Wall Street Trading Desks Stunned by Once-a-Century Tariff Shock

All across the world, as sell orders lit up screens on trading floors from Tokyo to London and New York, a sobering reality took hold: Donald Trump is serious about upending the global trading system — and it appears, at least for now, that fears of a stock-market crash won’t stop him.

The US bore the brunt of the selloff that raced through financial markets Thursday — with the S&P 500 suffering its worst day in five years — after Trump rolled out the highest tariffs in over a century, which are threatening to roil supply chains, slow growth and rekindle inflation.