The selloff extended losses from Thursday, the worst trading day since 2020.
U.S. stocks continued their plunge in early trading on Friday, just hours after China announced retaliatory tariffs in response to President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” levies.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 1,400 points, or 3.5%, while the S&P 500 plunged 4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 4.5%.
Corporate giants that rely on supply chains abroad were among the firms that continued to see shares fall. Nike dropped 5%, while Apple fell 3%. E-commerce firm Amazon slid 4%.
Shares fell for each of the so-called “Magnificent Seven,” a group of large tech firms that helped drive stock market gains in recent years.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, dropped nearly 4%. Chipmaker Nvidia slid 4%.
Tesla, the electric carmaker led by Trump-advisor Elon Musk, declined nearly 5%.
A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, April 4, 2025.
On Friday, China said it will impose 34% tariffs on U.S. goods in response to the levies issued by Trump earlier this week.
In a social media post hours later, Trump signaled a commitment to the tariff policy.
“TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Trump later criticized China in a different social media post, saying, “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED – THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO!”
All three major American stock markets closed down on Thursday, marking their worst day since June 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NASDAQ fell 6%, the S&P 500 4.8% and the Dow Jones nearly 4%
Global markets gave early signals of the difficulty to come on Friday. Japan’s Nikkei index lost 3.5% on Friday, while the broader Japanese Topix index fell 4.45%.
A man checks his phone next to an electronic board showing stocks on the Heng Seng Index in Hong Kong on April 3, 2025.
Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images
In South Korea, the KOSPI index was down 1.7%, with the country grappling with both Trump’s tariffs and the news that South Korea’s Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol.
Indian investors joined the sell-off on Friday, with the Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex indexes both falling more than 1%. India’s stock markets had previously performed better than others thanks to lower tariffs than competitors like China, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Australia’s S&P/ASX, meanwhile, continued its slide into Friday with another 2% drop taking the index to an 8-month low.
In Europe, too, stock markets fell upon opening. Britain’s FTSE 100 index dropped more than 1%, Germany’s DAX fell 0.75%, France’s CAC lost 0.9% and Spain’s IBEX slipped 1.4%.
Trump’s Wednesday announcement of tariffs on nearly all American trade partners sent U.S. and foreign markets alike into a tailspin.
ABC News’ Leah Sarnoff, Max Zahn, Victor Ordoñez and Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.
