Hong Kong’s stock market has suffered its steepest single-day decline in nearly three decades amid a wave of panic selling brought on by United States President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements.
The benchmark Hang Seng Index closed down 13.22 percent on Monday, after plunging as much as 13.74 percent during the day.
It was the sharpest plunge for Hong Kong stocks since the index tumbled 13.7 percent in a single day during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
On the worst day for Hong Kong stocks during the 2007-09 global financial crisis, the index fell 12.7 percent.
The rout came after Trump doubled down on his sweeping tariffs overnight, likening the measures to “medicine”, and following China’s announcement last week that it would retaliate with a 34 percent tariff on US imports.
“Friday was a public holiday in Hong Kong, so what we are seeing is the reaction to Trump’s tariffs and China’s retaliation. So it’s a double whammy,” Carlos Casanova, a senior economist with UBP in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera.
“To put this into context, previous retaliatory measures targeted less than 1 percent of China’s total imports. The magnitude of the last measures is unprecedented,” Casanova said.
“We’re in uncharted territory.”
Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, said the performance of the Hong Kong market offered a more accurate gauge of investors’ sentiment around the impact of Trump’s tariffs on China’s economy than the stock markets on the Chinese mainland.
“The point is, you cannot trade freely in China. You cannot short Chinese. You can do all of that in Hong Kong. So it’s obviously reflecting what is going on much better than Chinese stocks,” Garcia Herrero told Al Jazeera.
Hong Kong stocks were by far the worst performers on a dismal day overall for Asia’s markets, with equities in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and Singapore all suffering steep declines.
Global stock markets have shed trillions of dollars in value since Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on almost all countries on Wednesday.
US customs authorities began imposing a baseline tariff of 10 percent on imports on Sunday, with steeper duties of between 11 percent and 50 percent set to go into effect on Wednesday.
US stocks have shed more than $6 trillion in value since Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement.
Further steep losses are likely when Wall Street reopens on Monday, with futures tied to the benchmark S&P500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 down 2.7 percent and 3.55 percent, respectively.
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