New York: The sell-off for financial markets worldwide is slamming into an even higher, scarier gear on Friday. The S&P 500 tumbled 5.7%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 2,054 points as Wall Street’s worst crisis since the COVID crash deepens. The Nasdaq composite was down 5.5%, with a little more than an hour remaining in trading, after China matched President Donald Trump’s big raise in tariffs in an escalating trade war. Not even a better-than-expected report on the US job market, which is usually the economic highlight of each month, was enough to stop the slide.

So far there are few, if any, winners in financial markets from the trade war. European stocks dropped roughly 5%. The price of crude oil tumbled to its lowest level since 2021. Other basic building blocks for economic growth, such as copper, also saw prices slide on worries the trade war will weaken the global economy. China’s response to US tariffs caused an immediate acceleration of losses in markets worldwide. The Commerce Ministry in Beijing said it would respond to the 34% tariffs imposed by the US on imports from China with its own 34% tariff on imports of all US products beginning April 10. The United States and China are the world’s two largest economies.

Markets briefly recovered some of their losses after the release of Friday morning’s US jobs report, which said employers accelerated their hiring by........

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