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NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are falling sharply Monday after President Donald Trump said tariffs he had earlier announced on Canada and Mexico will take effect at the end of the night. That dashed Wall Street’s hopes Trump would choose a less painful path for global trade, and it followed the latest warning signal on the U.S. economy’s strength.

The S&P 500 was down 2% in late trading and on track for its worst day since December. After holding relatively steady through much of the morning, the index turned lower in the afternoon. The losses accelerated sharply after Trump said there was “no room left” for negotiations that could lower the 25% tariffs set for imports from Canada and Mexico, which had already been delayed once to allow time for more talks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 735 points, or 1.7%, with 45 minutes remaining in trading, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.6% lower.

The drops punctuate a rocky couple of weeks for Wall Street. After the S&P 500 set a record following a parade of fatter-than-expected profit reports from big U.S. companies last month, the market began diving sharply amid several weaker-than-expected reports on the U.S. economy, including a couple showing U.S. households are getting much more pessimistic about inflation because of the threat of tariffs.

The latest weaker-than-expected report arrived Monday on U.S. manufacturing. Overall activity is still growing, but not by quite as much as economists had forecast. Perhaps more discouragingly, manufacturers are seeing a contraction in new orders. Prices, meanwhile, rose amid discussions about who will pay for Trump's tariffs.

“Demand eased, production stabilized, and destaffing continued as panelists’ companies experience the first operational shock of the new administration’s tariff policy,” said Timothy Fiore, chair of the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing business survey committee.

The hope on Wall Street had been that Trump was using the threat of tariffs as a tool for negotiations and that he would ultimately go through with less damaging policies for the global economy and trade.

The market's recent slump has hit Nvidia and some other formerly high-flying areas of the market particularly hard. They fell even more Monday, with Nvidia down 9.4% and Elon Musk’s Tesla down 4.3%.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Kroger fell 2.9% after the grocery chain’s Chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen resigned following an internal investigation into his personal conduct.

Wall Street's wipeout even pulled down stocks of companies enmeshed in the cryptocurrency economy, which rose strongly in the morning. They initially bounced after Trump said over the weekend that his administration was moving forward with a crypto strategic reserve.

But MicroStrategy, the company that's now known as Strategy and has been raising money to buy bitcoin, slid to a loss of 3.1%. Coinbase, the crypto trading platform, fell 5%.

Across the Pacific in China, manufacturers reported an uptick in orders in February as importers rushed to beat higher U.S. tariffs and a Chinese state media report said that Beijing was considering ways to retaliate.

Trump had imposed a tariff of 10% on imports from, China and that's scheduled to rise to 20% beginning Tuesday. He also ended the “de minimis” loophole that exempted imports worth less than $800 from tariffs.

In Hong Kong, Chinese bubble tea chain Mixue Bingcheng’s stock soared 43% following its $444 million debut on the market. The company claims to be the world’s largest food retail chain, with more than 45,000 outlets, and its jump came as the Hang Seng index rose 0.3%.

Indexes rose by even more across Europe and in Tokyo. European markets leaped after a report showed an easing of inflation in February. That should help the European Central Bank, which investors widely expect will deliver another cut to interest rates later this week.

Germany’s DAX surged 2.6%, and France’s CAC 40 jumped 1.1%. Stocks outside the United States have performed better than the S&P 500 this year, even with Trump’s promises for “America First” policies

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.16% from 4.24% just before the manufacturing report's release. It's come down sharply since January, when it was approaching 4.80%, as worries have built about the possibility of a slowing U.S. economy.

Often, falls in Treasury yields can give a boost to stock prices because they make loans cheaper to get and give a boost to the economy. But the reason for this recent drop in yields, softer economic growth expectations, mean that's not the case this time, according to Morgan Stanley strategists led by Michael Wilson.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

Melania Trump went to Capitol Hill on Monday to lobby for a bill that would make it a federal crime to post intimate imagery online, whether they are real or AI-created, without an individual’s consent and require technology companies to swiftly remove such content.

It was her first solo public appearance since she resumed the role of first lady on Jan. 20.

The first lady said it was “heartbreaking” to see teenagers and especially girls grapple with the fallout after they become the targets of malicious and sexually explicit online content. She called on Congress to prioritize the well-being of young people.

“This toxic environment can be severely damaging. We must prioritize their well-being by equipping them with the support and tools necessary to navigate this hostile digital landscape,” she said during a roundtable discussion about the “Take It Down Act" at the U.S. Capitol.

“Every young person deserves a safe online space to express themself freely, without the looming threat of exploitation or harm,” she said.

The “Take It Down Act,” sponsored by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., passed the Senate in February. Melania Trump's public support for the legislation could help get it through the Republican-controlled House and to President Donald Trump's desk to become law.

Cruz was among the lawmakers who joined the first lady for the discussion in the Capitol's Mansfield Room. Online safety advocates and survivors of non-consensual intimate imagery also participated.

Cruz said Monday on social media that the measure was inspired by Elliston Berry and her mother, who visited his office after Snapchat refused for nearly a year to remove an AI-generated nonconsensual graphic image, also known as a “deepfake.”

“No one should have to experience the pain, humiliation, and trauma that so many Americans have at the hands of AI deepfakes,” Cruz said.

Meta, which owns and operates Facebook and Instagram, supports the legislation.

The bill would make it a federal crime to knowingly publish or threaten to publish intimate imagery online without an individual's consent, including realistic, computer-generated intimate images of people who can be identified.

If the bill becomes law, social media platforms would be required to remove such images within 48 hours of a victim's request and take steps to delete duplicate content.

“Having an intimate image – real or AI-generated - shared without consent can be devastating and Meta developed and backs many efforts to help prevent it,” Meta communications director Andy Stone said on X.

In the first Trump administration, Melania Trump led a youth initiative she called “ Be Best,” which included a focus on online safety. She has said she’s interested in reviving the program.

The first lady has made few public appearances since the start of the administration.

She accompanied the president to survey natural disaster sites in North Carolina and California at the end of inauguration week in January, and on Feb. 22 joined her husband to host the nation's governors for a black-tie dinner at the White House.

The first lady is expected at the Capitol again on Tuesday for the president’s prime-time address to a joint session of Congress.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA is headed to the South By Southwest festival to share tips on finding innovative solutions to complex challenges.

America's preeminent spy agency will deliver a presentation Sunday on creative problem solving at the annual SXSW music festival and tech conference held in Austin, Texas, the CIA announced Monday.

The typically tight-lipped agency said a CIA historian and one of the agency's public affairs officers will deliver the talk, entitled “Mission Possible: The Spies' Guide to Creative Problem Solving."

Sunday’s presentation from the CIA comes during the first weekend of the event, which brings together thousands of artists, technology experts, business leaders and entrepreneurs.

The agency said its tips on creative problem solving are designed to be helpful to anyone, even if their particular challenges don't include running covert surveillance, organizing clandestine meetups or sniffing out double agents.

“Come learn how creative problem-solving has helped resolve complex challenges we’ve faced in protecting national security, and how you can apply creative thinking to your own seemingly impossible missions,” the agency wrote in a social media post promoting the talk.

This month's presentation comes at a tumultuous time for America's intelligence community. The agency recently offered buyout offers to employees as part of President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's efforts to shrink and reshape the federal government.

Trump has long criticized America’s intelligence agencies, and his CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has promised big changes, claiming the agency has strayed from its original focus on human-collected intelligence.

Ratcliffe is a former congressman and one-time director of national intelligence.

DENVER (AP) — A woman is suspected in a string of vandalism against a Colorado Tesla dealership that included Molotov cocktails thrown at vehicles, the words “Nazi cars” spray painted on the building and a message that appeared to be directed against Tesla founder Elon Musk, according to court documents.

Lucy Grace Nelson was arrested Monday in Loveland after police said she returned to the dealership there with “additional incendiary devices” and materials used in vandalism. Police are still investigating her alleged motive, department spokesperson Chris Padgett said.

The case comes amid rising concerns voiced by Democrats and some Republicans about Musk’s influence over the administration of President Donald Trump and follows recent protests at Tesla storerooms elsewhere in the U.S.

Nelson was arrested on state charges of using an incendiary device or explosives during a felony, criminal mischief and criminal attempt to commit a felony in connection with the vandalism Monday, police said. However, police said they are working with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and federal charges were likely.

Nelson, who posted bond and was released from jail Tuesday, did not immediately respond to a telephone message on Wednesday.

The arrest affidavit outlining police's evidence against Nelson suggests there could be a second person involved, noting that the person seen on surveillance video during one of the six incidents since Jan. 29 seemed to have a smaller build than Nelson. But it identified Nelson as the person seen at other times.

Padgett said police were investigating the possibility of someone else being involved. He declined to release more details about the case because of the federal investigation.

In one of the incidents, someone spray painted an obscenity believed to be directed at Musk before being chased away by a security guard, the affidavit notes.

Security footage from the dealer also showed someone throwing Molotov cocktails into a row of Tesla sedans. The affidavit said at least four vehicles worth a combined $220,000 were targeted by the incendiary devices, which were crafted from empty liquor bottles. Police said that when Nelson was arrested, in her car they observed cans of spray paint, gasoline, bottles and various cloth pieces that could be soaked with an accelerant.

A woman who answered the phone at the Tesla dealership in Loveland declined to comment. Tesla did not return an email seeking comment.

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Associated Press writer Thomas Peipert contributed to this report.