Donald Trump’s chief economic advisor Gary Cohn is leaving the White House, and the markets aren’t happy.
S&P 500 futures immediately dropped by 1.1% on the news, which may not sound like a lot, but implies a loss of some $230 billion in the market value of the US stock market. They then continued downward, falling by 1.3% at 7:30 pm EST.
Dow Jones Industrial futures dropped by 1.3%, or 340 points. The dollar promptly lost 0.6% of its value against the Japanese yen after the Cohn news.
Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs, was considered a moderating influence on the White House’s trade and financial policies, balancing out Trump’s more hawkish, protectionist advisors. He fought bitterly with Trump about the recently announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, which risk destroying US jobs and sparking a trade war. Cohn’s departure from the White House makes a broad application of those tariffs more likely.