A false X post about pausing tariffs led to multi-trillion-dollar market swings

Summary

Traders work on the floor Monday at the New York Stock Exchange in New York. Seth Wenig/AP hide caption toggle caption Seth Wenig/AP Multi-trillion-dollar stock market swings on Monday appear to have been set off by false reports on Elon Musk's X. Experts say the episode highlights the social media site's enduring relevance, even as it helps amplify falsehoods. How did it happen? Around 8:30 a.m. ET, the National Economic Council's Kevin Hassett was asked during a live Fox News interview whether President Trump would consider a 90-day pause to the sweeping tariffs he imposed on many countries last week. Hassett responded: "I think the president is going to decide what the president is going to decide." On X, that morphed into a bogus headline that Trump was considering a 90-day pause on tariffs for all countries except China. It appears the X account "Hammer Capital" was the first to share this false report, around 10:11 a.m. ET on Monday. The account has just over 1,100 followers, and it has a blue verification badge, a paid feature that helps enhance the reach of user's posts. From there, the erroneous headline took on a life of its own. Dozens of other accounts with blue verification badges reshared it. Not long after, news organizations including Reuters and CNBC reported it. Around 10:12 a.m. ET, cheers broke out across the New York Stock Exchange trading floor, according to CNN, as the market rallied on the false premise that the White House was weighing a tariffs pause. About a minute later, it was posted by the X account "Walter Bloomberg," which has more than 850,000 followers. Although the account is not affiliated with Bloomberg News, it often shares the news organization's headlines. The account's boosting of the false headline prompted chatter among CNBC analysts on live television about a possible 90-day reprieve from Trump's tariffs. Reuters, citing CNBC, then published a headline carrying the inaccurate tariff pause report. The White House denied the...