Since the US President announced his sweeping tariffs war trillions of dollars has been wiped off global stock markets, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mel Stride has warned.
Trading screens globally are red as financial markets continue to fall and London’s FTSE 100 Index declined on Friday as the market opened.
The FTSE 100 fell by 0.53% to 8,429.98 as soon as the London Stock Exchange opened, Asian markets has also declined.
On Friday morning the sell-off continued amid nervous investors and the FTSE became worse by mid-morning as the Index was down by more than 3.5%.
NatWest and HSBC have been hit the hardest as their share prices plummeted by 7% and 6% respectively as traders continue to get rid of stocks as there are fears of a global crash.
Japan’s Nikkei lost 2.7% and closed at 33,780.58, down by 20%, South Korea’s Kospi tumbled 0.86% and closed at 2,465.42 and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was down by 2.44% closing at 7,667.8.
Stride told GB News, “You’re seeing trillions of dollars now wiped off markets worldwide.
“It’s been a little bit less severe actually in the UK than it has in the United States and other European countries, particularly Germany.
“This is what happens when you come forward and slap huge tariffs on trade. Of course, there is a lot of uncertainty now about how other parts of the world are going to react to that in terms of retaliatory tariffs as well.
“So yes, a very worrying time. It’s a worrying time for jobs.
“It’s a worrying time for consumers and prices going up and increasing pressures on employment and an upward pressure on unemployment for us, which is why we’ve really got to get this deal done now with the United States.”
GB News host, Stephen Dixon asked, “Is Nigel Farage right when he says, we basically had a deal three-quarters of the way done back in 2016.
“Whatever reason, the Tories in their last term didn’t get this all properly sorted out. But is that deal there as far as you know?”
Stride replied, “Well, he’s well he’s absolutely right in saying that in the first Trump presidency, we had made very substantial progress towards a free trade deal.
“Of course, we then ran into the Biden presidency and Covid impacts and so on, and the Biden administration was just not interested in doing a free trade deal. That was the big change.
“So this Government has had that progress to build upon. And I think it is regrettable, though, that it took over four months for our business secretary to get in the same room as his American counterpart in order to try and close that deal and do the extra hard yards to get it over the line.
“And we really need to see the Government moving at pace now and gripping this to make sure that we can get in a position when we’re not facing those additional tariffs on the UK economy.”
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