NEW YORK: Global markets plunged Monday following last week’s two-day meltdown on Wall Street, and U.S. President Donald Trump said he won’t back down on his sweeping new tariffs, which have roiled global trade.
Countries are scrambling to figure out how to respond to the tariffs, with China and others retaliating quickly.
Trump’s tariff blitz fulfilled a key campaign promise as he acted without Congress to redraw the rules of the international trading system. It was a move decades in the making for Trump, who has long denounced foreign trade deals as unfair to the U.S.
The higher rates are set to be collected beginning Wednesday, ushering in a new era of economic uncertainty with no clear end in sight.
Here’s the latest:
Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan says the current volatility in the market does not warrant any drastic measures to be taken, vowing the city will remain a free port.
After the city’s stock market slumped 13.2% on Monday, Chan told reporters that it was functioning in an orderly manner, with substantial selling and buying interests. But the U.S. tariffs will inevitably cause market fluctuations and retaliatory measures and interest rate policy from other countries will trigger more volatile capital flows.
He blasted the latest U.S. tariffs as “bullying and unreasonable,” saying they have disrupted global supply chains and severely impacted the global economic recovery process.
Hong Kong, a former British colony which returned to China in 1997, enjoys semiautonomy that allows its policies and economic system to be different from mainland China’s.
German exports to the US grew in February as firms anticipated tariffs
Germany has reported a large increase in exports to the United States in February, ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs.
Germany has Europe’s biggest economy and is a leading exporter. Last year, the United States was its biggest single trading partner for the first time in nearly a decade, displacing China.
The Federal Statistical Office said Monday that Germany’s exports to the U.S. were up 8.5% in February compared with the previous month, at 14.2 billion euros ($15.6 billion). German exports to the entire world, including other EU nations, were up 1.8% in the same period at 131.6 billion euros.
The head of Germany’s exporters association, the BGA, said the February increase “must not deceive us” as the rise in exports to the U.S. was due to “anticipatory effects.”
Dirk Jandura said in a statement that “U.S. firms bunkered and German firms moved deliveries forward.”
He added that “Germany and the EU must quickly find their role in the new world order” and “approach the global South with pragmatic offers.”
