April 03, 2025 10:42 AM UTC

Markets Crash While Gabe Evans Plays Pool With Your Future

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• by: Colorado Pols

CNBC reporting today on a massive market selloff provoked by President Donald Trump’s announcement just after markets closed yesterday of sweeping tariffs taking effect against basically every nation in the world including our closest economic partners and allies. Despite some hope that Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs would be more lenient than the worst fears, Trump went what can best be described as “full Herbert Hoover,” and set off a global trade war that could devastate the American economy on the way to its transformation into Trump’s Juche utopia:

Stocks nosedived Thursday sending the S&P 500 back into correction territory, after President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs of at least 10% and even higher for some countries, raising the risks of a global trade war that hits the already sputtering U.S. economy.

The broad market index dropped 4%, putting it on track for its worst day since September 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 1,500 points, or 3.5%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 5%. The slide across equities was broad, with decliners at the New York Stock Exchange outnumbering advancers by six to one.

President Donald Trump unveiled on Wednesday sweeping tariffs of at least 10% and even higher for some countries, raising the risks of a global trade war that hits the already sputtering U.S. economy.

As the Washington Post reports, close allies and trading partners are shocked and dismayed by the size and scope of Trump’s tariffs:

“The administration’s tariffs have no basis in logic, and they go against the basis of our two nations’ partnership,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, whose country got off relatively lightly with a 10 percent blanket duty. “This is not the act of a friend.”

The European Union, which was hit with a 20 percent blanket tariff, is ready to respond if talks with Washington fail, said the head of the E.U. executive branch, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“There seems to be no order in the disorder. No clear path through the complexity and chaos,” she said in a statement describing the tariffs as a “major blow.”

While untold billions of dollars in market value went poof today, Vice President J.D. Vance told the nation to ride out the pain, and forget everything they promised you last year about bringing costs down on Day One:

“What I ask folks to appreciate, we will not fix things overnight. [Pols emphasis] Joe Biden left us with largest peacetime debt and deficit in peacetime in America’s history. You don’t fix that overnight. We are fighting as quickly as we can to fix what was left to us,” Vance continued. “It will not happen immediately. If we pursue deregulation and cost-reducing policies, people will see in their pocket book and benefit from the fact that foreign countries can’t take advantage of us, and jobs will be more secure.”

Back in Colorado, tireless Trump cheerleader Rep. Lauren Boebert is as all in as she can manage, reposting the eminently clueless far-right agitator Charlie Kirk’s praise for the Dear Leader’s master plan:

But as Colorado Public Radio’s Caitlyn Kim reports, the booby prize for the worst possible spin on the unfolding disaster of Trump’s “Liberation Day” may go to Colorado’s most vulnerable Republican member of Congress, Rep. Gabe Evans:

“What we saw the President do this afternoon was implement reciprocal tariffs, which means that if they have a tariff on us, then we have a tariff back on them, but if they lower their tariffs or get rid of their tariffs, then we lower or get rid of our tariffs as well,” he said. “I’m a big believer in free trade, but free trade has to be fair trade as well.”

He likened it to a pool game, with Wednesday’s broad announcement as the rack break. [Pols emphasis] “It seems like everything’s in flux, but at the end of the day, I am absolutely confident that by getting back to free and fair trade practices… that will ultimately bring down the prices of goods for all Americans.”

The first problem is that despite the insistence otherwise from the White House, many of the tariffs imposed yesterday were not “reciprocal” at all, meaning based on tariffs charged by those other countries, and the methodology of the tariff calculation was not consistently applied.

The bigger problem is that Rep. Gabe Evans is likening Trump’s unilateral trade war, which could devastate the American and global economies, to a pool game. Specifically a “rack break,” the most chaotic moment at the beginning of the game where, as Evans says, “balls are going everywhere.” Here’s his verbatim answer:

EVANS: I liken it to a game of pool. You start off the game, the balls are all neatly racked, and then you, you break the rack. And it looks like the balls are going everywhere but then a good pool player is actually able to get the result that they want, um, as a result of being able to sink the balls in the different pockets. And so, I think that’s where we’re at right now…

If you’ve ever played pool, you know that the rack break doesn’t always end well. In fact, it’s possible to lose the game in that one shot.

But more importantly, what is happening to the markets today, and is about to happen to businesses and consumers across the nation, is not a game.

Rep. Evans’ cavalier attitude while the economy nosedives into fully preventable chaos lashes Evans even tighter to the Trump brand, which Evans has embraced in this highly competitive district from the beginning of his run. If next year at this time the consensus of expert opinion that this trade war will severely damage the economy has proven correct, Gabe Evans will pay the ultimate political price. No one should relish the prospect of a crashed economy for political advantage, but for Gabe Evans the choice to defend Trump in this moment could truly be fateful.