By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 6, 2025 ~

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump unveiled his sweeping tariff plan. By Thursday, Wall Street was stampeding to the exit doors, leaving the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1,679.39 points by the closing bell. Showing just how dangerous the market is assessing Trump’s tariff war to be, contrarian investors couldn’t even stage a short squeeze by Friday to push stocks back up – something they have been able to do regularly since Trump’s chaos courtiers invaded Washington, promising to “Occupy Mars” as they took a blow torch to their current planet.

Friday was indicative of full-on selling panic, with the Dow losing another 2,231 points. The two-day rout in the S&P 500 tallied up to a breathtaking $5 trillion in market value losses, setting a two-day historic record.

The plunge in the S&P 500 futures market was so steep before the stock market opened on Friday morning that the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note sank below 4 percent, trading below 3.90 percent at one point. The loss in yield reflected a stampede into the benchmark security as a safe-haven play, pushing up the cost to purchase it and thus driving down its fixed coupon yield.

By Friday night, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee and a former Harvard Law professor, was unveiling a plan for Congress to rip Trump’s tariff-signing pen from his obsessive-compulsive-ready-fire-aim pudgy fingers.

The following exchange occurred between Senator Warren and MSNBC host, Lawrence O’Donnell, on his 10 p.m. program, “The Last Word”:

Lawrence O’Donnell: The Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 7: ‘All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other bills.’ That sentence has meant that everyone elected to federal office in the history of the United States of America has understood that the power to set a tariff or a tax belongs exclusively to the Congress.

In the twentieth century the Congress voted to give the President very limited authority to raise tariffs in certain narrowly defined situations including national emergencies – like, for example, World Wars. Almost all of the Trump tariffs do not come close to fitting the exceptional conditions allowing the President to raise tariffs. Therefore, almost all of the Trump tariffs are completely illegal. And with those illegal tariffs driving the United States and the world now toward a global recession, according to JPMorgan’s forecast, the bankers at JPMorgan should be very glad that Elizabeth Warren has a plan.

Joining us now, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. She is a top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee. She’s a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over tariffs. Senator Warren, what can we do?

Senator Elizabeth Warren: Right now, authority is right here in Congress. We don’t have to just stand by and watch everything melt down because Donald Trump has engaged in this crazy round of tariffs. Instead, we can pass a resolution, reel it back in, take away this authority from him – right now – and get things back to normal. We can do that. We just need a handful of Republicans to join us, and we can get this done. And frankly, we should do this. We should do it before the markets open on Monday.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Yeah, it’s the kind, it’s a very simple resolution. It’s the kind of thing that each body could pass very quickly.

Senator Warren: We could do this fast and remember, we saw a little crack in the Republican Trump wall on Wednesday when we put forward a resolution to be able to stop the tariff war with Canada. Just a narrow one, to try to get the Republicans in. Four Republicans joined us. We’re now looking at Donald Trump crashing not just the U.S. economy but the economy all around the world. This is truly an emergency, and we need Congress to act. All we have to do is pick up a few Republicans, get those Republicans to join the Democrats and roll back with a resolution what Donald Trump has done, and then we restore where the markets were before.

Lawrence O’Donnell: We’ve heard from Senator Rand Paul. We’ve heard from other Republicans. There are now four Republicans who are cosponsors on another bill, [that] Senator Cantwell is a cosponsor of, that would, in effect, allow only, I believe, 60 days for the Trump tariff, for Donald Trump to raise tariffs and then, or some period like that, and then they would expire. They would just automatically expire if Congress doesn’t approve them, but that allows for weeks and weeks and weeks of economic destruction worldwide.

Senator Warren: That’s right, and chaos. And look, we don’t need to do that. We don’t need to pass a separate law, or a new law, or a different law. The legal authority is already there. All we have to do is pass a resolution in the House and the Senate declaring that the particular device he’s using, of this fake emergency that he was claiming, triggers his ability to do these tariffs, just saying, ‘That’s not so,’ and that will take away his power to do that.

Lawrence O’Donnell: And the audience should understand that previous Presidents have not done what Donald Trump is doing for two reasons. None of them were stupid enough to think it was a good idea, and none of them believed that this kind of tariff raising by a President was legal.

Senator Warren: Yeah. But you know, Lawrence, this is really a moment when Republicans in the House and the Senate have to ask themselves: Are they really just here to bend a knee to whatever Donald Trump wants, even if it crashes economies all around the world? Or are they here actually to represent the interests of the American people? If it’s the latter, let’s pick up the tool that’s already there, in law, and reel back these tariffs that Donald Trump has put in place all by himself.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Senator, I know you’ve brought up an amendment tonight in what’s moving forward on the Republican budget. What is at stake tonight in these votes?

Senator Warren: So, remember, this is the next step in the Republicans trying to do massive giveaways to billionaires and billionaire corporations. And pay for it on the backs of cuts to Medicaid for little babies and for seniors in nursing homes, cuts to our public education system, cuts to the Veterans Affairs Department, cuts in medical research. So, tonight is going to be about forcing the Republicans to have to take a series of votes about exactly what they plan to do with this budget. And the vote I want them to take is, I’m going to put forward a proposal that says, ‘Whatever you all end up doing with the budget, at least promise in this, commit, that you will not do any tax giveaways to companies that make a billion dollars or more in profits.’ Let’s see if the Republicans could at least agree to that.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Senator, before you go, have you gotten thanks from those investment bankers at JP Morgan for your idea to save them and save the global economy?

Senator Warren: No, but you know, this isn’t about thanks. This really is serious, Lawrence, and I’m really worried. Not just about what’s happening in the stock market, but what this will mean for employment across the country, what this will mean for people who are counting on modest savings. I am really worried about what it means for everybody in our country and worried about the implications all around the world. Congress has a chance, right now, to put a stop to this, but the Republicans in Congress have to be willing to stand up to Donald Trump and say, ‘No, you don’t get to break the American economy.’