NEW YORK- Asian stocks were mostly lower on Tuesday, tracking Wall Street declines as political turmoil in Washington and rising coronavirus cases worldwide weighed on sentiment ahead of the start of the quarterly earnings season.
Political uncertainty dominated trading as House Democrats introduced a resolution to impeach US President Donald Trump, accusing him of inciting insurrection following a violent attack on the Capitol last week.
Several big tech giants, including Twitter Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc, Facebook Inc and Apple Inc, have taken actions against Trump and his network of supporters, as concerns mounted over the risk of continued violence.
Twitter’s stock tumbled 6.4 percent on Monday after the micro-blogging site permanently suspended Trump’s account last Friday.
Investors also kept an eye on the continued spread of the coronavirus globally as cases surpassed 90 million on Monday, according to a Reuters tally.
“The weakness was led by tech and I think the banning of Trump’s account by Twitter and Amazon stepping up against Parler all brought a renewed focus on increased regulation and reining in on tech,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman of Great Hill Capital in New York.
Japan’s Nikkei slipped 0.48 percent, South Korea’s KOSPI fell 0.91 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index futures lost 0.54 percent.
Defying the broader selloff, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.24 percent.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.29 percent, the S&P 500 lost 0.66 percent and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.25 percent.
