Trump tariffs reside: FTSE sees largest every day drop since Covid after China hits US with large 34% tariff
The UK’s key FTSE-100 stock market has suffered its worst one-day drop since the start of the pandemic, ending a week of havoc on global markets prompted by Donald Trump’s new tariffs war.
The index closed down 419.75 points, or 4.95 per cent, at 8,054.98, marking the biggest single-day decline since March 2020, when the index lost more than 600 points in one day.
All but one stock on the FTSE-100 fell on Friday, with Rolls-Royce, banks and miners among those suffering the sharpest losses.
China announced earlier it would impose a 34 per cent tariff on imports of all US products, matching the “Liberation Day” levy imposed by President Trump, ushering a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
Beijing also pledged to impose more export controls on rare earth materials used in high-tech products such as computer chips and electric vehicle batteries.
No 10 contradicted the US president’s claim on Thursday that the prime minister was “very happy” about a 10% import tax on British goods entering America. A Downing Street spokesman said they were disappointed.
Sir Keir Starmer will be holding talks with global leaders this weekend.
Full trade war would be damaging, leaders say
Sir Keir Starmer, Australia’s Anthony Albanese and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni agreed an “all-out trade war would be extremely damaging” during phone calls, Downing Street said.
The prime minister said it had been “clear for a long time that like-minded countries must maintain strong relationships and dialogue to ensure our mutual security and maintain economic stability”, a spokesperson from his office said.
Starmer begins talks with world leaders
Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has held talks with his Australian and Italian counterparts – Anthony Albanese and Giorga Meloni – on their approach to Donald Trump’s tariffs, a Downing Street spokesperson has said.
No 10 has already said Sir Keir will be holding a series of talks with global leaders this weekend:
FTSE loses year’s gains
The FTSE-100 has lost all the gains it has made so far this year, and more.
About £3.8 trillion wiped off world stock markets
Analysts estimate that about $4.9 trillion (£3.8 trillion) have been wiped off the value of the global stock market since the US president announced his tariffs on Wednesday evening.
AJ Bell investment analyst Dan Coatsworth said: “China’s retaliation to Trump’s latest round of tariffs means that both sides are not backing down.
“It caps off a horrible week for financial markets and dragged share prices even lower.
“The escalation in tariffs is bad for US companies who buy goods from China, and vice versa, because their costs will go up.
“It’s also bad for the world in general as we now have a repeat of the heightened geopolitical tensions between the US and China which dominated Trump’s first term in office.
“The rapid pullback in stocks and shares over the past few days has put a dent in people’s investments, including those in the US who were meant to have benefited from Trump’s actions.
“Instead, his tactics have caused shockwaves in every corner of the world.”
US indexes also suffer worst drops since 2020
Both the S&P 500 and Dow Jones indexes also suffered their worst days since 2020 as US stocks tumbled again.
The S&P 500, which tracks the country’s leading listed companies, slid by as much as 3.6% to about 5,200, shortly after stock markets in New York opened.
This took the index down to its lowest level since August.
The Dow Jones, which tracks 30 large US companies, and the technology-focused Nasdaq index also dropped around 3%.
FTSE suffers worst day in five years
The FTSE-100 dropped 3.8 per cent – its worst day since 27 March 2020, as the Covid pandemic hit the UK.
After China announced it a 34% reciprocal tariff on imports of all US products, the index dropped by about 4%, later recovering a little before dipping again.
Nasdaq heads towards bear market territory
The Nasdaq looks set to confirm a bear market, as it is down more than 20 per cent from its record high.
The tech-heavy index hit a record closing high of 20,173.89 on December 16, but has struggled since the start of the year. Fears of a potential slowdown in AI spending had pushed it into correction territory earlier last month.
The index was last down 3.6 per cent on Friday.
How Trump tariffs led to a $2.5 trillion wipeout for the US stock markets – and why worse is yet to come
Unless you happen to be an investor or trader who had shorted a lot of stocks before yesterday, it probably wasn’t an enjoyable experience watching some of the biggest and most well-known companies on the planet tumble ever-deeper into the red.
By the close of play in the US on Thursday, President Donald Trump’s previous-day announcement of global tariffs had wiped just shy of an estimated $2.5 trillion, or £1.9tn, off the total value of US stock markets in the space of a few hours.
For what is essentially a play at making his nation richer for the long term, it was quite the impact in the opposite direction – but Mr Trump remains steadfast in his beliefs that a longer-term gain will be made from his ploy of alienating most of the rest of the planet in business terms.
Our business and money editor Karl Matchett reports:
Opinion | The markets may be assuming Trump’s erratic policy will be corrected in due course
The Independent’s associate editor Sean O’Grady writes:
The markets, distressed as they are, have not yet fallen into a full-on crash. But only because they assume that such erratic policy-making will in due course be corrected and the tariffing watered down.
If not, then the valuations attached to the world’s largest corporations will have to fall, for the simple reason that they can no longer make things in the most efficient manner, and thus generate the returns they need to justify anyone buying their shares. There will be a tsunami of profit warnings in the months ahead.
Trump has not only upended the post-war rules-based international trading system, but the very concept of globalisation and the operations of every manufacturing, transportation, logistics and resources company on earth. Not far behind them will be the banks and investment houses that finance and are invested in them. And when the rest of us next see a valuation of our pension pots we will see the immediate and colossal impact. This is where it hits home.
It’s at times like these that the markets panic. It could be, as reported, that investors can’t quite believe what is happening, and that any American president could abandon free market-based economics for eighteenth-century mercantilism, and set about making America look like the 1960s again.
But what if he means it? What if he ramps the tariffs up again if countries retaliate? What if it escalates?
