US president’s international trade war spooks investors, with drops in US share prices following European losses
Stock markets stumbled on Monday as Donald Trump pushed ahead with fresh tariffs on the US’s trading partners despite a supreme court strike-down and growing opposition from domestic voters.
Uncertainty over the status of global trade deals spooked investors, trigging a drop in US shares prices including on the Dow Jones industrial average, which tumbled 1.4% in morning trading. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 also fell 0.9% and 1.1%, after losses for European stock markets.
Shareholders were struggling to discern the next steps in Trump’s global trade war, after the US supreme court ruled on Friday that the president overstepped his legal authority by using emergency measures to impose tariffs on countries across the world last year.
However, Trump went on to announce over the weekend that he would push ahead and impose temporary tariffs on US imports from all countries: first declaring a 10% rate, before increasing that figure to 15%, under a never-before-used section of the Trade Act of 1974.
