LONDON: Stock markets slid Friday (Aug 1) after US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on dozens of trading partners and weak US jobs data fuelled the fall.
Wall Street’s Dow Jones index dropped more than 1.2 per cent as trading got underway in New York, while Paris and Frankfurt tumbled more than two per cent. The dollar gave up earlier gains against key currencies.
With hours to go before Trump’s Aug 1 deadline for governments to make toll-averting deals, the president unveiled a list of sweeping levies.
The new tariffs range from 10 to 41 per cent and target exports from 69 countries, including Canada, India, Switzerland, Brazil and Taiwan. Trump’s administration said the measures, effective Aug 7, would raise the US effective tariff rate to about 18 per cent, up from just 2.3 per cent last year.
Hours later, the US Labor Department said the US economy added just 73,000 jobs in July while revising lower the figures for May and June.
“The US payrolls data has eclipsed news about the latest tariff rates applied to the world’s economies by Donald Trump, and is now dominating markets,” said Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB trading group.
Earlier, she noted, tariffs were “the main theme sucking risk sentiment from financial markets”.
Governments around the world have been scrambling to cut deals with the White House since Trump unveiled his bombshell “Liberation Day” tariffs on Apr 2.
He has delayed implementation of the tariffs several times – the latest move pushing them back by a week to Aug 7.
MARKETS SLIDE WORLDWIDE
US stocks were deep in the red Friday afternoon, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1.46 per cent to 43,486.45, the S&P 500 losing 1.8 per cent to 6,225.55, and the Nasdaq falling 2.42 per cent to 20,610.91. Global equities followed suit, with Europe’s STOXX 600 tumbling 1.89 per cent.
