[SINGAPORE] The sell-off following US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement last Wednesday continued to roil Asian markets on Monday (Apr 7), with the Hong Kong market faring the worst.
The Hang Seng index suffered its largest drop since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, plunging more than 3,000 points to close 13.2 per cent lower. Trump’s tariffs had hit Chinese imports to the US with a 34 per cent tariff, prompting Beijing to respond on Friday with an identical tariff of 34 per cent.
Among the losers were tech giants Xiaomi and Alibaba – their share prices plummeted 20.6 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively.
Global markets and economies are still struggling to deal with the “seismic” tariff shock triggered last week, said DBS chief economist Taimur Baig in a report on Monday.
“Despite the spate of announcements, there is still substantial fear that more measures are to come,” he said. “Perhaps more critical is the notion that nations trying to do a deal with the US will not be able to rest easy upon signing agreements, as no deal with US seems to be reliable any longer,” he said.
Not helping matters were Trump’s comments over the weekend, indicating that the reciprocal tariffs were here to stay, unless the bilateral trade deficit between the US and specified country were to be eliminated entirely, wrote David Chao, Invesco’s global market strategist for the Asia-Pacific (ex-Japan).
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It was a sea of red across other Asian markets. The Nikkei 225 index in Japan fell about 8.6 per cent shortly after trading opened. It closed 7.8 per cent down, bringing its total losses to 12.8 per cent since Trump’s announcement on Wednesday. The yen strengthened against the Singapore dollar by 1.8 per cent as at Monday afternoon.
The Straits Times Index (STI) index lost 7.5 per cent, not much less than the 8.3 per cent decline during the subprime mortgage crisis on Oct 24, 2008; in the Covid pandemic-induced crash of Mar 23, 2020, the index tumbled 7.4 per cent.
With the 0.3 per cent decline on Thursday after Trump’s announcement, and the 3 per cent fall on Friday, STI’s losses stand at a cumulative 10.5 per cent since the announcement on Wednesday.
The Shanghai Composite Index shed 7.3 per cent, or 245.43 points, to 3,096.58. China markets had a longer weekend with the Qing Ming holiday last week.
Elsewhere, South Korea’s Kospi index retreated by 5.6 per cent at the close, after having fallen more than 130 points since Friday.
Australia’s ASX 200 index was one of the least-hit, with a drop of 4.2 per cent on Monday. The country is facing only the baseline 10 per cent tariff. However, the Australian dollar weakened to 81 Singapore cents, a level it last reached in April 2020, during the Covid pandemic-induced crash.
The Malaysian market was down 4 per cent to 1,443.80 points.
Market weakness continues to spread. In early trading in Europe, London’s FTSE index had lost 6 per cent and was trading at a one-year low. Germany’s DAX was 5.33 per cent lower.
An hour after trading on the US markets got underway, the Dow was volatile and weaker by 0.6 per cent. The S&P 500 was just about trading above water.
