TOKYO (Reuters) - Global stocks extended a sell-off on Tuesday as an escalating trade fight between the United States and other major economies steered investors away from riskier assets, lifting safe-haven U.S. Treasuries and keeping the dollar on the defensive.
Markets in China - the epicenter of the trade tensions with the United States - were especially hard hit. Losses across Asian equities were broad-based after Wall Street tumbled overnight, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq suffering their steepest losses in more than two months overnight.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.75 percent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng retreated 1.2 percent, the Shanghai Composite Index slid 1.4 percent and Japan’s Nikkei shed 0.5 percent.
Equities from tech-heavy regions such as South Korea’s KOSPI and Taiwan fell 1 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co was down 1.15 percent, South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc lost 0.8 percent and Japan’s Tokyo Electron was down 1 percent.
U.S. technology shares were particularly hard hit. Chipmakers which derive much of their revenue from China had taken a battering on Monday, following a report that the U.S. Treasury Department was drafting curbs that would block companies with at least 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying U.S. tech firms.
Besides the trade spat with China, the United States has recently upped the ante in a challenge to the European Union by threatening to impose tariffs on cars imported from the bloc.
“Increasingly hawkish trade rhetoric the United States is employing could begin impacting the economy by cooling investor sentiment and curbing capital
