Asian markets plunged on Monday following last week's two-day meltdown on Wall Street, and President Donald Trump said he won't back down on the sweeping new tariffs he announced on April 2 that have roiled global trade.

Countries are scrambling to figure out how to respond to the tariffs, with China and others retaliating quickly.

Trump’s tariff blitz fulfilled a key campaign promise as he acted without Congress to redraw the rules of the international trading system. It was a move decades in the making for Trump, who has long denounced foreign trade deals as unfair to the US.

The higher rates are set to be collected beginning Wednesday, ushering in a new era of economic uncertainty with no clear end in sight.

China projects confidence, saying ‘the sky won’t fall'

Beijing struck a note of confidence on Monday even as markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai tumbled.

“The sky won’t fall. Faced with the indiscriminate punches of US taxes, we know what we are doing and we have tools at our disposal," wrote The People's Daily, the Communist Party's official mouthpiece.

China announced a slew of countermeasures on Friday evening aimed at Trump’s tariffs, including its own 34% tariffs on all goods from the U.S. set to go in effect on Wednesday.

Australian dollar drops to levels last seen early in pandemic

The Australian dollar fell below 60 US cents on Monday for the first time since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The drop reflected concerns over the Chinese economy and market expectations for four interest rate cuts in Australia this calendar year, Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers said.

“What our modeling shows is that we expect there to be big hits to American growth and Chinese growth and a spike in American inflation as well,” Chalmers said.

“We expect more manageable impacts on the Australian economy, but we still do expect Australian GDP to take a hit and we expect there to be an impact on prices here as well,” he added.

The Trump administration assigned Australia the minimum baseline 10% tariff on imports in the the United States. The U.S. has enjoyed a trade surplus with Australia for decades.

Indian stocks tumble as selling pressure intensifies

Indian stocks fell sharply on Monday, seeing their biggest single-day drop in percentage terms since March 2020 amid the pandemic.

The benchmark BSE Sensex and the Nifty 50 index both dropped about 5% after trading opened but then recovered slightly. Both were later trading down about 4%.

Trump says he’s not backing down on tariffs

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he won’t back down on his sweeping tariffs on imports from most of the world unless countries even out their trade with the U.S., digging in on his plans to implement the taxes that have sent financial markets reeling, raised fears of a recession and upended the global trading system.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said he didn’t want global markets to fall, but also that he wasn’t concerned about the massive sell-off either, adding, “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

His comments came as global financial markets appeared on track to continue sharp declines once trading resumes Monday, and after Trump’s aides sought to soothe market concerns by saying more than 50 nations had reached out about launching negotiations to lift the tariffs.

“I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world,” Trump said. “They’re dying to make a deal. And I said, we’re not going to have deficits with your country. We’re not going to do that, because to me a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or at worst, going to be breaking even.”

Asian markets plunge as tariff fallout intensifies

Asian markets plunged on Monday following last week’s two-day meltdown on Wall Street, and US President Donald Trump said he won’t back down on his sweeping tariffs on imports from most of the world unless countries even out their trade with the U.S.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost nearly 8% shortly after the market opened on Monday. By midday, it was down 6%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 9.4%, while the Shanghai Composite index was down 6.2%, and South Korea’s Kospi lost 4.1%.

U.S. futures also signaled further weakness.

Market observers expect investors will face more wild swings in the days and weeks to come, with a short-term resolution to the trade war appearing unlikely.

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