Largest single-day gains for S&P 500
The percent change reflects the change from the previous day's market close to the current day's market close. The S&P 500 began in 1957.
A table showing the ten largest single-day gains for the S&P 500.
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Australia turns down China's offer to 'join hands' to fight US tariffs
Australia on Thursday declined Beijing's proposal to work together to counter U.S. tariffs, saying instead it would continue to diversify its trade and lower its reliance on China, its largest trading partner.
"We are not going to be holding hands with China in respect of any contest that is going on in the world," Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told Sky News, referring to the Chinese ambassador's proposal for countries to "join hands" on trade.
"We are not doing that. What we are doing is pursuing Australia's national interests and diversifying our trade around the world."
He said Australia would build its economic resilience by strengthening trade ties with the European Union, Indonesia, India, Britain and the Middle East.
In an opinion column in The Age newspaper, China's ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian urged Canberra to collaborate with Beijing to defend the multilateral global trading system.
"Under the new circumstances, China stands ready to join hands with Australia and the international community to jointly respond to the changes of the world," Xiao said.
U.S. President Donald Trump, in a stunning reversal, on Wednesday said he would temporarily lower hefty duties on dozens of countries but continue to target China, raising the tariff to 125% from 104%, further escalating a trade war between the world's two largest economies.
That could pose a risk to Australia, which ships almost a third of its goods to China. Exports to the United States are less than 5% of Australia's total goods exports.
Australia's central bank has warned the ongoing uncertainty over tariffs and other trade restrictions between the U.S. and other major economies could have a chilling effect on business investment and household spending decisions in the country.
Trump has imposed a unilateral 10% tariff on Australia, the low end of his reciprocal tariffs for all imports into the United States.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that while the duty on Australia, a key U.S. security ally in the Indo-Pacific, has "no basis in logic", his government would not retaliate.
Exclusive-Chinese sellers on Amazon to hike prices or exit US as tariffs soar, association says
Chinese companies that sell products on Amazon are preparing to hike prices for the U.S. or quit that market due to the "unprecedented blow" from President Donald Trump's tariff hikes, the head of China's largest e-commerce association said.
Trump said on Wednesday he would raise tariffs on Chinese imports to 125% from the 104% level already in effect, escalating the high-stakes confrontation between the two world's largest economies.
"This isn't just a tax issue, it's that the entire cost structure gets entirely overwhelmed," said Wang Xin, the head of the Shenzhen Cross-Border E-Commerce Association, which represents more than 3,000 Amazon sellers.
"It'll be very hard for anyone to survive in the U.S. market," she told Reuters.
Some sellers are looking to increase prices in the U.S. while others are looking to find new markets, Wang said.
The tariffs will severely impact China's small enterprises and manufacturers and also rapidly accelerate the country's unemployment rate, she added.
Ackman's Pershing Square Holdings fund drops nearly 14% so far this year
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Holdings portfolio has lost nearly 14% so far this year, the firm told investors on Wednesday.
The losses, through April 8, do not include gains seen on Wednesday, when markets surged after U.S. President Donald Trump paused most tariffs for 90 days.
The losses, primarily incurred over the previous week, reflect sharp global declines as investors reacted to the Trump administration's plans to impose heavy tariffs on nearly all trading partners.
In the first quarter, Pershing Square Holdings slipped just 1.2%.
Ackman invests in a select group of U.S. stocks, including Nike and Chipotle Mexican Grill, both of which have suffered losses since January but saw double-digit gains on Wednesday.
His portfolio is closely watched in the industry for investment trends.
Long known as one of Wall Street's most outspoken investors, Ackman took to X this week to express his dismay about the proposed tariffs, warning they could push the economy into recession.
He suggested holding tariffs at 10% across the board, keeping pressure on China, while pausing reciprocal tariff implementation for 90 days.
Trump on Wednesday paused the tariffs, and the S&P 500 index jumped more than 9%.
Ackman has delivered some of the hedge fund industry's strongest returns, including a remarkable 70.2% gain in 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
Vietjet signs $300 million finance deal, in talks to expand order with Boeing
Vietnamese budget carrier Vietjet said on Thursday it has signed an agreement worth $300 million with AV AirFinance, a partner of investment fund KKR, to fund the expansion of its fleet.
Thursday's announcement confirmed a Reuters report last week on the finance deal done between Vietjet and AV AirFinance during a visit to the U.S. by Deputy Prime Minister Ho Duc Phoc for reciprocal tariff negotiation. The deal value was initially reported at $200 million.
The agreement with AV AirFinance is the latest in a string of financing agreements worth $4 billion that have been signed with U.S. partners, Vietjet said in its statement.
Vietjet has also agreed to buy 200 Boeing 737 MAX jets in a deal first signed in 2016 and revised during Trump's Vietnam visit in 2019. No jets have been delivered yet, though.
The airline is looking forward to receiving the first jets this year and is in talks to expand the order, it said in the statement.
Reuters reported on last Friday that the airline was also considering the purchase of 20 wide-body Boeing 787 jets.
Whistleblower claims Meta helped China develop advanced AI to ‘outcompete American companies’
Meta actively helped China in the race to develop artificial intelligence as part of its failed effort to cozy up to Beijing, a former executive-turned-whistleblower said during a bombshell Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, who detailed her experience at Meta in the scathing memoir “Careless People,” testified that she witnessed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other executives lie to Congress and “repeatedly undermine US national security and betray American values.”
During her opening statement, Wynn-William, Facebook’s former director of global public policy, told lawmakers that Meta began providing briefings to the Chinese Communist Party “as early as 2015” while pursuing “Project Aldrin” – a top-secret effort to gain access to China’s lucrative market.
“These briefings focused on critical emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence – explicit goal being to help China outcompete American companies,” said Wynn-Williams, who worked at the social media giant from 2011 to 2017.
“There’s a straight line you can draw from these briefings to the recent revelations that China is developing AI models for military use, relying on Meta’s Llama model,” she added.
The hearing before the Senate Judiciary’s subcommittee on crime and counterterrorism occurred after Meta obtained an emergency order barring Wynn-Williams from promoting or publicly discussing her allegations against the company. Despite that effort, her book “Careless People” surged to the top of best-sellers lists.
Wynn-Williams said Meta’s AI model Llama “has contributed significantly to Chinese advances in AI technologies like DeepSeek” – which sparked a US tech selloff earlier this year after releasing a model on par with American rivals that it claims cost less than $6 million to train.
“The greatest trick Mark Zuckerberg ever pulled was wrapping the American flag around himself and calling himself a patriot and saying he didn’t offer services in China while he spent the last decade building an $18 billion business there,” Wynn-Williams said.
“And he continues to wrap the flag around himself as we move into the next era of artificial intelligence.”
Meta saw the tech briefings with top-level Chinese officials as part of the “value proposition” it could offer to get into Beijing’s good graces, according to Wynn-Williams.
The whistleblower also detailed her allegation that the company developed a “censorship system” in 2015 on behalf of the CCP that risked exposing the data of American users and agreed to block accounts in 2017 operated by Guo Wengui, a self-exiled Chinese billionaire and dissident, after facing pressure from China.
Committee chair Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) accused Meta of trying to silence Wynn-Williams – noting that she faces $50,000 in damages “every time she mentions Facebook in public” as a result of the arbitration ruling.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the $50,000 figure is from the separation agreement that Wynn-Williams signed when she left the company in 2017 and applies to any breach of contract, not just non-disparagement.
The company abandoned its efforts to enter the Chinese market in 2019.
Stone said Wynn-Williams’ “testimony is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims.”
“While Mark Zuckerberg himself was public about our interest in offering our services in China and details were widely reported beginning over a decade ago, the fact is this: we do not operate our services in China today,” the spokesman added.
Hawley, who previously told The Post that he would be looking for instances where Facebook had lied under oath to Congress about its China ties, said he is pursuing a “full-scale investigation into the potential illegal behavior of Facebook.”
At one point during the hearing, Hawley referenced internal conversations in 2017 in which Facebook employees discussed taking down the dissident’s account. Months later, a Facebook executive testified to the Senate that action was taken through regular channels.
“Facebook received direct pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and bowed to it and discussed it internally and planned it and then lied about it to Congress,” Hawley said.
Hawley suggested that Zuckerberg misled Congress about the extent of his communication with China — despite Wynn-Williams’ assertion that top executives were in regular contact with Beijing. He also signaled that Meta may have violated a 2012 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission to protect the privacy of user data.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who also attended the hearing, said Facebook’s effort to penalize Wynn-Williams for going public “can be easily abused to silence her.”
Elsewhere, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said it was “disgusting and the height of hypocrisy for a supposed free speech champion, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta, to use a campaign of threats and intimidation to try to silence you.”
“The American people are going to be pretty outraged that Mark Zuckerberg sold out America to China. That he imperiled our national security for a buck,” Blumenthal added.
In her memoir, Wynn-Williams detailed examples of what she called a “rotten company culture” reaching as high as Zuckerberg, former COO Sheryl Sandberg and current top policy executive Joel Kaplan.
The memoir alleged that Sandberg once spent $13,000 on lingerie for herself and a young female assistant and later invited Wynn-Williams to “come to bed” during a long flight home from Europe, among other salacious claims.
As The Post has reported, watchdogs like the Tech Oversight Project have called on Congress to “drop the hammer” on Meta over its China dealings.
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