President's tweets 'repeatedly driving down stock market', as Pence under fire over staying at leader's Irish golf resort

Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.

Days on which Donald Trump tweets more than 35 times are regularly associated with negative stock market returns while days on which the president tweets five times or fewer yield positive results, according to a new study by Bank of America Merrill Lynch reported by CNBC.

The investment bank's chief equity strategist, Savita Subramanian, wrote in a note that "since 2016, days with more than 35 tweets (90 percentile) by Trump have seen negative returns (-9 basis points), whereas days with less than 5 tweets (10 percentile) have seen positive returns (+5 basis points) - statistically significant."

"Trade talk, political campaigning and tweets have contributed to volatility, from China to Fed policy to tax policy,” she wrote. "And new tariffs announced in August indicate downside risk to our 2019/20 EPS [earnings per share] growth forecasts of +2%/+7%, where indirect impacts from hits to corporate or consumer confidence could be significant."

Trump's sudden rants about China or chairman Jerome Powell's stewardship of the Federal Reserve have certainly been seen to swing markets to alarming degrees in recent months but, overall, the bank concludes has still been good for the stock market overall. The Dow is up 42 per cent since the 2016 presidential election and 31 per cent since his inauguration.

It is down since 5 May, however, when the president shocked financial markets by tweeting his intention to increase China tariffs of 10 per cent on $200bn (£164bn) to 25 per cent.

His latest tweets overnight, incidentally, have seen him reassuring the public on Hurricane Dorian and quoting Fox host Lou Dobbs' assertion that the American people are "disgusted with the FBI".

Vice president Mike Pence is meanwhile under fire for staying at a Trump-owned golf resort in Doonbeg on the Atlantic coast during his trip to Ireland, forcing him to fly 181 miles across the country to attend meetings with the country's leaders in Dublin.

"If you have a chance to get to Doonbeg you'll find it's a fairly small place. The opportunity to stay at Trump National in Doonbeg, to accommodate the unique footprint that comes with our security detail and other personnel made it logical," the veep explained on Tuesday.

His chief-of-staff Marc Short offered a different explanation, pointing out that Pence's great-grandmother was from the town and another distant relative still operates a local pub, providing him with a rare opportunity to bask in his family heritage.

But no one's buying either story.

Here's Tom Embury-Dennis's report.

US defence secretary Mark Esper has agreed to free up $3.6bn (£2.97bn) from the Pentagon budget for Trump's US-Mexico border wall by effectively defunding 127 military construction projects.

Esper determined that the use of the military construction funds was necessary to support American forces deployed to the southern border under the national emergency that Trump declared in mid-February. 

The formal determination allows the US president, under an obscure statute in the federal code overseeing the military, to reallocate the funds without approval from Congress. 

Here's the latest on Trump's trade war with China.

He insists the rival superpower is about to crack but the data suggests otherwise...

More on Dorian, after the president warned against complacency in Florida, saying "lots of very bad and unpredictable things can happen", signed an emergency declaration for North Carolina and said he was "sending crews" to help the people of the Bahamas.

Here's Andrew Buncombe's report.

The Democrats are using the destruction wrought by Dorian through the Caribbean to drag climate change to the forefront of the national consciousness.

New Jersey senator and 2020 contender Cory Booker yesterday unveiled a $3trrn (£2.5trn) climate plan, pledging to invest in clean energy, phase out the use of fossil fuels and create a 100 per cent carbon neutral economy

"We are facing a dual crisis of climate change and economic inequality," Booker said in a statement. "Without immediate action, we risk an incredible human toll from disasters, health impacts, rising national security threats, and trillions of dollars in economic losses."

Meanwhile, rival Elizabeth Warren had adopted the climate change plan of former candidate and Washington state governor Jay Inslee, whom she apparently met with in Seattle before Labor Day to discuss the move.

"Today, I’m embracing that goal by committing to adopt and build on Governor Inslee’s 10-year action plan to achieve 100 per cent clean energy for America by decarbonising our electricity, our vehicles, and our buildings," Warren wrote in a Medium post on Tuesday night.

"And I’m challenging every other candidate for president to do the same."

She said she intends "to match Governor Inslee’s commitment and to subsidise the economic transition to clean and renewable electricity, zero emission vehicles and green products for commercial and residential buildings."

Specifically, she said she hopes to achieve "100 per cent zero-carbon pollution for all new commercial and residential buildings" by 2028, "100 per cent zero emissions for all new light-duty passenger vehicles, medium-duty trucks and all buses" by 2030 and "100 per cent renewable and zero-emission energy in electricity generation" by 2035.

"If we work together to make smart investments in our clean energy future, we will grow our economy, improve our health, and reduce structural inequalities embedded in our existing fossil fuel system," she wrote.

"As president, I will take bold action to confront the climate crisis, starting on day one."

US attorney Neal Katyal, acting solicitor general under Barack Obama, has called out Trump for operating a "snowflake presidency" by failing to take meaningful action on gun control in the wake of a spate of mass shootings. 

"The Second Amendment is being used as a bogeyman to stop sensible gun reform and the results are in the streets and they are devastating and sad and this country has to do something about it and I'm sick and tired of Republicans hiding behind the Second Amendment," he added.

One party that is (finally) taking action on guns in mass retailer Walmart, which is moving to limit the sale of guns and ammunition in its stores.

White nationalist gunman Patrick Crusius, 21, opened fire in a branch of Walmart in the Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, Texas, on 3 August, killing 22 people and injuring 24, many of whom were Hispanic.

This tweet from California governor Gavin Newsom highlights the problem of America's firearms addiction better than any other.

The United States would rather redesign its schools to adapt to mass shooters than take lethal weapons out of their hands.