Recession economies

A GLOBAL recession was last night looking increasingly likely as the crash in major stock markets contin-ued following Donald Trump's tariffs hammer-blow.

- By Martyn Brown Political Editor

London's FTSE 100 index suffered its biggest daily drop since the start of the Covid pandemic yesterday closing down 419.76 points, or 4.95%, at 8,054.98.

Financial markets in the US, Europe and Asia also went into melt-down for a second day as panic among investors spread.

The nosedive came as China's leader Xi Jinping fired the first retali-atory shot by slapping a 34% tariff on all US goods mirroring the per-centage the country was hit with by the US president on Wednesday.

The FTSE 100 dropped by about 4% soon after the announcement, losing 150 points in the space of an hour and hitting the lowest level since December. Beijing also declared it was effectively banning 11 American com-panies by adding them to a list of "unreliable" firms and placing restric-tions on 16 others.

China warned that Mr Trump's sweeping tariffs were "inconsistent with international trade rules".

The blitz has wiped off around $2trillion from the US stock market.

After Beijing's retaliation, Mr Trump posted: "China played it wrong, they pan-icked the one thing they cannot afford to do!"