By Faith Barbara N Ruhinda updated at 18:15 EAT on Friday 4 April 2025

The hundreds of billions wiped off shares the companies such as Apple and Nike this week demonstrate the possible damage to the economies they source from.

It’s nations like of Vietnam and Cambodia, which have built their prosperity in recent decades on becoming go-to places for affordable goods, which are likely to see the biggest economic damage.

This is not to say that a global recession is an any ways certain. Trade of goods is only one part of a complex global economy.

But with China now retaliating, growth in most major nations seems set for a blow. This comes just as countries were putting a series of shocks, from Covid to the Ukraine war, behind them

The US stock exchange has opened sharply lower. The Dow Jones and the S&P 500 have each fallen 2.4% in the first minutes of US trading, while the Nasdaq is down 3%.

When it comes to US markets, there are three main indexes that traders, analysts and journalists watch.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a list of 30 big US companies. They are considered to be “blue chip” stocks which means they have a solid track record in terms of their financial performance.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index – or, as it is better known, the S&P 500 – tracks the share prices of 500 companies. For some, it provides a much better cross-section of businesses listed in the US.

The Nasdaq index is made up of about 3,500 companies and the majority of those are technology firms. So when you see tech stocks shooting high or plummeting low, you’ll see plenty of coverage of the Nasdaq.

Meanwhile, Trump publishes a flurry of posts on his Truth Social account, with his latest one hitting back at China’s move to slap retaliatory tariffs on the US.

“China played it wrong, they panicked,” Trump says. “The one thing they cannot afford to do!”

As a reminder, China said it would retaliate with an additional 34% tax on US goods from next week after Trump announced a raft of global tariffs.

China’s finance ministry said the US tariffs on Chinese products are “not in line with international trade rules”.

The US markets have just opened sharply lower. I’m not at all surprised.

There is the cliché about uncertainty: you can’t get much more uncertainty than something like this.

Added to that, it’s an uncertainty about a policy – not a hurricane or an earthquake or a bank collapse.

He went as big as some of the markets feared, and bigger in some ways.

The New York stock exchange is now open for business and the index is down again.

The Dow Jones and the S&P 500 have each fallen 2.4% in the first minutes of US trading.

The Labor Department has just published its closely watched monthly report that estimates job creation in the US.

Employers added 228,000 jobs in March. That’s way more than the 140,000 that many analysts had expected.

However, the unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 4.2%, from 4.1% last month.

If the job market stays strong, recession fears could abate. But many analysts said investors were likely to dismiss this number as a snapshot of a different world.

“Today’s better than expected jobs report will help ease fears of an immediate softening in the US labour market,” Lindsay Rosner, head of multi sector fixed income investing at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, wrote in a note.

“However, this number has become a side dish with the market just focusing on the entrée: tariffs.”

The stock market is what’s known in the business world as a leading indicator.

In other words, it offers a prediction from investors about where the fortunes of the companies whose shares are being traded may be headed.

That’s because tariffs introduce a new cost that someone will have to pay for.

If a company absorbs the cost, it hurts their profits. If it passes the cost onto consumers, it risks a drop in sales. And if sales fall, business slows – and the economy as well.

Because Trump announced tariffs that are both high and broad, investors are betting that some combination of those is all but certain across many, many different parts of the economy.

It’s always possible, however, that Trump suddenly decides he wishes to add an event or address the traveling press corps.

That’s what happened yesterday, when he surprised us all with a visit to the back of Air Force One to answer our questions for 20 minutes.

Many revolved around tariffs, which he repeatedly defended. At one point, he also said that he would be open to using tariffs as a negotiating tool with other countries if they had something “phenomenal” to offer

US President Donald Trump has just posted on the social media platform Truth Social, insisting his policy on tariffs will not change.

“To the many investors coming into the United States and investing massive amounts of money, my policies will never change,” he says.

“This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before,” he adds.

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