It’s hard to say what finally broke Wall Street’s will. Maybe it was the retaliatory 34 percent tariff from Beijing, or the sight of Jerome Powell brushing off the carnage like a man who’d just changed a flat tire. Maybe it was the unmistakable conviction in Donald Trump’s voice when he said, “China played it wrong. They panicked.”

Or maybe it was the simple realization—years in the making, but somehow still a surprise—that this president is not going to hand back the steering wheel to the Chamber of Commerce.

Whatever the trigger, Friday felt like capitulation. Not just a selloff or a rout—though it was certainly that, with the Nasdaq down nearly six percent, the Dow off more than 2,200 points, and the S&P 500 hemorrhaging value like a biotech firm with a bad FDA call. No, this was something more specific: a psychological surrender to the idea that tariffs are not merely a negotiating tactic or a transitory flourish. They are, for better or worse, policy. And not just policy, but a pillar of a new economic order in which global capital doesn’t get to write the rules.

The market, like a poker player who stayed in the hand far too long, seemed to be operating under the assumption that Trump would eventually fold. Surely he would blink. Surely Powell would cut. Surely this was all theater. The curtain will come down, everyone will take their bows, and we can return to life as we knew it.