Trump tariffs live updates: Asian markets plummet further with Hong Kong stocks down almost 10% – UK Times

India’s Nifty50 and Sensex indices crashed to 9-month lows, dropping around 5 per cent during opening trade this morning.

IT companies, which earn a significant share of their revenue from the US, collectively lost around 7 per cent.

The broader small-caps and mid-caps lost 6.2 per cent and 4.6 per cent respectively.

US president Donald Trump’s top economic advisers have sought to portray the tariffs as a savvy repositioning of the US in the global trade order.

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said more than 50 nations had started negotiations with the US since Mr Trump imposed tariffs on dozens of countries last Wednesday.

Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said on CBS News that the tariffs would remain in place “for days and weeks”.

Taiwan stocks plummeted almost 10 per cent this morning in their first trading since US president Donald Trump announced new import tariffs last week.

After opening following a two-day market holiday on Thursday and Friday, Taiwan’s benchmark index dropped to its lowest level in more than a year and was poised for its biggest one-day percentage drop since at least 1990, LSEG data showed.

Taiwan’s top financial regulator announced yesterday it would impose temporary curbs lasting all this week on short-selling of shares to help deal with potential market turmoil from the tariffs.

The island, hit with a 32 per cent duty, was singled out by Mr Trump as among the US trading partners with one of the highest trade surpluses with the country.

Taiwan on Friday announced a T$88bn ($2.65bn) support package for companies hit by the tariffs, while president Lai Ching-te said the island would buy more from and invest more in the US, with the aim of a zero-tariff regime between the two.

US president Donald Trump has claimed that China’s objections to new tariffs stalled a deal to sell off TikTok to keep it operating in the US.

“We had a deal pretty much for TikTok — not a deal but pretty close — and then China changed the deal because of tariffs,” Mr Trump told reporters on Air Force One while returning to Washington.

“If I gave a little cut in tariffs, they would have approved that deal in 15 minutes, which shows the power of tariffs.”

China is facing 54 per cent tariffs on US exports after Mr Trump slapped Beijing with 34 per cent tariff last week on top of the exitising 20 per cent he had already imposed earlier this year.

ByteDance’s TikTok was forced out of the US after a 2024 law mandated the company to divest TikTok’s US unit by 19 January this year.

The company has balked at selling a lucrative business, which has been valued from $20bn to as high as $150bn, according to Bloomberg.

Asian share markets crashed this morning as fears of a global trade war led investors to ramp up bets on the risk of recession.

Hong Kong and Chinese stocks were particularly badly hit as markets around the world crumbled in the face of a widening global trade war and fears it will unleash a deep recession.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell almost 10 per cent in morning trade which, if sustained, would make for the benchmark’s largest daily fall since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Banking stocks collapsed, with Hong Kong-listed shares of HSBC and Standard Chartered tumbling 15 per cent.China’s CSI300 blue-chip index fell more than 5 per cent with selling in nearly every sector. China’s yuan slipped to its lowest since January and bonds rallied sharply.

China, which is now facing US tariffs of 54 per cent, responded in kind on Friday by slapping extra levies on US imports.

There’s trouble in Trumpland; Tesla CEO and head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, has taken public swipes at Donald Trump’s adviser on trade and manufacturing, Peter Navarro, who helped shape the president’s reciprocal tariff policy that tanked markets across the world.

Musk is typically vocal in his support and defense of the president, but has been quiet since Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement that killed $2.5 trillion from the U.S. stock market — a loss of value that cost the Tesla CEO more than $30bn, according to CNBC.

On X, which Musk owns, he took swipes at Navarro, a Harvard-educated economist who advises Trump on trade. Navarro who was originally tapped for a spot in the White House by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is the author of books on China and the economic threats he says the nation poses to the U.S.

Donald Trump’s secretary of Commerce seemingly admitted on Sunday that US workers would not see long-lost manufacturing jobs return as a result of the president’s new tariff strategy, which places duties on nearly all US imports.

Howard Lutnick appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday and promised that “trillions” of dollars would flow into the US in the form of new investments in America’s manufacturing sector. Margaret Brennan, the show’s host, questioned whether those factories would be “automated”, as Lutnick had said previously.

Pointing out that the construction of new factories “takes years” and will do nothing to bring down costs of consumer goods for Americans in the short term, Brennan added: “You said that robots are going to fill those jobs. So those aren’t union worker jobs.”