Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in English BANGKOK — Asian shares nosedived Monday after the meltdown on Wall Street last week over President Trump’s tariff hikes and the backlash from China. U.S. futures also signaled further weakness. The future for the S&P 500 lost 4.2%, while that for the Dow Jones industrial average shed 3.5%. The future for the Nasdaq lost 5.3%. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost nearly 8% shortly after the market opened, and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 tumbled more than 6%. South Korea’s Kospi lost 4.4%. Oil prices sank further, with U.S. benchmark crude down 4%, or $2.50, at $59.49 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell $2.25 to $63.33 a barrel. On Friday, Wall Street’s worst crisis since COVID-19 slammed into a higher gear. The S&P 500 plummeted 6% and the Dow plunged 5.5%. The Nasdaq composite dropped 5.8%. The losses came after China matched Trump’s big raise in tariffs announced Wednesday, upping the stakes in a trade war that could end with a recession that hurts everyone. Even a better-than-expected report on the U.S. jobs market, usually the economic highlight of each month, wasn’t enough to stop the slide.So far there have been few, if any, winners in financial markets from the trade war. Stocks for all but 14 of the 500 companies within the S&P 500 index fell Friday. The price of crude oil tumbled to its lowest level since 2021. Other basic building blocks for economic growth, such as copper, also saw prices slide on worries the trade war will weaken the global economy.China’s response to U.S. tariffs caused an immediate acceleration of losses in markets worldwide. The Commerce Ministry in Beijing said it would respond to the 34% tariffs imposed by the U.S. on imports from China with its own 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products beginning April 10, among other measures. The United States and China are the world’s two largest economies.The central question looking ahead is: Will the trade war cause a global recession? If it does, stock prices may come down even more. The S&P 500 is down 17.4% from its record high in February.Trump seemed unfazed. From Mar-a-Lago, his estate and club in Florida, he headed to his golf course a few miles away after writing on social media that “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH.”The Federal Reserve could cushion the blow of tariffs on the economy by cutting interest rates, which can encourage companies and households to borrow and spend. But the Fed may have less freedom to move than it would like.Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Friday that tariffs could drive up expectations for inflation and lower rates could fuel still more price increases. “Our obligation is to keep longer-term inflation expectations well anchored and to make certain that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem,” Powell said.Much will depend on how long Trump’s tariffs stick and what kind of retaliations other countries deliver. Some of Wall Street is holding onto hope that Trump will lower the tariffs after prying concessions from other countries in negotiations.Trump has said Americans may feel “some pain” because of tariffs, but he has also said the long-term goals, including moving more manufacturing jobs back to the United States, are worth it.On Wall Street, stocks of companies that do lots of business in China suffered some of the sharpest losses.DuPont dropped 12.7% after China said its regulators were launching an antitrust investigation into DuPont China group, a subsidiary of the chemical giant. It’s one of several measures targeting American companies in retaliation for the U.S. tariffs.GE Healthcare got 12% of its revenue last year from the China region, and it fell 16%.In the bond market, Treasury yields fell, but they pared their drops following Powell’s cautious statements about inflation. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.01% from 4.06% late Thursday and from roughly 4.80% early this year. It had gone below 3.90% in the morning.Kurtenbach writes for the Associated Press.
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