President Donald Trump ’s decision to push ahead with 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada and to double tariffs on Chinese products to 20% also left investors reeling.
Concerns about the U.S. economic outlook have been behind much of the drop, including worries over how tariffs could worsen inflation and mass layoffs of government workers could increase unemployment.
Superstar stock Nvidia, one of Wall Street’s most influential companies that’s been leading the market for years, lost 8.5% after initially rising at the open of trading following a better-than-expected profit report.
Better-than-expected earnings reports have become routine for Nvidia, whose chips are powering the surge into artificial-intelligence technology, but this was the company’s first since China's DeepSeek shook the entire AI industry by saying it has a large language model that can compete with the world’s best without using the most expensive chips.
Shares retreated Friday in Asia, with benchmarks in Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea falling more than 2% after Wall Street indexes fell sharply on doubts over the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.
