Asian stock markets dropped Friday, with those in China and Hong Kong leading the way, as trade tensions between the U.S. and its allies ratcheted up ahead of a major summit.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng fell 1.8% after logging a six straight days of gains Thursday. Tech giant Tencent fell 3.3%.
The Shanghai Composite finished 1.4% lower, and the Nikkei lost 0.6%.
South Korean stocks dropped, leaving the Kospi down by 0.8%, as Samsung Electronics slumped 1.9%. Stocks in Singapore dropped 1.1%, equities in Taiwan fell 0.9%, and Australia’s S&P ASX 200 closed with a relatively modest decline of 0.2%.
Ahead of Friday’s start of the Group of Seven meeting in Quebec, U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron late Thursday exchanged barbed tweets in a spat over U.S.’s trade stance.
Rising frictions in international trade in recent months have instilled uncertainty in global markets, already experiencing one of their most volatile stretches in years.
On Thursday, Macron said the U.S.’s newly announced steel and aluminum tariffs against the European Union and Canada were pushing the six other G-7 nations to become a force of their own. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would stay true to the interests of Canadian citizens, even if that means tensions between neighbors.
In an apparent response, Trump wrote on Twitter a short time later: “Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create nonmonetary barriers.”
While many investors say that the trade tensions won’t be a significant drag on global growth, they expect such headlines to add to the rocky environment for stocks that has marked most of 2018.
“We’re going to be volatile for a while,” said Mark Heppenstall, chief investment officer at Penn Mutual Asset Management. “Short term, trade headlines could be a negative drag.”
The White House said Trump would leave the G-7 summit earlier than planned.
— Georgi Kantchev contributed to this report.