Tariffs and the Global Market Sell-Off: S&P 500 Touches Bear Territory 4/7/25

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Carl Quintanilla (0:59)

Market moving insight and analysis join Jim Cramer, David Faber and me, Carl Quintanilla on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street. Good morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Futures are sharply lower again after one of the worst two day sell offs in recent market history, both oil and the VIX flirting with 60 today. We'll watch for those countermeasures from the EU this week. We've got a batch of sell side downgrades.

Of course, Q1 earnings on the way later this week. Let's begin with this global market sell off, Jim, which continues to deepen as the president stands pat on this tariff plan. 11 trillion in market value wiped out since inauguration day. You wrote this morning, not the washout at this point that you think the market deserves.

Jim Cramer (1:43)

I was really hoping that we would get something in the, say, 9, 10% decline. And then you could say, well, wait a second, maybe we're close to the worst case. I think I'd be pretty clinical about it. I think that the way you want to look at it is what multiple do you put on the new earnings estimates for the S&P? And I think that the S&P, people thought, well, we thought it was going to be 270, 280 Now it's going to be 230 I think you have to put a worst case, 14 times, because markets have tended the bottom at 14 times earnings, and that gives you a 36% downside from here. I use that worst case because that presumes that nothing's going to happen other than the man we heard right before Peter Navarro continues to win. Peter Navarro obviously in the ear of the president, right before he came out with the tariffs, with a much sharper tariff than reciprocal. I think that there are two camps in the White House. There's, I know the president would not necessarily want this characterization, but it's what I see. There's a camp which just says, listen, we've got to be a little more nuanced about all of this. And then there's a camp that's winning right now, the Navarro camp, which just says, look, this is not a negotiation. It's about vanquishing the China. It's about building here or else. And whether we have a recession, well, we won't because there's going to be the giant tax cut that comes from the tariffs.

David Faber (2:57)

I accept that. Most of the executives I've spoken with over the weekend, and I would assume the same for you guys, think we are potentially going to have a recession.

Jim Cramer (3:05)

Absolutely.

David Faber (3:06)

And the market is clearly saying that. Oil falling perhaps below $60. The 10-year, what, four or below that.

Jim Cramer (3:15)

No disagreement for me.

David Faber (3:16)

There it is. And I mean, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are pulling back to a certain extent in terms of making decisions and or allocating capital.

They're sitting on their hands. And by the way, I come back to this basic notion of this policy, whatever you wanna call it, in and of itself, which is, is it a negotiation or is it revenue raising? Are we in favor of free trade? Or are we really trying to eliminate trade deficits? Because they're completely different things.

Jim Cramer (3:47)

Of course.

David Faber (3:48)

And right now, it appears that we wanna raise revenue and get rid of trade deficits, even though we really can't necessarily convince countries where people have nothing to buy stuff from us. You know, when I hear Howard Lutnick says, he did yesterday, that Vietnam should buy $200 billion worth of our stuff, it's nonsensical. Well, but they have a $430 billion GDP. They don't.