Late last night, President Trump announced a new 104% tariff on all products imported from China to the United States. This is a combination of the 20% tariff previously imposed, the 34% tariff announced last week and the 50% tariff last night in retaliation for China's action of imposing a 34% tariff on America two days ago.
The two countries have refused to sit down at the table to resolve trade issues that have been lingering since Trump became president for the first time 8 years ago. At that time, Chinese companies such as Huawei were subject to technology access restrictions, resulting in no longer supporting Android GMS, access to TSMC chip foundries and Huawei stopped offering 5G devices for several years.
Following the new tariffs on China yesterday, this morning the major Asian stock markets continued their downward trend with the KLSE also affected. Meanwhile, the share values of major tech companies such as Apple, TSMC, NVIDIA and Tesla have also been declining. Apple recorded the highest decline this morning -4.98% as their product supply chain is highly dependent on China.