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Trump tariffs impact: World’s 500 richest people suffered biggest two-day loss
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg faced the largest losses, totaling $31 billion and $27 billion respectively.
The world’s richest people just had a brutal couple of days. After US President Donald Trump announced new tariffs, markets around the world went into a tailspin. Between Thursday (April 3) and Friday, the 500 wealthiest individuals lost a jaw-dropping US$536 billion combine, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed.
The S&P 500 dropped 10.5% in just two days, and the Nasdaq wasn’t far behind with an 11.4% fall.
Friday was especially painful, with US$329 billion wiped out — the biggest one-day drop since the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly 90% of the billionaires saw their fortunes shrink, losing an average of 3.5% each, Bloomberg reported.
Leading the list of losses was the world's richest person Elon Musk. Tesla’s stock plunged more than 10% on Friday alone, which knocked US$31 billion off Musk’s net worth. That brings his total loss for the year to a staggering US$130 billion. Not far behind was Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, who lost US$27 billion after his company’s shares fell nearly 14% in just two days, it reported.
Then there’s Ernest Garcia III, the man behind used-car platform Carvana. He lost US$2 billion in the same period — enough to drop him off the global top 500 rich list altogether, thanks to a 28% crash in Carvana’s stock.
But not everyone had a bad day. Nike co-founder Phil Knight actually walked away with a small win on Friday. After Donald Trump said he had a “very productive call” with Vietnam’s leader — hinting at the possible removal of a 46% tariff on Vietnamese goods (where Nike does a lot of its manufacturing) — the shoe brand’s stock rose 2.8%. That uptick added US$84 million to Knight’s fortune, partially making up for the US$3 billion hit he took a day earlier.
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim had a bit of a rollercoaster ride, too. On Thursday, he stayed afloat as Mexico was left out of the new tariff targets — a small win that lifted the country's stock market. But the joy was short-lived. By Friday, Slim lost US$5.5 billion as the Mexican market reversed course and dropped nearly 5%.
