Global stocks take hit from tariff threats

LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters): Global stocks slid and the dollar eased against the safe-haven yen and Swiss franc on Monday after US President Donald Trump threatened to slap extra tariffs on goods imported from eight European nations until the US was allowed to buy Greenland.
Gold and silver prices jumped to all-time highs, while oil dipped on concerns about what a possible trade war between the US and Europe could mean for global growth and demand.
US cash equity markets will be closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, although S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures have dropped 0.8 per cent and 1.2 per cent, respectively. For Europe, the STOXX 600 index fell 0.9 per cent. Blue-chip indexes in Frankfurt, Paris and London were down 0.2 per cent to 1.2 per cent.
Japan's Nikkei fell 0.7 per cent, and MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slipped 0.1 per cent.
Trump said he would impose additional 10 per cent levies from February 1 on goods imported from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Britain, rising to 25 per cent on June 1 if no deal on Greenland was reached.
Major European Union states condemned the tariff threats as blackmail, and France proposed responding with a range of previously untested economic countermeasures. The EU and Britain had agreed trade deals with the US last year.
"There is obviously a response (in financial markets) to the new tariff threats," said George Lagarias, chief economist at Forvis Mazars.