Friday 23 Also can 2025 5:17 pm
Stock markets all around the western world felt the “relax winds” of Donald Trump’s most modern replace salvos on Friday after the US President vowed to levy tariffs on imports from Europe and all Apple products made exterior the US.
The US’s S&P 500 index opened down 1.62 per cent as traders pared encourage bets on US shares in response to the unique trends in Trump’s long-working replace saga.
Shares in Apple opened 3.72 per cent lower, responding to the capricious President pledge to levy a 25 per cent import tax on all iPhones made exterior the US.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump confirmed he had “instructed Tim Cook of Apple” that he expects all iPhones sold in the US to be made in the US, “no longer India or any space else”.
“If that is no longer the case, a Tariff of 25 per cent must be paid by Apple to the US,” he added.
Minutes later, Trump posted one other ‘fact’ pledging to levy a 50 per cent tariff on the overall country’s imports from the European Union from the originate of June.
Euopean shares all fell sharply on the guidelines. The pan-European STOXX 600 index fell honest proper unnerved of two per cent after the replace salvo, pushing into to a weekly fall for the major time in over a month.
The blue-chip indexes in France and Germany fell too. Paris’ Cac and Frankfurt’s DAX dropped 1.65 per cent and 1.54 per cent respectively.
Susannah Streeter, head of cash and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Trump has made it obvious that the EU is unruffled out in the chilly in the case of replace negotiations and it’s sent a shiver through European inventory markets.
“Whereas the US administration has shown a willingness to broker affords with reasonably a few nations all around the realm, the President’s cool tone in direction of Europe has sparked unique fears that punishing tariffs may perchance presumably well change into a fact for the bloc.”
The bearish sentiment spilled over into London-listed equities too. The FTSE 100 fell by as unheard of as 1.35 per cent at as soon as after Trump printed his social media posts, earlier than paring encourage just about all of these losses to shut down 0.24 per cent.
