Category World News

Hong Kong’s stock market has suffered its steepest single-day decline in nearly three decades amid a wave of panic selling brought on by United States President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements.

The financial hub’s benchmark Hang Seng Index closed down 13.22 percent on Monday, after plunging as much as 13.74 percent during the day.

It was the sharpest plunge for Hong Kong stocks since the index tumbled 13.7 percent in a single day during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

On the worst day for Hong Kong stocks during the 2007-09 global financial crisis, the index fell 12.7 percent.

The rout came after Trump doubled down on his sweeping tariffs overnight, likening the measures to “medicine”, and following China’s announcement last week that it would retaliate with a 34 percent tariff on US imports.

“Friday was a public holiday in Hong Kong, so what we are seeing is the reaction to Trump’s tariffs and China’s retaliation. So it’s a double whammy,” Carlos Casanova, a senior economist with UBP in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera.

“To put this into context, previous retaliatory measures targeted less than 1 percent of China’s total imports. The magnitude of the last measures is unprecedented,” Casanova said.

“We’re in uncharted territory.”

Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, said the dip in Hong Kong offered a more accurate gauge of the market’s expectations for how the tariffs will affect China’s economy than the stock markets on the Chinese mainland.

“The point is, you cannot trade freely in China. You cannot short Chinese stocks. You can do all of that in Hong Kong. So it’s obviously reflecting what is going on much better than Chinese stocks,” Garcia-Herrero told Al Jazeera.

Hong Kong stocks were by far the worst performers on a dismal day overall for Asia’s markets, with equities in mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and Singapore all suffering steep declines.

Global stock markets have shed trillions of dollars in value since Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on almost all countries on Wednesday.

US customs authorities began imposing a baseline tariff of 10 percent on imports on Sunday, with steeper duties of between 11 percent and 50 percent set to go into effect on Wednesday.

US stocks have shed more than $6 trillion in value since Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement.

Further steep losses are expected when Wall Street reopens on Monday, with futures tied to the benchmark S&P500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 – which are traded outside usual market hours – down 2.7 percent and 3.55 percent, respectively.

Here is where things stand on Monday, April 7:

Fighting

• Polish and allied aircraft were activated to protect Polish airspace following Russian strikes in western Ukraine, which borders Poland, the Polish Armed Forces Operational Command said.
• One person was killed and several others injured by Russian missile and drone attacks on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities said.
• A Russian ballistic missile partially destroyed a building housing state-owned channels broadcasting in foreign languages, the television channel Freedom said in a statement.
• Ukraine’s military said its forces shot down 13 of 23 missiles and 40 of 109 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack. Some 53 drones were also lost due to electronic warfare measures, the military said.
• The death toll from Russia’s recent missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih rose to 19, including many children, with a further 75 people injured, Ukrainian officials said. The attack also damaged 44 apartments and 23 private houses. Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s military administration, declared three days of mourning starting on April 7.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces had carried out a high-precision missile strike on a restaurant in Kryvyi Rih where a meeting between Ukrainian unit commanders and Western instructors was taking place. It said the strike killed 85 military personnel and foreign officers and destroyed 20 vehicles. The Ukrainian General Staff rejected the claims.

• Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defence units “intercepted and destroyed” 11 Ukrainian drones over the country’s Kursk and Belgorod regions, which border Ukraine, as well as the southern Rostov region overnight.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry said Kyiv carried out seven attacks on Moscow’s energy infrastructure facilities between April 5 and 6, despite a moratorium on energy strikes brokered by the United States. According to the ministry, the attacks targeted the Crimean region, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, as well as Russia’s Bryansk, Rostov and Voronezh regions.
• The ministry also said that Kremlin forces launched an overnight strike using long-range precision weapons and drones against Ukraine’s central artillery armament base and defence industry enterprises involved in drone production.
• According to the ministry, Moscow also gained control over the village of Basivka in Ukraine’s Sumy region in a rare cross-border advance. Andriy Demchenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service, called the announcement “disinformation”.

Politics and diplomacy

• The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, denounced Russia’s “reckless disregard” for civilians, following Russia’s attack on Kryvyi Rih.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed concern over the lack of international pressure on Russia amid the “increasing” number of “daily Russian strikes on Ukraine”.

• Zelenskyy also said the US had not issued a statement in response to Russia’s refusal of an unconditional truce, which Ukraine has agreed to.
• French President Emmanuel Macron called for “strong action” against Russia if Moscow continues to “refuse peace”. “A ceasefire is needed as soon as possible,” Macron said.
• Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s international economy envoy, told the country’s Channel One television that Russia and the US could resume contact with each other “next week”.
• Ukraine’s economy minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, told the Associated Press news agency that Kyiv would send a team to Washington, DC, next week for negotiations on a new draft of a deal that would grant the US access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.

The Toronto Blue Jays and Vladimir Guerrero Jr have agreed to a 14-year, $500m contract extension, multiple media outlets reported.

The deal, leaked on Sunday, reportedly includes no deferred money, making it the second most valuable contract in present value in the majors, surpassed only by Juan Soto’s 15-year, $765m deal, reached in December.

Guerrero, a four-time All-Star and the MVP runner-up in 2021, was set to become a free agent at the end of the season. By locking him up now, Toronto avoids the risk of getting into a massive bidding war on the open market.

For his career, the 26-year-old has 160 home runs, 511 RBIs (or runs batted in), and a .287 batting average in 829 games. Last season, he hit 30 home runs and drove in 103 RBIs with a .323/.396/.544 batting line.

In 10 games this season, Guerrero is hitting .256 with no home runs and four RBIs.

In response to declining voter support, Australia’s main opposition party has abandoned election pledges to end remote working arrangements for public servants and fire tens of thousands of government employees.

The center-right Liberal Party leader, Peter Dutton, acknowledged on Monday that the proposals were “mistakes.”

In an interview with Channel Nine, Dutton said, “I think it’s important that we say and acknowledge it, and our intention was to make sure that where taxpayers are working hard and their money is being spent paying wages, it’s being spent efficiently.”

Former Queensland police officer Dutton had promised to eliminate 41, 000 positions from the public payroll and forbid government employees from working from the office five days a week.

Anthony Albanese, the prime minister of Australia, doubted his opponent’s all-out demeanor last month when he called a May 3 national election.

According to Albanese, “Peter Dutton wants to undermine work rights and, in particular, doesn’t understand contemporary families, doesn’t understand the crucial role that women and men play in family life,” he told reporters.

In recent polling, Albanese’s center-left Labor Party outperforms Dutton’s Liberal Party-led coalition, despite the close race.

Labor led the Coalition 52-48 in a head-to-head matchup in the most recent Newspoll survey, up one point from the previous poll.

The election campaign has been dominated by cost-of-living issues, including a severe housing affordability crisis.

Although the majority of the vote will likely go to Labor or the Coalition, polls have indicated that there is a high chance of a hung parliament.