NEW YORK — When Donald Trump offered some financial advice Wednesday morning, stocks were wavering between gains and losses.

But that was about to change.

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social at 9:37 a.m.

Less than four hours later, Trump announced a 90-day pause on nearly all his tariffs. Stocks soared on the news, closing up 9.5% by the end of trading. The market, measured by the S&P 500, gained back about $4 trillion, or 70%, of the value it had lost over the previous four trading days.

It was a prescient call by the president. Maybe too prescient.

“He’s loving this, this control over markets, but he better be careful,” said Trump critic and former White House ethics lawyer, Richard Painter, noting that securities law prohibits trading on insider information or helping others do so. “The people who bought when they saw that post made a lot of money.”

The question is, Was Trump already contemplating the tariff pause when he made that post?

Asked about when he arrived at his decision, Trump gave a muddled answer.

“I would say this morning,” he said. “Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it.”

He then added, “Fairly early this morning.”

Asked for clarification on the timing in an email to the White House later, a spokesperson didn’t answer directly but defended Trump’s post as part of his job.

“It is the responsibility of the President of the United States to reassure the markets and Americans about their economic security in the face of nonstop media fearmongering,” wrote White House spokesman Kush Desai.

Another curiosity of the posting was Trump’s signoff with his initials.

DJT is also the stock symbol for Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of the president’s social media platform Truth Social.

It’s not clear if Trump was saying buying stocks in general, or Trump Media in particular. The White House was asked, but didn’t address that either. Trump includes “DJT” on his posts intermittently, typically to emphasize that he has personally written the message.

The ambiguity about what Trump meant didn’t stop people from pouring money into that stock.

Trump Media closed up 22.67%, soaring twice as much as the broader market, a stunning performance by a company that lost $400 million last year and is seemingly unaffected by whether tariffs would be imposed or paused.

Trump’s 53% ownership stake in the company, now in a trust controlled by his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., rose by $415 million on the day.

Trump Media was bested, albeit by only two-hundreds of a percentage point, by another Trump administration stock pick — Elon Musk’s Tesla.

Last month, Trump held an extraordinary news conference outside the White House praising the company and its cars. That was followed by a Fox TV appearance by his commerce secretary urging viewers to buy the stock.

Tesla’s surge Wednesday added $20 billion to Musk’s fortunes.

Kathleen Clark, a government ethics law expert at Washington University School of Law, says Trump’s post in other administrations would have been investigated, but is not likely not to trigger any reaction, save for maybe more Truth Social viewers.

“He’s sending the message that he can effectively and with impunity manipulate the market,” she said, “As in: Watch this space for future stock tips.”

BANGKOK — The impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’sblast of tariff hikes was reverberating across world markets Monday as America’s trading partners puzzled over whether there is room for negotiating better deals.

Several countries said they were sending trade officials to Washington to try to talk through the crisis, which has cast uncertainty over the global economic outlook, hammered markets and left U.S. allies wondering about the value of their ties with the world’s largest economy.

However, Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, was defiant as he arrived at a meeting of European Union trade ministers in Luxembourg, saying the premise of the wide-ranging tariffs was “nonsense” and that attempts by individual countries to win exemptions haven’t worked in the past.

It’s important for the EU to stick together, he said. That “means being clear that we are in a strong position — America is in a position of weakness.”

China, which hit back Friday at Washington with 34% tariffs on U.S. products and other retaliatory moves, accused the U.S. of failing to play fair.

“Putting ‘America First’ over international rules is a typical act of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying,” Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters.

The ruling Communist Party struck a note of confidence even as markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai crumpled. “The sky won’t fall,” declared The People’s Daily, the party’s official mouthpiece. “Faced with the indiscriminate punches of U.S. taxes, we know what we are doing and we have tools at our disposal.”

Leading big drops in many markets, Hong Kong’s stock benchmark, the Hang Seng, plunged 13.2%. The Shanghai Composite index, meanwhile, lost 7.3% despite reported moves by regulators to staunch the losses.

China’s Commerce Ministry said officials met with representatives of 20 American businesses including Tesla and GE Healthcare over the weekend and urged them to take “concrete actions” to address the tariffs issue.

During the meeting, Ling Ji, a vice minister of commerce, promised that China will remain open to foreign investment, according to the readout by the ministry.

South Korea’s Trade Ministry said its top negotiator, Inkyo Cheong, will visit Washington this week to express Seoul’s concerns over the 25% tariffs on Korean goods and discuss ways to mitigate the damage to South Korean businesses, which include major automakers and steel makers.

Pakistan also planned to send a delegation to Washington this month to try negotiate over the 29% tariffs on its exports to the U.S., officials said. The prime minister ordered Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb to assess the tariff’s potential impact on Pakistan’s fragile economy and draw up recommendations.

The U.S. imports around $5 billion worth of textiles and other products each year from Pakistan, which heavily relies on loans from the International Monetary Fund and other lenders.

In Southeast Asia, Malaysia’s Trade Minister Zafrul Abdul Aziz said his country will seek to forge a united response from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

As chair of the 10-nation body this year, Malaysia will lead a meeting Thursday in its capital Kuala Lumpur to discuss broader implications of the trade war on regional trade and investment, Zafrul told reporters.

“We are looking at the investment flows, macroeconomic stability and ASEAN’s coordinated response to this tariff issue,” Zafrul said. He denied reports Malaysia had imposed a 47% tariff on imports from the U.S., saying the actual average Malaysian tariff on American exports is 5.6%.

He said that he had met with the U.S. ambassador to Malaysia to try to clarify how the U.S. came up with its 24% tariff.

Indonesia, one of the region’s biggest economies, said it would work with businesses to increase its imports of U.S. wheat, cotton, oil and gas to help reduce its trade surplus, which was $18 billion in 2024.

Coordinating Economic Affairs Minister Airlangga Hartarto told a news conference that Indonesia will not retaliate against the new 32% tariff on Indonesian exports, but would use diplomacy to seek mutually beneficial solutions.

Some Southeast Asian neighbors, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, face tariffs of over 40%, giving Indonesia a slight advantage, he noted.

“For Indonesia, it is also another opportunity as its market is huge in America,” Hartoto said. He said Indonesia would buy U.S.-made components for several national strategic projects, including refineries.

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Associated Press journalists from around the world contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — U.S. consumer confidence plummeted in February, the biggest monthly decline in more than four years, a business research group said Tuesday, with inflation seemingly stuck and a trade war under President Donald Trump seen by a growing number of Americans as inevitable.

The Conference Board reported that its consumer confidence index sank this month to 98.3 from 105.3 in January. That’s far below the expectations of economists, who projected a reading of 103, according to a survey by FactSet.

The seven-point drop was the biggest month-to-month decline since August of 2021.

Markets on Wall Street immediately drooped. The S&P 500 fell 0.7%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 1.7%. The Nasdaq declined 1.4%.

Respondents to the board’s survey expressed concern over inflation with a significant increase in mentions of trade and tariffs, the board said.

The Conference Board’s report Tuesday said that the measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for income, business and the job market fell 9.3 points to 72.9. The Conference Board says a reading under 80 can signal a potential recession in the near future.

The proportion of consumers expecting a recession over the next year jumped to a nine-month high, the board said.

Consumers’ view of current conditions tumbled 3.4 points to a reading of 136.5 this month and views on current labor market conditions fell again.

“Views of current labor market conditions weakened,” the group said Tuesday. “Consumers became pessimistic about future business conditions and less optimistic about future income. Pessimism about future employment prospects worsened and reached a ten-month high.”

Consumers appeared increasingly confident heading into the end of 2024 and spent generously during the holiday season. However, U.S. retail sales dropped sharply in January, with cold weather taking some of the blame for a dent in vehicle sales at at retail stores.

Retail sales fell 0.9% last month from December, the Commerce Department reported last week. The decline, the biggest in a year, came after two months of healthy gains.

The consumer confidence index measures both Americans’ assessment of current economic conditions and their outlook for the next six months.

Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. economic activity and is closely watched by economists for signs about how the American consumer is feeling.

DAVOS, Switzerland — Billionaires’ wealth grew three times faster in 2024 than the year before, a top anti-poverty group reported on Monday as some of the world’s political and financial elite prepared for an annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland.

Oxfam International, in its latest assessment of global inequality timed to the opening of the World Economic Forum meeting, also predicts at least five trillionaires will crop up over the next decade. A year ago, the group forecast that only one trillionaire would appear during that time.

OxFam’s research adds weight to a warning by outgoing President Joe Biden last week of a “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people.” The group’s sharp-edged report, titled “Takers Not Makers,” also says the number of people in poverty has barely budged since 1990.

The World Economic Forum expects to host some 3,000 attendees, including business executives, academics, government officials, and civic group leaders at its annual meeting in the Alpine village of Davos.

President-elect Donald Trump, who visited Davos twice during his first term and was set to take the oath of office on Monday, is expected to take part in the forum’s event by video on Thursday. He has long championed wealth accumulation — including his own — and counts multibillionaire Elon Musk as a top adviser.

“What you’re seeing at the moment is a billionaire president taking oaths today, backed by the richest man. So this is pretty much the jewel in the crown of the global oligarchies,” Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International, said in an interview, referring to Trump and Musk.

“It’s not about one specific individual. It’s the economic system that we have created where the billionaires are now pretty much being able to shape economic policies, social policies, which eventually gives them more and more profit,” he added.

Like Biden’s call for making billionaires “begin to pay their fair share” through the U.S. tax code, Oxfam — a global advocacy group — called on governments to tax the richest to reduce inequality and extreme wealth, and to “dismantle the new aristocracy.”

The group called for steps like the break-up of monopolies, capping CEO pay, and regulation of corporations to ensure they pay “living wages” to workers.

Many investors racked up strong gains in 2024, with strong performances for top tech companies and stock-market indexes like the S&P 500, as well as the price of gold and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Oxfam said billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion last year, or roughly $5.7 billion a day, three-times faster than in 2023. The number of billionaires rose by 204 to 2,769, and the 10 richest men saw their wealth rise nearly $100 million a day on average, it said.

Citing World Bank data, the group pointed to lingering poverty, saying the number of people living on less than $6.85 per day has “barely changed” since 1990. Oxfam used Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire List” as of end-November for data on the ultra-rich.

By contrast, at least four new billionaires were “minted” every week in 2024, and three-fifths of billionaire wealth comes from inheritance, monopoly power or “crony connections,” it said.

On average, Oxfam said, low- and middle-income countries are spending nearly half their national budgets on debt repayments. It also noted that life expectancy in Africa is just under 64 years of age, compared to over 79 years in Europe.

Despite the growing gap between the über rich and the poor, the annual Davos confab, which formally begins on Tuesday, will likely focus this year again on making money and doing deals, with strongman leaders on the rise in some Western countries and progressive causes like diversity and climate change waning in the business world.

The continued rise of artificial intelligence as a tool for business to reap greater efficiencies will also again be a central theme in Davos, despite worries in many sectors that AI could upend many white-collar jobs and displace workers in an array of industries.

Trump’s return for a second term will likely be on many lips in Davos, as will lingering conflicts, including wars in Ukraine and Sudan, along with hopes for a continuation of a cease-fire that began on Sunday between Hamas and Israel, pausing their devastating 15-month war in Gaza.

Forum organizers last week issued a survey conducted among 900 experts for “Global Risks Report,” which found that conflicts between countries was the top concern, followed by extreme weather, economic confrontation, misinformation and disinformation, and “societal polarization” — a nod to the gap between rich and poor.

As in past years, protesters calling for more economic equality, taxing the rich and pressing other demands took to the streets. Some blocked roads to Davos, snarling traffic in places and delaying trips for some attendees to the event, which runs through Friday.

TORONTO — Canada’s antitrust watchdog said Thursday it is suing Google over alleged anticompetitive conduct in the tech giant’s online advertising business and wants the company to sell off two of its ad tech services and pay a penalty.

The Competition Bureau said that such action is necessary because an investigation into Google found that the company “unlawfully” tied together its ad tech tools to maintain its dominant market position.

The matter is now headed for the Competition Tribunal, a quasi-judicial body that hears cases brought forward by the competition commissioner about non-compliance with the Competition Act.

The bureau is asking the tribunal to order Google to sell its publisher ad server, DoubleClick for Publishers, and its ad exchange, AdX. It estimates Google holds a market share of 90% in publisher ad servers, 70% in advertiser networks, 60% in demand-side platforms and 50% in ad exchanges.

This dominance, the bureau said, has discouraged competition from rivals, inhibited innovation, inflated advertising costs and reduced publisher revenues.

“Google has abused its dominant position in online advertising in Canada by engaging in conduct that locks market participants into using its own ad tech tools, excluding competitors, and distorting the competitive process,” Matthew Boswell, Commissioner of Competition, said in a statement.

Google, however, maintains the online advertising market is a highly competitive sector.

Dan Taylor, Google’s vice president of global ads, said in a statement that the bureau’s complaint “ignores the intense competition where ad buyers and sellers have plenty of choice.”

The statement added that Google intends to defend itself against the allegation.

U.S. regulators want a federal judge to break up Google to prevent the company from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the past decade.

The proposed breakup, floated in a 23-page document filed this month by the U.S. Department of Justice, calls for sweeping punishments that would include a sale of Google’s industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions to prevent Android from favoring its own search engine.