Global stock markets sink

London : World equities markets were in the red Thursday as trade war fears ratcheted higher after the United States said it was looking at more than doubling threatened tariffs on a range of Chinese imports. In London, sterling slipped after the Bank of England hiked its key interest rate by a quarter-point to 0.75 percent, but seemed reticent to announce any further rate rises amid Brexit uncertainty.

Key European markets closed the session with hefty losses, while on Wall Street the Dow was also lower approaching midday. In American earnings news, Tesla motors surged 8.5 percent after it reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss of $717.5 million, but said it was on track to become profitable the rest of the year.

Earlier, Asian stocks sank after the US administration confirmed it was considering hiking levies to 25 percent from the announced 10 percent on $200 billion of Chinese goods. Should the US follow through, it would be “a considerable step-up in the trade dispute between US and China and would start to seriously threaten global growth,” wrote Konstantinos Anthis, head of research at ADSS.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday called on the US to remain “cool-headed”, but that appeal alone appeared to do little to shift the mood on trading floors. In Germany, the DAX blue chip index was down 1.5 percent at the closing bell, with analysts blaming US tariff threats that would hit car manufacturers especially hard.