Understanding the finer points of the stock market and the how and why of its ups and downs is a complex task for anyone. When major shifts in a whole diaspora of fields occur, people often look to the stock market as a gauge for how significant those shifts really are and what the potential results are going to come out as. World news is often reported as to how it has an impact on the world of finance, and this is certainly one such instance, as President Trump trades tariff blows with China in a rapidly escalating trade war. The impact of this trade war certainly didn’t avoid the stock market, which took notice of the shifting costs of exports and imports and created a noticeable response. Let’s take a look at what’s really going on in this recent episode in the global economy.

Trump VS China

The US President’s attitude towards foreign nations is an eternally shifting spectrum, though it does tend to rest somewhere towards antagonistic for the sake of sending a message. Trump’s ‘show of force’ tactics recently got him into a situation with China on a trade front, causing a situation that has impacted all of the global markets, and heavily impacted the American and Chinese markets. “Trump has a latent tension towards China that simply won’t abate, no matter how few tangible issues there are in reality. This drove him most recently to impose some pretty severe tariffs on Chinese goods,” reports Samuel Chang, data analyst at WriteMyx and BritStudent.

US Tariff

The United States began a 15 percent tariff on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods for import, from tech to clothing. Trump’s explanation for his move relates again to his suspicion of all of the largest global powers, from Russia to China. He spoke out, via his favorite medium Twitter, about the US over-reliance on Chinese exports, and that his tariff was a motivator for US companies to look for alternative solutions for suppliers outside of China, rather than simply turning to some nation over and over again to supply the products they needed.

Trump’s Reasoning

Trump’s steps to disincentivize US trade with China could be viewed as impulsive, since the immediate effects of so drastic a tariff will likely fall on the US consumer, with US household costs potentially rising by up to $1000 a year, with such a large selection of consumer goods now made noticeably more expensive. Similarly, Trump’s plan, though it must have considered the possibility of consequences, didn’t allow for a reaction in the opposite direction as the Chinese trade officials lashed back at the tariff.

The Chinese Response

Not ones to be out-maneuvered, least of all by Trump, the Chinese responded to the tariffs with sanctions of their own that were as much a political response as a practical one, as they delivered a counter punch to Trump’s initial move. China immediately imposed additional tariffs on exported goods on a $75-billion target list, and further tariffs were placed on thousands of items originating from the US. Similarly, China was quick to begin imposing new duties on US crude oil, a predictable but damaging move that has made the potential fallout and impact on global stock markets more noticeable.

The Trade War Fallout

“Such actions from nations as influential as the US and China don’t come without an impact that affects people from all around the world. In this instance, a variety of shifts have left most markets a little worse for wear, but most drastic damage has been avoided”, explains Mark Cherry, a business writer at Australia2Write and NextCoursework. The fallout included the US stock futures dipping 0.7% and the Asian markets are down. A noticeable drop in oil prices was also recorded, as would have been expected after the duties imposed on US crude by the Chinese.

Conclusion

This is the latest in a series of jabs between the US and China, though there is no sense in which these sorts of interactions have all that much of a practical purpose. Though this particular episode abated pretty swiftly, the threat of further escalations has made the market quite jittery.

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Mildred Delgado is a young and responsible marketing strategist at PhdKingdom and AcademicBrits. She works with a company’s marketing team in order to create a fully-functional site that accurately portrays the company. Mildred is also responsible for presenting these details to stakeholders in a series of marketing proposals. You can find her work at OriginWritings.