Australian shares will plunge on Friday morning when the trading bell rings in Sydney, with ASX 200 futures pointing to a 1.4% nosedive to end Week 14.

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The impending red bloodbath comes after – you guessed it – tariffs posturing.

Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs early yesterday morning (Aus time); since then, there has been a flurry of responses. China and the European Union especially threatened to strike back against the U.S. levies with their own.

The whole thing has sparked sharp fear in U.S. and global markets alike, with many now tipping things to spiral into a global recession quite quickly.

On Wall Street, more than US$2.5B was wiped out through the collapse.

In percentage dips, that’s a -5.97% reversal for the Nasdaq composite, -3.98% for the Dow Jones, and -4.84% for the S&P 500. Traders aren’t happy, that’s for sure.

This morning, Trump seemed upbeat. He told White House reporters: “The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom… the country is going to boom. The rest of the world wants to see is there any way they can make a deal.”

Hong Kong meanwhile lost as much as -1.5% overnight; the STOXX 600 lost -2.57%.

In Oz company news today, eyes will stay locked on any companies exposed to Trump’s tariffs – some, like Cettire (ASX:CTT) and CSL (ASX:CSL), were already blitzed through Thursday and lost as much as 10% in value.

Elsewhere too, Woodside (ASX:WDS) chief executive Meg O’Neill has pushed back against calls for the gas producer to cut carbon emissions, citing high costs.

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Looking at forex, the Aussie dollar is buying 63.2 US cents.

To commodities, which are in the greenback,

Iron Ore has sagged 1.5% to $101.25 a tonne in Singapore,

Brent Crude is trading at $69.83 after losing more than -6.8% today,

Gold is trading at $3,145 per ounce, and, 

US natgas futures are at $4.11 per gigajoule.

That’s Market Open, I’m Isaac McIntyre, stick with us for HotCopper’s Market Update.

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