Renewed U.S.-China trade spat boosts safety demand for yen

Chinese stocks recorded their steepest falls since the trade dispute started on Tuesday.

Japan’s Nikkei sank 0.8 percent as worries over growing protectionism overshadowed stronger-than-expected export data.

Brent crude futures fell 0.8 percent to $74.76 a barrel after rallying 2.5 percent overnight, while US light crude futures retreated 0.9 percent to $65.27.

Earlier, the Shanghai Composite Index .SSEC ended 3.8 percent lower after slumping almost 5 percent at one point to its lowest level since mid-2016.

A trade spat between the top two economies of the world began in April with Mr Trump imposing tariffs on steel and aluminium imports into the United States from China, which also retaliated by imposing additional tariffs worth about $three billion on 128 U.S. products.

The euro remained under pressure due to a dispute in Germany’s governing coalition and expectations the European Central Bank will hold interest rates steady into 2019.

US stocks are mostly higher Wednesday as technology and media companies lead a recovery from the turbulent trading seen the day before.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average ended down 287.26 points at 24,700.21. An earlier version stated that the S&P 500 closed down 11.18 points at 2,762.57.

Big industrial companies and chemical makers are hard hit.

Shares of Boeing, which has been a proxy for trade-war tensions with China, fell 3.8 per cent, weighing the most on the Dow.

According to the report, 61 per cent of the firms polled said the Chinese companies they worked with were equally or more innovative than they were, but that the country overall had yet to take the lead in more challenging areas such as engineering or scientific discovery.

The chamber also called for bilateral investment talks between Beijing and Brussels to be sped up to address the long-term concerns of European businesses over uneven treatment in regulation and investment. US crude fell 1.6 percent to $64.80 a barrel in NY, and Brent crude, the global standard for oil prices, fell 0.5 percent to $74.94 a barrel in London. Southeast Asian indexes were mostly lower.

Derek Scissors, a China scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, spelled out the reality of the situation when he said that Beijing has almost exhausted U.S. imports to target.

To respond to Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on as much as $250 billion worth of Chinese goods, Beijing would have to find other ways to respond.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin attend a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on June 8.

Worldwide markets slumped, with China-focused stocks hard hit.

The Shanghai Composite Index dropped more than 3 percent to its lowest since July 2016, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 2.8 percent. US bond yields fell in a flight to safety.

The United States and China edged closer Tuesday to triggering the riskiest trade war in decades, a fight that could weaken the world’s two largest economies, unsettle relations between Beijing and Washington and crimp global growth.

Trump today announced tariffs of 25 percent targeting Dollars 50 billion (43 billion euros) in Chinese imports from “industrially significant” technologies, making good on a pledge to punish the alleged theft of American intellectual property. On Monday, The New York Times reported that Trump told Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer, that the US would not place tariffs on iPhones. China threatened to retaliate, leading Trump to seek broader penalties.