The aim of the article is to describe the trends ongoing in modern economic discourse. Economic discourse is considered to be a part of business discourse texts united by the topic of commerce and economic relations. The author looks into speech influence means used by the participants of online communication in social media posts. The work is carried out in the framework of functional pragmatic paradigm. Studying the correlation between the speech forms and their functions, this approach allows to identify the main speech strategies and tactics used by specialists in economics and ordinary people discussing economic issues. The tactic of assessment is the object of the current study. The excerpts from social media involving debate on single market issue were chosen by method of continuous sampling. They included the posts from accounts of European Union Commission, EU Finance, Confederation of British Industry, BBC Politics et al. The author singles out speech means characterizing the phenomenon from a positive and negative perspective. They are treated as a reflection of collective consciousness of Europeans and demonstrate an attitude of doubt and skepticism towards the single market. To conclude, online communication in the field of economics and business proves to be a valuable object for linguistic research. New mass media play an important role in formation of discourse field and a powerful tool for expressing public opinion.