After the bump, is this now the Trump slump?

A TREMOR shook Wall Street yesterday as investors panicked over a rumour that one of Donald Trump’s top financial advisers was about to quit.

Former Goldman Sachs banker Gary Cohn has been a lynchpin of Trump’s struggling administration and is spearheading the tax reform efforts which have driven US markets to record highs.

But he is said to have been horrified by the president’s suggestion there was no difference between white supremacists who killed a woman in Charlottesville and the protesters confronting them.

One expert warned that it would ‘crash the markets’ if Cohn quit. Claims that he was resigning sent the Dow Jones index down 275 points last night – with the losses echoed around the world.

There was also a jump of more than 30pc in the Vix index which measures volatility – the socalled fear gauge – and the dollar swung wildly against other currencies. Shares in Goldman Sachs, Cohn’s former employer and the bank many assume will do best from a bonfire of red tape, fell by almost 2pc.

The claim he was leaving was vehemently denied by a White House spokesman, who insisted Cohn would remain Trump’s chief economic adviser and head of the National Economic Council.

But experts warned the wobble showed the stock boom since the president’s election victory could be rapidly reversed unless order is restored at the White House.

A plunge in equities across the Atlantic would likely be followed by UK markets diving into the red, meaning British savers and pension funds would suffer losses.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management said: ‘There is a lot of faith that he [Cohn] is going to help carry through the tax reform that people are looking for. I think if he steps away, it would crash the markets.’

Although Cohn has said he will stay on, the ex-banker is understood to have been very upset by Trump’s actions in the wake of the Charlottesville killing and is thought to be concerned about the impact which staying on could have on his reputation.

Tensions were further inflamed yesterday by Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s top strategists, who said that the US and China were locked in an ‘economic war’.

‘One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path,’ he said in an interview. ‘If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, ten years at the most, from hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never recover.’

China responded by saying it had a ‘mutually beneficial’ relationship with America. The criticism of Trump continued yesterday, with Apple boss Tim Cook condemning the president in a message to staff.