Stock market sell-off deepens as UK and seven countries reel from Trump tariff threat
By Sarah Taaffe-Maguire, business and economics reporter
There were signs it had started this morning, but now the stock market sell-off has deepened.
Once again, the US’s threat of higher tariffs – taxes on imports – has sent share prices falling.
Eight European countries have been threatened with 10% tariffs from 1 February, a rate that would then climb to 25% on 1 June if no deal was in place for the US to purchase Greenland.
The benchmark stock indexes of those countries – Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland – are among the hardest hit.
Denmark’s main stock index, the OMX Copenhagen 25, dropped 2.8%, Norway’s Oslo Bors lost more than 1.6%, and Finland’s Helsinki 25 shed 1.75%.
Sweden’s main stock market index, the Stockholm 30, has lost nearly 1.9%, France’s CAC 40 is down 1.5%, the German DAX dropped 1.25% and the Dutch Amsterdam Index shed 1.5%.
The UK’s FTSE 100 has had one of the smallest falls at 0.5%.
While US markets are shut due to a bank holiday, pre-market trading shows the tech-heavy Nasdaq losing 1.5%, and the S&P 500, the US index containing the most valuable companies in the world down 1.1%.