If there is one thing corporate America hates, it is higher taxes – and tariffs are taxes. But corporate America, especially Wall Street, hates uncertainty even more than taxes. When investors seemingly panicked following this past week’s rollout of President Trump’s new tariffs, it was not the collective voice of investors warning the president to abandon the tariff plan floated in his latest social media post. I think investors simply want to know what the rules are and have some confidence that policies won’t change on a whim.

Economic models project that tariffs would increase consumer prices in the U.S. by 1.5% to 2% over the next two years. I am always amused by the feigned precision of an economist whose primary expertise is building Excel spreadsheets. These models can’t predict the speed of price pass-throughs for different industries or behavioral adaptations in response to changing prices of different goods. No one truly knows the net effect of any specific tariff plan, but that doesn’t prevent a lot of people from pretending they do.

When U.S. tariffs were set to increase on Chinese imports on March 3, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped approximately 650 points on consecutive days, shaving about 1.5% from the index each day. As tempting as it may be, it is shallow and short-sighted to read too much into those two days, especially as it relates to tariffs. When Trump increased certain tariffs in his first term, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 7% in the two trading days following their implementation. At the time, the index was about 26,000 – compare that to 42,500 following this most recent two-day “tariff decline.”

Large declines in the overall stock market are unpleasant, but they are not uncommon. From 2021 to 2024, there were 85 occasions on which the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined more than 1% in a day. Yet, during those same four years, the U.S. stock market increased an average of almost 12% annually.

For those who insist on viewing everything through the lens of politics, a group of you will quickly note that Joe Biden was President the four years that produced those 12% annual returns, while another group observers will highlight that the market increased an average of 13.8% annually during Trump’s first term.

My perspective is a bit different. Our past two presidents could not have been more dissimilar, yet during their combined 8 years in office the U.S. stock market increased an average of 12.8% annually.

I just wish the current one would give us a bit more predictability in terms of economic policy.

David Moon is president of Moon Capital Management. A version of this piece originally appeared in the USA TODAY NETWORK.