Donald Trump erupted in a fiery social media post warning “abusing countries not to retaliate” to tariffs after global stock markets plummeted. Overnight, Asian markets tanked as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped more than 13%, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell more than 6% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock index lost nearly 8%.

Similarly, the opening of European markets this morning spelt more bad news, with Germany’s DAX and Britain’s FTSE 100 among several markets to accelerate downwards. Trump has previously warned countries to negotiate with the United States and has cautioned against the imposition of retaliatory measures on Washington. He once more doubled down, posting on his website Truth Social: “Oil prices are down, interest rates are down (the slow moving Fed should cut rates!), food prices are down, there is NO INFLATION, and the long-time abused USA is bringing in Billions of Dollars a week from the abusing countries on Tariffs that are already in place.

“This is despite the fact that the biggest abuser of them all, China, whose markets are crashing, just raised its Tariffs by 34%, on top of its long term ridiculously high Tariffs (Plus!), not acknowledging my warning for abusing countries not to retaliate.

“They’ve made enough, for decades, taking advantage of the Good OL’ USA! Our past “leaders” are to blame for allowing this, and so much else, to happen to our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Last month, China ominously warned the US that it was ready for any form of war with the United States, including a trade war.

Beijing has since hit back at Trump’s decision to impose 34% on Chinese goods entering the US by doing the same to US goods entering China, stoking fears that the world is heading towards a global trade war.

Last night, President Trump defended the decision to impose tariffs of around 90 tariffs, despite the potential for economic harm to Americans.

He said: “I don’t want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

The US President added: “I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world. They’re dying to make a deal.

“We’re going to have surpluses or, at worst, going to be breaking even.”

It remains unclear how the UK will react to a 10% blanket tariff on all goods entering the US.

On Friday, Keir Starmer met with business leaders as the government developed a framework for assessing what options it has available and how it might respond.