Hong Kong stock market plunges most since ’97 crisis amid tariffs panic

Hong Kong’s stock market has suffered its steepest single-day decline in nearly three decades amid a wave of panic selling brought on by United States President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements.

The financial hub’s benchmark Hang Seng Index closed down 13.22 percent on Monday, after plunging as much as 13.74 percent during the day.“To put this into context, previous retaliatory measures targeted less than 1 percent of China’s total imports. The magnitude of the last measures is unprecedented,” Casanova said.

“We’re in uncharted territory.”

Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, said the dip in Hong Kong offered a more accurate gauge of the market’s expectations for how the tariffs will affect China’s economy than the stock markets on the Chinese mainland.