Traders described this morning as a complete bloodbath as the UK’s FTSE 100 joined world indexes in turning red due to uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs, which continued to batter stock markets.
Across Asia and Europe, trillions of dollars have been wiped off companies’ values, especially in banking and manufacturing.
The cause is not only the imposition of those tariffs, which are the largest the US has inflicted since the 1930s, but also the uncertainty over what will happen next and the drag this will have on global trade and growth.
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Investors cannot determine if the Trump administration is genuinely committed to tariffs on this scale or if they are merely part of a negotiating tactic to address trade imbalances, and for America to use its economic power to secure better deals.
They are uncertain if this is a genuine restructuring of global trade and the end of globalization as we know it, markets and economies will continue to suffer.
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As one Trump supporter, billionaire Bill Ackman, who opposes the tariffs, put it, President Trump has launched a “global economic war against the whole world” that will usher in an “economic nuclear winter.”
It’s time for all of us to buckle up.
