President Donald Trump is going ahead with the full 50% tariff increase on Chinese imports tonight, and he’s making it clear he doesn’t care what Wall Street thinks about it.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the new tariffs will go live at midnight, pushing total U.S. trade penalties on Chinese goods to a combined 104%. Karoline said Trump “will not accept a situation where Wall Street is allowed to run the economy.”

This announcement came as U.S. markets started crashing again. On Tuesday afternoon, the S&P 500 dropped 0.2%, the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.5%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained a weak 93 points or 0.2%. The session started with huge rallies—Dow up nearly 3.9%, S&P and Nasdaq both over 4%—but that didn’t last. As Trump’s tariff deadline moved closer, the gains vanished.

Tariff deadline hits as volatility destroys investor confidence

In the morning, traders reacted to speculation that Trump’s team might negotiate with U.S. allies to soften the tariffs. That fantasy didn’t survive the afternoon.

Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday that he had a “great call” with the acting president of South Korea and claimed that China “also wants to make a deal badly.” But neither country had any deal in place when U.S. markets closed. Instead of dialing things back, Karoline said the president is standing firm.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that around 70 countries had approached the U.S. government looking to make trade deals. Scott said, “If they come to the table with solid proposals, I think we can end up with some good deals. And part of the calculus of that may be that some part of the tariffs stay on.” That means the administration might keep certain tariffs locked in no matter what happens.

Tuesday was the fourth straight day of violent price swings triggered by Trump’s tariff plan, which was announced last week. On Monday, the U.S. stock market had its highest trading volume in 18 years, with nearly 29 billion shares changing hands. The Dow moved more than 2,500 points from high to low during the day. The S&P 500 briefly dropped into bear market territory, falling over 20% below its all-time high.

Traders panic as big names collapse and fear index explodes

The swings weren’t limited to broad indexes. On Tuesday, Apple stock fell 3%, after going up over 4% earlier in the day. The iPhone maker, which gets a lot of its money from China, has now lost about 20% over just three sessions. The losses are being driven by traders expecting more damage from Trump’s tariff hikes.

The CBOE Volatility Index, known as the VIX, hit around 60 on Monday. That’s one of the highest levels in years. On Tuesday, it hovered near 50, still far above normal. This metric is Wall Street’s main gauge of fear. When it’s this high, traders expect chaos.

Small-cap stocks also got crushed. The Russell 2000, which focuses on smaller U.S. companies, dropped 0.5% by early afternoon Tuesday. The index is now down more than 3% from where it peaked earlier that day. The brief rally that started in the morning collapsed before lunch.

Some analysts still see a way for stocks to recover. Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, told CNBC that the S&P 500 could climb back to 5,400. That would be a 6.7% jump from where it ended Monday. “I think we probably have to go up to about the 5,400 level on the S&P, which would represent the September retest of 2024,” Sam said. “That becomes resistance.”

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