rage, it’s the threat of overpriced fast food.

Wall Street, of course, smashed the SELL button all day today. The Dow cratered over 840 points at its worst before scrambling back to close down 0.7%. The S&P 500 slipped 0.3% (even though at one point it was down nearly 2%), while the Nasdaq, against all odds, clawed out a 0.6% gain (shoutout to Nvidia and Alphabet, both up 2%).

Retailers got obliterated. Best Buy crashed 14% after its CEO said that price hikes are coming. Target issued a scary warning about its Q1 profits. But it wasn’t all sad news… Walgreens jumped 7% on rumors it might go private.

Tech stocks saw quite a bit of movement too. Intel tanked 7% after its biggest rival, TSMC, dropped a $100 billion investment bomb right in front of Trump at the White House (absolute power move). Oh and Nvidia bounced back 2% from Monday’s 9% wipeout, and Super Micro Computer went full rocket mode, soaring 10%.

Tesla had an absolute disaster of a day, sinking 4% after China revealed its February sales collapsed nearly 50%. Ford and GM weren’t much better, down 2-3% as investors realized maybe running an auto business during a tariff war isn’t ideal. And because this mess even extends to food, Chipotle lost 2%... turns out, half its avocados come from Mexico (I know the “Avocados from Mexico” song is playing in your head right now).

After Trudeau clapped back, Trump hopped on Truth Social (because of course he did) to remind everyone that his counterpunch would be even bigger. If there’s one thing we know about Trump, it’s that he never backs down from a fight… especially one he started.

Now, with the S&P 500 dangling near pre-election levels, all eyes are on his speech tonight. The man lives for stock market bragging rights (and lately, crypto too), so you know he’s got something brewing. Prediction: Expect a massive green day tomorrow morning.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.