Key events
Robert Tait
The first signs of an internal US political backlash against Donald Trump’s declaration of a global trade war were starting to emerge on Thursday amid tanking stock markets worldwide and widespread international criticism of the move.
Hours after Trump unveiled a sweeping panoply of tariffs in an event he dubbed “liberation day”, four Republican senators openly defied him by voting for a Senate resolution from Democrats demanding that the 25% tariffs on Canadian products be reversed.
The resolution lacks the force of law but its support from Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, both of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, immediately signaled the deep misgivings among some Republicans over Trump’s tariff gambit, which has triggered a global sell-off.
Lauren Aratani
Zooming in on US stock markets – all three major US funds closed down in their worst day since June 2020, during the Covid pandemic.
Here’s our latest full report from the US:
US stock markets tumbled on Thursday as investors parsed the sweeping change in global trading following Donald Trump’s announcement of a barrage of tariffs on the country’s trading partners.
All three major US stock markets closed down in their worst day since June 2020, during the Covid pandemic. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 6%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow dropped 4.8% and 3.9%, respectively. Apple and Nvidia, two of the US’s largest companies by market value, had lost a combined $470bn in value by midday.
Patrick Commins
The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristolina Georgieva, has warned that Trump’s sweeping new tariffs “clearly represent a significant risk to the global outlook at a time of sluggish growth”.
In a brief statement issued this morning, Georgieva cautioned against retaliation to American trade aggression, even as the European Union and China threatened to respond in kind.
“It is important to avoid steps that could further harm the world economy. We appeal to the United States and its trading partners to work constructively to resolve trade tensions and reduce uncertainty,” she said.
Trump has said he is ready to negotiate and willing to dial back import taxes if countries can offer him something “phenomenal”.
Asia markets plunge further after US stocks mark worst day in five years
Asian markets have posted further losses after opening on Friday, hours after US markets closed the day with some of their worst losses in five years, with tech stocks particularly hard hit.
Tokyo’s Nikkei index was down 1.8% at 34,108.23, adding to a drop of 2.77% on Thursday. The broader Topix index was off 2.3%, having lost 3.08% the previous day.
Chip-related shares were some of the worst performers on Friday, with Advantest and Tokyo Electron down 7% and 4%, respectively.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index fell as much as 2% on Friday, to an eight-month low.
On Thursday, Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite plunged 6%, while the retreat in the S&P 500 was its biggest in a day since 2020.
In Europe, both the Paris and Frankfurt stock exchanges finished the day with losses of more than 3%.
Oil prices plummeted more than 6% on concerns an economic downturn sparked by Trump’s trade policies would hit demand. The price of gold hit another new record.
The dollar slumped by as much as 2.6 percent versus the euro, its biggest intraday plunge in a decade, and suffered sharp losses also against the yen and British pound.
On Friday, the US currency fetched 146.33 yen in early Asian trade, rebounding slightly from 145.99 yen in New York.
Opening summary
Global financial markets have been plunged into turmoil as Donald Trump’s escalating trade war knocked trillions of dollars off the value of the world’s biggest companies and heightened fears of a US recession.
Asian markets plunged further on Friday morning, with the Nikkei in Tokyo dropping 1.8% and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index falling as much as 2%, to an eight-month low.
About $2.5tn (£1.9tn) was wiped off Wall Street and share prices in other financial centres across the globe by day’s end on Thursday.
IMF chief Kristolina Georgieva warned that the tariffs represented a “significant risk” to the global economy and warned against retaliation, while world leaders from Brussels to Beijing rounded on Trump. China condemned “unilateral bullying” practices and the EU said it was drawing up countermeasures.
Trump himself insisted market turmoil was no issue – telling reporters “markets will boom”.
On Friday, economists will be anxiously awaiting the latest US jobs figures – due out at 8.30am eastern time. It may take months for the impacts of Trump’s tariff decision to work their way into the jobs figures. But outside of the government’s official figures there are already signs that the resilience of the US jobs market is being tested.
Here’s a round-up of the key moments so far:
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The New York stock exchange had its worst day of trading since June 2020 – during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. The main indices saw their worst one-day falls in five years as Donald Trump claimed that “the markets are going to boom” in response to his sweeping tariffs.
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The heaviest falls in share prices on Thursday were reserved for US companies with complex international supply chains stretching into the countries that Trump is targeting with billions of dollars in fresh border taxes. Apple, which makes most of its iPhones, tablets and other devices for the US market in China, was down 9.5% at close of trading, and there were steep declines for other large multinationals including Microsoft, Nvidia, Dell and HP.
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Canada will retaliate against “unjustified, unwarranted” tariffs imposed by the United States with a 25% taxes on US vehicles, Mark Carney announced on Thursday. The US has placed 25% taxes on Canadian steel, aluminum and vehicles.
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The UK business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, told MPs that ministers were still pursuing an economic deal with the US as the priority but “we do reserve the right to take any action we deem necessary if a deal is not secured”.
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The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said Trump’s decision to impose tariffs of 20% on EU goods was “brutal and unfounded”, while Germany’s outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, called it “fundamentally wrong”. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the “protectionist” tariffs ran “contrary to the interests of millions of citizens on this side of the Atlantic and in the US”.
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Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican senator and former Senate majority leader, has criticized Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, saying that they are “bad policy and trade wars with our partners hurt working people most”. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that tariffs on imported semiconductor chips and pharmaceuticals will be coming “soon”.
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The US dollar hit a six-month low, falling 2.2% on Thursday morning, amid a growing loss of confidence in a currency previously considered the safest in the world for most of the past century.
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Tariffs will fall heavily on some of the world’s poorest countries, with nations in south-east Asia, including Myanmar, among the most affected. Cambodia, where about one in five of the population live below the poverty line, was the worst-hit country in the region with a tariff rate of 49%. Vietnam faces 46% tariffs and Myanmar, reeling from a devastating earthquake and years of civil war after a 2021 military coup, was hit with 44%.
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The EU is thought to be preparing retaliatory tariffs on US consumer and industrial goods – likely to include emblematic products such as orange juice, blue jeans and Harley-Davidson motorbikes – to be announced in mid-April, in response to steel and aluminium tariffs previously announced by Trump.
