European shares and currencies tumble on Trump tariff fears

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European shares tumbled and currencies slid towards the greenback on Tuesday as buyers fretted over the impression of a extra hawkish method to China below a second Trump presidency.

The benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index misplaced 2 per cent, its worst one-day efficiency for the reason that market rout in early August. Paris’s Cac 40 completed down 2.7 per cent, whereas Frankfurt’s Dax shed 2.1 per cent.

The US greenback prolonged its good points following final week’s presidential election. The greenback index was up 0.6 per cent towards a basket of six friends.

Sterling shed 1.1 per cent to $1.273 and the yen to ¥154.90, their lowest ranges since early August. The euro dropped 0.5 per cent to $1.06, its weakest degree in a yr.

The strikes adopted experiences that US senator Marco Rubio, an Iran and China hawk who serves on the Senate international relations committee, would develop into secretary of state in Trump’s administration.

Merchants have been additionally pricing within the growing prospect that the Republicans will management each homes of Congress, giving Trump extra leeway to push by way of huge tax cuts and aggressive tariffs.

Trump has threatened 60 per cent tariffs on Chinese language imports to the US, and blanket 10 to twenty per cent duties on all different buying and selling companions.

Traders are involved that European producers will endure a double whammy of US tariffs on exports and the likelihood that China floods the area with low cost imports that undercut home corporations, significantly carmakers.

“The rest of the world is being squeezed. Europe is being squeezed here. China is also going to be hurt quite a bit as it has been singled out as the main tariff target,” mentioned Tomasz Wieladek, chief European economist with T Rowe Value.

“It is almost like a redistribution of the rest of the world’s growth into the US economy.”

Copper, seen as an indicator of worldwide financial well being, fell practically 2 per cent in London as merchants feared commodities would bear the brunt of potential Trump tariffs.

Kelly Ke-Shu Chen, an analyst with DNB Markets, mentioned Rubio’s stance would undercut prospects of “any form of dialogue” between the US and China.

US Treasury yields rose as merchants raised bets that US rates of interest could not fall as a lot as beforehand thought, with robust financial knowledge and potential tax cuts by the Trump administration seen as stoking inflation.

The yield on the speed delicate two-year bond was up 0.1 share factors to 4.35 per cent. The yield on the benchmark 10-year added 0.12 share factors to 4.43 per cent.

Traders have in current weeks pared again their expectations of US charge cuts, to simply three quarter level cuts by the top of subsequent yr, in keeping with knowledge from LSEG.

Laura Cooper, head of macro credit score at asset supervisor Nuveen, mentioned the market was pricing within the threat of reflation. “There is limited upside in yields as we’re going to lack a political policy catalyst [for some time],” she added.

The leap in Treasury yields got here forward of Wednesday’s US inflation knowledge, with economists polled by Reuters anticipating shopper costs to have risen to 2.6 per cent in October, up from 2.4 per cent the earlier month.

In US fairness markets, the benchmark S&P 500 was down 0.2 per cent, whereas the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.1 per cent, to pare again from the previous week’s Trump-led rally.

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