By STAN CHOE and ALEX VEIGA, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street could soon be in the claws of another bear market as the Trump administration’s tariff blitz fuels fears that the added taxes on imported goods from around the world will sink the global economy.

The last bear market happened in 2022, but this decline feels more like the sudden, turbulent bear market of 2020, when the benchmark S&P 500 index tumbled 34% in a one-month period, the shortest bear market ever.

Here are some common questions about bear markets:

Why is it called a bear market?

A bear market is a term used by Wall Street when an index such as the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 20% or more from a recent high for a sustained period of time.

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Why use a bear to refer to a market slump? Bears hibernate, so they represent a stock market that’s retreating. In contrast, Wall Street’s nickname for a surging market is a bull market, because bulls charge.

The S&P 500, Wall Street’s main barometer of health, was down 1.2% in Monday afternoon trading. It’s now 18.4% below the all-time high it set on Feb. 19.

The Dow industrials fell 1.8%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite, which already was in a bear market, dropped 0.9%.

The most recent bear market for the S&P 500 ran from Jan. 3 to Oct. 12 in 2022.

What’s bothering investors?

The trade war has ratcheted up fear and uncertainty on Wall Street over how businesses and consumers will respond.

President Donald Trump followed through on tariff threats last week by declaring a 10% baseline tax on imports from all countries and higher tariff rates on dozens of nations that run trade surpluses with the United States.

Global markets cratered the next day, and the sell-off deepened after China announced it would retaliate with tariffs equal to the ones from the U.S.

A container ship sails off from a container terminal in Qingdao in eastern China’s Shandong province Sunday, April 6, 2025. (Chinatopix Via AP)

Tariffs cause economic pain in part because they’re a tax paid by importers that often gets passed along to consumers, adding to inflationary pressure. They also provoke trading partners into retaliating, which can hurt all economies involved.

Import taxes can also cause economic damage by complicating the decisions businesses have to make, including which suppliers to use, where to locate factories and what prices to charge. And that uncertainty can cause them to delay or cancel investments that help drive economic growth.

The tariffs come at a time when the U.S. economy is already showing signs of slowing. Markets are also worried that tariffs could fuel inflation, which recently ticked higher.

How long do bear markets last and how deep do they go?

On average, bear markets have taken 13 months to go from peak to trough and 27 months to get back to breakeven since World War II. The S&P 500 index has fallen an average of 33% during bear markets in that time. The biggest decline since 1945 occurred in the 2007-2009 bear market, when the S&P 500 fell 57%.

A general view shows the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, April 7, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

History shows that the faster an index enters into a bear market, the shallower they tend to be. Historically, stocks have taken 251 days (8.3 months) to fall into a bear market. When the S&P 500 has fallen 20% at a faster clip, the index has averaged a loss of 28%.

The longest bear market lasted 61 months and ended in March 1942. It cut the index by 60%.

When is a bear market over?

Generally, investors look for a 20% gain from a low point as well as sustained gains over at least a six-month period. It took less than three weeks for stocks to rise 20% from their low in March 2020.

Should investors sell now?

If you need the money now or want to lock in the losses, yes. Otherwise, many advisers suggest riding through the ups and downs while remembering the swings are the price of admission for the stronger returns that stocks have provided over the long term.

While dumping stocks would stop the bleeding, it would also prevent any potential gains. Many of the best days for Wall Street have occurred either during a bear market or just after one ended. That includes two separate days in the middle of the 2007-2009 bear market when the S&P 500 surged roughly 11%, as well as leaps of better than 9% during and shortly after the monthlong 2020 bear market.

Advisers suggest putting money into stocks only if it will not be needed for several years. The S&P 500 has come back from every one of its prior bear markets to eventually rise to another all-time high.

The down decade for the stock market following the 2000 bursting of the dot-com bubble was a notoriously brutal stretch, but stocks have often been able to regain their highs within a few years.

Veiga reported from Los Angeles.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump welcomed Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and the reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers to the White House on Monday to congratulate them for winning the World Series last season.

Trump complimented “the very talented people” who beat the New York Yankees in five games, while also refusing to introduce some Democratic senators at the ceremony because “I just don’t particularly like them, so I won’t introduce (them).” The event came during a manic Monday for U.S. stocks after Trump doubled down on his tariffs.

Trump singled out several Dodgers for their achievements last season, praising Ohtani for becoming baseball’s first 50 home run-50 stolen base player, Japanese pitcher Yoshi Yamamoto and NL Championship Series MVP Tommy Edman.

Trump praised Betts for his play — and took a dig at the Boston Red Sox for trading him to the Dodgers — and they shook hands at the ceremony.

Betts, the star outfielder at the time for the 2018 champion Boston Red Sox, did not make that team’s trip to the White House the next year during Trump’s first term. Betts was on the Dodgers when they won the World Series in 2020 and attended the celebration the following year under President Joe Biden.

The 32-year-old Betts is the lone Black player on the Dodgers who returned from last season’s World Series team.

“Nobody else in this clubhouse has to go through a decision like this except me,” Betts said over the weekend of his decision. “That’s what makes it tough. But it is what it is. I’m not trying to make this political by any means at all. All it is is just me being with my team to celebrate something. It’s a privilege to get an invitation like this. I just want to be there with them.”

Manager Dave Roberts had called the invitation a huge honor that each World Series champion gets to experience. Roberts said deciding to go to the White House was not a formal conversation he and players had.

The trip came almost a month after a Department of Defense webpage describing Brooklyn Dodgers great and civil rights icon Jackie Robinson’s military service was restored after it had come down.

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That development came after pages honoring a Black Medal of Honor winner and Japanese American service members were taken down — which the Pentagon said was a mistake — amid the department’s effort to remove content singling out the contributions by women and minority groups, which the Trump administration considers “DEI.”

Neither Robinson nor any other previous Dodgers greats were mentioned at the ceremony.

Trump did talk briefly about former New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, whom the former New Yorker called a friend. Trump also poked fun at the late Yankees owner’s notorious short-leash with his managers after he congratulated Roberts.

“I think he would have lasted even with George Steinbrenner,” Trump said. “You lose two games and you’re fired.”

Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Mark Walter and pitcher Clayton Kershaw gave brief remarks at the White House. Kershaw presented Trump with a Dodgers jersey and No. 47 on the back.

Trump may have tipped his hand that he expected the Dodgers — who were 9-2 going into Monday night’s game at Washington — to repeat as World Series champs.

“After seeing how successful you’ve begun the season, I can tell you that you can plan on being back here, I hope you can be back here, next year,” Trump said.

The NHL’s reigning Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers became the first team to visit Trump in his second term when they were honored during a ceremony in the East Room in early February.

The White House also said recently the NFL’s Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles accepted their invitation for April 28.

The Gophers men’s basketball team picked up a transfer commitment from Davidson forward Bobby Durkin on Monday, a source confirmed to the Pioneer Press.

The 6-foot-7, 220-pound wing is considered a four-star recruit in 247Sports transfer rankings and the 11th-best small forward available.

Durkin averaged 13.5 points, 5.9 rebounds and 2.4 assists in 33 games during his true sophomore season in 2024-25. He saw improvements from his freshman year, when he put up 8.5 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.1 assists.

Durkin, who has two years of eligibility remaining for the U, shot 35 percent from 3-point range, 41 percent from the field and 85 percent from the free-throw line last season. He was disruptive on defense (1.3 steals per game) and took care of the basketball (0.8 turnovers per game) a season ago.

The Darien, Ill., native finished his high school career at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., and is the third incoming player via the NCAA transfer portal, joining Colorado State forward Jaylen Crocker-Johnson on April 1 and Cal forward BJ Omot of Mankato on April 2. Durkin’s news was first reported by On3.com

New head coach Niko Medved still has seven open scholarship spots for next year’s roster.

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By LEA SKENE, Associated Press

BALTIMORE (AP) — An appeals court on Monday cleared the way for billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to once again access people’s private data at three federal agencies, a win for the Trump administration as the underlying lawsuit plays out.

In a split ruling, the three-judge panel blocked a lower court decision that halted DOGE access at the Education Department, the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management. U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction last month in federal court in Baltimore, saying the government failed to adequately explain why DOGE needed the information to perform its job duties.

Led by the American Federation of Teachers, the plaintiffs allege the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws when it gave DOGE access to systems with personal information on tens of millions of Americans without their consent, including people’s income and asset information, Social Security numbers, birth dates, home addresses and marital and citizenship status.

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The Trump administration says DOGE is targeting waste across the federal government by addressing alleged fraud and upgrading technology.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has also sided with the Trump administration in other cases, including allowing DOGE access to U.S. Agency for International Development and letting executive orders against diversity, equity and inclusion move forward. The court left in place, however, an order temporarily blocking DOGE from the Social Security Administration, which contains vast amounts of personal information.

In Monday’s opinion, Judge G. Steven Agee of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that Boardman’s decision misread legal precedent in “requiring nothing more than abstract access to personal information to establish a concrete injury.” As a result, Agee wrote, the government demonstrated “a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits of their appeal.”

Agee, a nominee of Republican President George W. Bush, was joined in his opinion by Judge Julius Richardson, who was nominated to the bench in 2018 by Republican President Donald Trump. They agreed to stay the preliminary injunction as the case proceeds.

In his concurring opinion, Richardson wrote that more evidence is needed to establish whether the access is necessary. “But it does not stretch the imagination to think that modernizing an agency’s software and IT systems would require administrator-level access to those systems, including any internal databases,” he wrote.

The third judge disagreed. “Simply put, I think the district court got things right,” Judge Robert King wrote in his dissenting opinion. King, who was nominated by Democratic President Bill Clinton, said he requested a larger panel of all 4th Circuit judges to consider the case, but the request was denied.

The lawsuit accused the Trump administration of handing over sensitive data for reasons beyond its intended use, violating the Privacy Act. Instead of carrying out the functions of the federal student loan program, the lawsuit says, DOGE has been accessing loan data “for purposes of destroying” the Education Department.

One of the nation’s largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers says it represents 1.8 million workers in education, health care and government. Also joining the suit were six people with sensitive information stored in federal systems, including military veterans who received federal student loans and other federal benefit payments. The suit also was backed by the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed reporting.