Can anyone explain to me how the American stock market is up for the year after everything that is happening (tariffs)?

Because they have only been dropping for the past month.

Because the rules are made up and the points don't matter.
To put it another way, the house always wins (the richest few % own 90+% of the market).

Left over momentum from the election. Stocks rose pretty continuously from the election on because businesses expected a "pro-corporate" President. They started correcting a week after Jan. 20th inauguration and his tarriff tantrums began to bear fruit, corpos realized they fucked up. "YTD" being zero or only slightly positive/negative only means the markets have fallen back to where they started pre-Trump.

There is a long, loooooong way to fall still.

Weeeeeeeeeee!
- Are you someone who observes toilets, observes from a toilet, or a toilet that observes?

Maybe I'm missing something, but that link seems to indicate it's down, -2.26% YTD.

My short answer to why it's not down more is simply not enough time has passed for it to impact earnings reports. If all the tariff threats are implemented and stick around, it could be a red summer. And don't forget that most Canadians are boycotting anything made in the US. We just don't know how much of an impact that will have yet.

And s&p shows down 4.54 ytd
"YTD" is currently 3 months of data
"Past Year" is 12 months

Year to date, stocks are down. 1 calendar year though, most are still up.

I'd say it's a few things:

Stock market loves de-regulation. (Fewer rules -> more profit.
Stock market loves the promise of corporate tax cuts.
Even with tarrifs and nonsense, most American stock indices are heavily skewed to the magnificent 7, all of which besides Tesla are fairly immune to global trade.

That’s what I meant. Thanks for the clarification.
Not only immune to global trade : big s/p 500 companies might benefit from the chaos to consolidate at the expense of smaller companies that can’t adjust production across boarder or be effective at lobbying exemptions.
Then come inflation expectations with another layer of pushing stock, especially big cap indexes higher.

You're holding the chart upside down

VTI is down over 5% YTD at time of writing

Your link seems to be showing that it’s down 1.65%?

And now it’s down 2.26%

Because things don't turn on a dime. It's going to take some time (and reductions in corporate profits) before it sinks in that the game has changed.

"Three economy" really means "rich people's money" and the filthy rich have been doing just fine

The Dow is currently down 6.39% over the last month. The last three peaks have all been much lower than the previous peaks.

Investors genuinely did not believe Trump would go through with the tariffs and demolishing the government. Even though he repeatedly said he would during the election, investors just didn't believe it. They though he'd come in and slash corporate taxes and regulations and that'd be it. So after he won the election they stock market went on a tear. In the week after the election the US Stock Market Index jumped like 300 points and continue to rise until it hit it's peak just after inauguration.

Then Trump started to actually do the things he'd been promising he'd do all along. It took until _{1 month into the administration (}1 month ago) before investors realized Trump was serious. That's when the market started falling. It's only been going down for a month now.

It's only been falling for a month now, but the US Stock Market Index is already ~100 points lower than it was at the election. Right now it's at the same place it was 6 months ago. In other words, any gains the US Stock Market made over the 5 months from Sept-Feb were completely wiped out over just 1 month in March.

Just think of it as a mood ring for rich people. The rich people aren't feeling any pain and they're happy to pick up stuff that they want when others want to/are forced to sell.