President Trump demanded U.S. companies stop doing business with China and announced he would raise the rate of tariffs on Beijing Friday, capping one of the most extraordinary days in the long-running U.S.-China trade war.
By the end of the trading day, the Dow Jones industrial average had fallen 600 points, or nearly 2.4 percent; the business community had ratcheted up criticisms of the president; and world leaders descending on the Group of Seven summit in France were confronted with the prospect of a global slowdown, triggered by a trade war with no end in sight.
The combination of events nearly eclipsed a Twitter tirade in which Trump questioned whether the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell was an “enemy” of the U.S.