Bosses beware: the tariff shock is not like covid-19

PEER INTO a Bloomberg screen and the parallels between the past month and the spring of 2020 draw themselves. Then as now the VIX index, which tracks share-price volatility, spiked above 40, a level reached only a handful of times in American stockmarket history. Uncannily, both in 2020 and 2025 the S&P 500 index of America’s biggest companies peaked on the same day, February 19th, before declining and then collapsing by more than 10% in a matter of days. The oil price plunged. Sentiment among American consumers was and is down the tubes.