China on Friday announced that it was levying tariffs on $75 billion worth of American goods in the latest retaliation against President Donald Trump's trade war.
In addition to slapping tariffs on an additional $75 billion worth of goods, China also said it would resume enforcing duties against American automobiles.
As Bloomberg reports, the announcement of new tariffs ahead of the opening bell on Friday sent stock market futures plunging downward.
Although futures markets had initially shown that the Dow-Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and NASDAQ would all open the day on an upward trajectory, those gains were instantly wiped out as soon as China announced its retaliatory tariffs, as seen in the graph below.
The latest salvo in the trade war comes as warning signs continue to mount that the economy is slowing down and could fall into a recession in the near future. The U.S. Treasury bonds yield curve inverted again on Thursday, and new data from IHS Markit showed that the American manufacturing sector actually contracted in August, marking the first time the sector has shrunk since 2009 in the midst of the Great Recession.
