Donald Trump has long bragged how his presidency has been a boon to the stock market. His recent attacks on Amazon.com Inc. are undermining that position.
Shares in the online retail giant have plunged 11 percent since last week, when Axios reported that the president was “obsessed” with regulating the company. That wiped about $75 billion from Amazon’s market capitalization.
It has also taken eight points off the S&P 500, where Amazon has the fourth-biggest weighting, at 2.5 percent. That’s more than double the next biggest drag on the equity benchmark, which has fallen 2 percent in that time and now sits more than 9.5 percent below its January record.
Trump has unleashed a barrage of tweets accusing Amazon of not paying enough in taxes and underpaying the U.S. Postal Service.
The stock market has hit turbulence before with the president suffering few political consequences. In October, he even took a victory lap for sending health-care shares into a tailspin.
“Heath insurance stocks, which have gone through the roof during the ObamaCare years, plunged yesterday after I ended their Dems windfall!” Trump tweeted.