President Trump staged another tweet attack on an American corporation on Wednesday, this time raking Nordstrom Inc. for the supposed crime of dropping his daughter Ivanka’s fashion line.
At about 10:51 a.m. New York time, Trump tweeted, “My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”
This attack follows Trump tweets aimed at Boeing and Lockheed Martin, but there are a few especially notable aspects to it. First, it was entirely personal: The critiques of Boeing and Lockheed were at least ostensibly related to public policy — he was questioning the cost of Defense Department procurements from those companies. But there’s no public policy aspect to whether Nordstrom continues to carry Ivanka’s merchandise, only the question of how much lucre flows into the Trump family’s pocket.
Second, this tweet was particularly incoherent. What could Ivanka’s being “a great person” have to do with Nordstrom’s business decisions, even assuming for the sake of argument that it’s true?
Third, and perhaps most important from a business standpoint, the market impact of Trump’s tweet was especially evanescent. The big retailer’s stock took a hit around the time of the tweet, falling about 0.65% to $42.47 as trading volume soared from about 6,700 shares in the minute or so before the tweet dropped to roughly a half-million shares during the four minutes that followed. But the action was over soon thereafter; by 2:01 p.m. New York time, Nordstrom was back above its pre-Trump peak. The shares closed at $44.53, a gain of more than 4% on a day when the rest of the market was essentially flat.
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