The US financial markets continued to see a selloff for a second straight day on Friday in the aftermath of the sweeping tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on most of the world.
The S&P 500 tumbled 6 percent, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 2,231 points as Wall Street’s worst crisis since the crash due to the COVID-19 pandemic deepened, the Associated Press reported. The S&P 500 is down roughly 16% from its record set in February.
Along with the above two indices, the Nasdaq composite was also down 5.8 percent, as China matched Trump’s big raise in tariffs in an escalating trade war. The selloff continued even after a better-than-expected report on the US job market.
Markets briefly recovered some of their losses after the release of Friday morning’s US jobs report, which said employers accelerated their hiring by more last month than economists expected. But the real fear hitting financial markets is about what’s to come.
“The world has changed, and the economic conditions have changed,” AP quoted Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock, as saying.
China’s response to Donald Trump’s tariff plans
China responded on Friday to the tariffs announced by Donald Trump with their own retaliatory measures. The country’s commerce ministry said it would respond to the 34 percent tariffs imposed by the U.S. on imports from China with its own 34 percent tariff on imports of all US products beginning April 10. It is worth noting that the United States and China are the world’s two largest economies.
The Republican leader criticized China’s retaliation on Friday, saying on his Truth Social platform that “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED – THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO!”
Much will depend on how long Trump’s tariffs stick and what kind of retaliations other countries deliver. Some of Wall Street is holding onto hope that Trump will lower the tariffs after prying out some “wins” from other countries following negotiations. Otherwise, many say a recession looks likely.
The US President seems unfazed, though, saying that Americans may feel “some pain” because of tariffs, but the long-term goals, including getting more manufacturing jobs back to the United States, are worth it. On Thursday, he likened the situation to a medical operation, where the US economy is the patient.
On Wall Street, stocks of companies that do lots of business in China fell to some of the sharpest losses.
DuPont dropped 11.7 percent after China said its regulators are launching an antitrust investigation into DuPont China Group, a subsidiary of the chemical giant. It’s one of several measures targeting American companies in retaliation for the US tariffs.
GE Healthcare, which got 13.8 percent of its revenue last year from the China region, fell 12.7 percent.
