President Donald Trump’s announcement of global tariffs on April 2, 2025, sent shockwaves through the stock market, causing sharp declines in the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Dow suffered its steepest two-day drop in its 127-year history, erasing more than $270 billion from the net worths of the world’s billionaires. Amid the economic turmoil, Wikipedia’s volunteer editors have been working to document the events on the online encyclopedia.
The main entry is currently titled “2025 stock market crash,” but there is an ongoing debate among editors about whether to change it to “2025 stock market decline.”
The discussion reveals differing views among editors about Wikipedia’s role and how it should serve readers. Some believe that Wikipedia should only include entries with long-term historical significance, while others argue that articles should reflect the current media and public framing of events. The debate matters because Wikipedia is not just a reference site but a living archive that provides information to the broader internet.
Consumers, investors, journalists, and AI models all rely on its language, and a single word—crash or decline—can potentially shape both market sentiment and public memory.
Trump’s tariffs and investor reaction
Trump’s tariffs stunned global markets with their unexpected severity, causing investment firms holding trillions in multinational corporate stocks to watch their portfolios lose value overnight.
Financial elites, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, openly criticized the policy, warning of a potential recession. Billionaire Trump supporters, such as Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, also lobbied against the tariffs, with Ackman warning of a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter.” Conservative billionaires Charles Koch and Leonard Leo even filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s authority to impose tariffs on China. Faced with the swift and radical censure from capital, Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for most countries on Wednesday, April 9.
The episode served as a reminder of who really holds the levers of power in a capitalist system: the billionaire class. As Charles E. Lindblom described in his essay “The Market as Prison,” capitalism is a system rigged with an “automatic punishing recoil” where any credible challenge to capitalist profits triggers a cascade of disinvestment that wrecks the economy.
Despite his own billions in wealth, Trump found himself forced to cave to the whims of the market, just as left governments throughout history have.
