BENGALURU- Most Asian stock markets rebounded on Friday but posted steep weekly declines, as persistent tariff threats from US President Donald Trump intensified global trade tensions and led cautious investors to turn to safe haven assets.
Stocks in Thailand and Malaysia were up 1 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, but hit declines of 2.6 percent and 2.5 percent for the week – with the Malaysian market eyeing its worst weekly performance since September 2022.
Philippine equities rose 0.7 percent. Taiwanese stocks were last largely flat, but hit their third straight week of losses, a run last seen seven months ago.
Rising global trade tensions have stirred market volatility and sapped risk appetite, driving investors towards safe haven assets such as US treasuries and gold, with the yellow metal reaching a record high.
Trump threatened on Wednesday to escalate a global trade war with further tariffs, as major US trading partners said they would retaliate in tit-for-tat measures.
“Reciprocal tariffs in particular are going to be quite hurtful,” said Illiana Jain, an economist at Westpac.
“When you add reciprocal tariffs or try and pressure a lot of these Asian economies to drop tariffs that are there to protect domestic industries, we might see prices start to increase for some of the critical goods, and that’s going to hamper growth as well as general sentiment within Asia.”
Indonesian stocks fell 1.6 percent on Friday and were on track for a 1.4 percent weekly drop.
The Indonesian government maintained its budget deficit forecast at 2.53 percent of GDP this year despite a 30 percent plunge in tax revenues in the first two months of 2025.
Regional currencies inched higher as the dollar steadied. The Philippine peso added 0.3 percent, and the Thai baht edged up 0.1 percent.
