Global markets, from Asia to Europe, have witnessed a big fall due to US President Donald Trump’s trade war and China’s forceful response to high tariffs. The Hong Kong stock exchange closed today with a 13.22 percent drop, its worst one-day tumble since the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Tencent closed nearly 18 percent and more than 12.5 percent lower, respectively. Banking corporation HSBC plunged 14.8 percent, Chinese delivery giant Meituan plummeted 15 percent, and consumer electronics firm Xiaomi finished down 20.6 percent. Japan’s benchmark stock index lost over 2,600 points, marking the third-largest fall on record.

Singapore’s Straits Times Index plunged 7.37 percent. The Taiex, the weighted index of the Taiwan Stock Exchange, plunged 9.8 percent at the open as trading resumed after a long weekend.

Pakistan’s stock market, the KSE-100 index, crashed by over 6,000 points, despite a one-hour suspension of trading. The fall is said to be one of the sharpest single-day declines in PSX history.

The German DAX index dropped by nearly 10 percent this morning as stock markets opened before recovering slightly to hover around 7 percent in the red as trading continued. London’s FTSE 100 was down about 5 percent. In the USA, the Dow Jones has gone down 4.4 percent, the S&P 500 has lost 4.7 percent, while the Nasdaq has fallen 5 Percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 4.2 percent to 7,343.3 points, losing over 100 billion Australian dollars. It was the index’s largest one-day decline since May 2020.