Market panic deepens as China retaliates

WORLD markets crashed yesterday with Asia leading the rout, as US President Donald Trump held firm on his swinging tariffs despite China retaliating and global recession warnings growing louder.

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Hong Kong's Hang Seng plunged more than 13%, its biggest drop since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, while in Japan the Nikkei 225 index fell an eye watering 7.8%.

Countries mostly have been scrambling to blame the new US tariffs with-out retaliating, but Beijing is respond-ing in kind, escalating the trade war between the two biggest economies.

Beijing's new 34% tariffs announced on Friday "are aimed at bringing the United States back onto the right track of the multilateral trade system," Vice commerce minister Ling Ji said.

"The root cause of the tariff issue lies in the United States," Ling told representatives of US companies on Sunday, according to his ministry.

Trump on the weekend doubled down on his demand to slash defi-cits with trading partners, saying he would not cut any deals unless that was resolved.

"Sometimes you have to take med-icine to fix something," Trump said.