Wall Street could be headed for a bear market. Here's what that means.

Wall Street could soon be in the claws of another bear market as the Trump administration's tariff blitz fuels fears that the added taxes on imported goods from around the world will sink the global economy.

The last bear market occurred in 2022, but the current decline is more similar to the sudden, turbulent bear market of 2020, when the benchmark S&P 500 index tumbled 34% in a one-month period, the shortest bear market ever.

A bear market is a Wall Street term used to describe a market downturn when a stock index, such as the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average, has fallen 20% or more from a recent high for a sustained period of time.