United States stock futures plunged Sunday evening (Monday AEDT), signalling another punishing session after President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs triggered a historic market sell-off last week.
By 9:15 am AEST (10:15 pm GMT) Dow Jones Industrial Average futures sank 4%, S&P 500 futures fell 4.4% and Nasdaq-100 futures shed 5.3%.
Friday’s session marked one of the worst days for Wall Street since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, as the Dow shed 5.5%, the S&P 500 tumbled 6%, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.8%.
Investor hopes for some form of de-escalation over the weekend were dashed. Markets had been looking for signs that the Trump administration might delay the tariffs, or at least soften the terms through negotiations. Instead, officials struck a defiant tone.
President Trump posted on Truth Social urging Americans to “hang tough”, calling the tariffs an “economic revolution”.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed to CBS News that the tariffs would move forward as planned, stating: “The tariffs are coming… They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks.”
The market was further unnerved by the lack of clarity on how tariff rates were calculated. Many investors saw the figures as arbitrary and not grounded in conventional economic policy.
Tensions escalated sharply on Friday after China announced retaliatory tariffs of 34% on all U.S. imports, becoming the first major trading partner to take concrete action.
Canada and the European Union have signalled they may soon follow suit, while Vietnam was cited by Trump as a rare exception, offering to slash tariffs on U.S. goods to zero.
While the administration claims that more than 50 nations have expressed willingness to negotiate, market confidence has been badly shaken.
