President Donald Trump's tariff-driven trade wars are taking a toll on stocks. The S&P has fallen more than 10% from its recent high, into what's known as "correction" territory. Is a bear market next?

Corrections are "relatively rare yet symbolically worrisome milestones for the markets," said The New York Times. The Nasdaq and Russell 2000 have also fallen into correction territory. The turmoil is a "reflection of the uncertainty surrounding Trump's policies" and worries that consumers and businesses are pulling back.

But this doesn't look to be the start of a bear market, said Bloomberg. A bear market is defined as a drop of 20% or more from the recent high. The drop in stock prices will probably provoke a "flip in trade and monetary policy," said Bank of America analyst Michael Hartnett. 

What did the commentators say?
Corrections can be a good thing. Market pros see them as "potentially healthy wipeouts of overdone euphoria," said Stan Choe at The Associated Press. The S&P had seen two straight years of growth of more than 20%, with stock prices rising "faster than corporate profits." 

The latest correction may simply be "culling too-high enthusiasm among day traders," said Choe. Corrections always carry a "larger fear" that a bear market is in the making, however. While the economy seems "relatively solid at the moment," its future "looks cloudier than usual given all the unknowns."

Investors "spent last year wish-casting about Trump's agenda," Catherine Rampell said at The Washington Post. They assumed he would implement policies they favor, like tax cuts and deregulation, while pulling back from his promises to implement tariffs and reduce the workforce with mass deportations. But Trump really meant to do what he said he would do. "Markets are only figuring it out now?"

What next?
"Nobody can say for sure when the sell-off will end," said MarketWatch. It can be tough to tell if the correction is starting to "snowball" into a bear market. But three bear markets within a decade would be an "extremely rare occurrence." The last time that happened was the 1960s. There have already been two bear markets this decade, the first when the Covid-19 pandemic crashed the markets in 2020 and again when inflation started to spike in 2022. Investors will be keeping an "eye on the upcoming economic data" to see what happens next.

The political leaders of the U.S., the U.K. and Russia are 78, 62 and 72 years old, respectively, but the trio are bucking a global trend of younger politicians taking office. "Across continents," said the Times of India, a "fresh wave" of youthful leadership is "surging" and "defying stereotypes" while "injecting new energy" into the political scene. Here are five leading the way. 

Kristrún Frostadóttir, 36 
Frostadóttir (pictured above) became Iceland's youngest-ever leader and the world's youngest-serving head of government last year. Her election also marked the first time her country had a woman prime minister and woman president, Halla Tómasdóttir, at the same time. 

Ibrahim Traoré, 36 
After seizing power in a September 2022 coup d'état that ousted his fellow military officer Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, Traoré has been the interim leader of Burkina Faso. "I know I'm younger than most of you here," he said to government officials as he took office. 

Daniel Noboa, 37 
When he took office at the age of 35, Noboa became the second-youngest president in Ecuador's history and the youngest to be elected. Noboa's 2023 election was a "triumph for the youngest," said a 25-year-old supporter to Al Jazeera.

Milojko Spajić, 37 
The Montenegrin prime minister took office in October 2023, having entered politics as minister of finance after the 2020 election. The focus of his campaign to become PM was a promise to raise the minimum wage and increase minimum pensions. 

Gabriel Boric, 39 
A former student protest leader, Boric became Chile's youngest-ever president at the age of 35 in December 2021, after he defeated a far-right candidate. Boric was seen as a youthful modernizer, winning on a "promise to turn Chile into a greener, more egalitarian 'welfare state,'" said Agence France-Presse. 

The youngest leaders
Jean-Claude Duvalier was just 19 when he became president of Haiti in 1971. The youngest president in American history is Theodore Roosevelt, who was thrust into the hot seat in 1909 at the comparatively ancient age of 42.