Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both jumped on Monday's news of a plummeting stock market to argue that the volatility makes the case for their very different campaigns.
In social media posts, Trump warned that China “will bring us down” and that “nobody has a clue.”
The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 1,000 points when the market opened Monday morning. A weakening Chinese economy, a frequent punching bag for Trump on the campaign trail, is taking the brunt of the blame for the instability.
“I’ve been talking about China for years, because China is bad. It’s going to bring us down, too, because we’re so heavily coupled with China,” the GOP frontrunner said on Fox News on Monday.
Democrat Bernie Sanders also used the drop to bolster his argument against Wall Street, which has been a central tenet of his campaign.
“For the past 40 years, Wall Street and the billionaire class have rigged the rules to redistribute wealth to the richest among us,” he tweeted.
Republican presidential candidates Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee and Carly Fiorina both took the news as a chance to knock President Barack Obama’s economic record.
“This is a history of failed policies by this president. What’s happened is, because this president has run up more debt than any president in American history, that debt has been given to us in large measure by the Chinese. Now, as the Chinese markets tend to have a correction, which they’re doing right now, it’s going to have an even greater effect,” Christie said on Fox News.
"You don't build a strong economy by empowering Washington-Wall Street elites at the expense of American workers on Main Street," Huckabee said in a statement. "Sadly the chickens are now coming home to roost for the Obama administration and its failed economic policies."
Fiorina said on Fox Business News: “I actually have been expecting a correction for some time now because the underlying fundamentals of the U.S. economy are not that strong. Two percent growth is pretty lackluster.”
