Sunset landscape of light trails passing through an intersection in Seoul Gangnam central business district in Seoul city, South Korea
Mongkol Joo Won | Moment | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets rose on Monday on tariff uncertainty after US President Donald Trump announced over the weekend that he would raise global tariffs from 10% to 15%.
The move comes in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling invalidating a wide range of presidential trade policies established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA).
However, U.S. trading partners are not immune, said Claudio Galimberti, chief economist at Rystad Energy.
“While the Supreme Court’s decision invalidates most existing tariffs and weakens our ability to target individual countries, it does not dismantle the broader tariff framework,” he said in a note after the announcement.
Galimberti added that if the tariff cap is reached without prior exemption from IEEPA, average tax rates could rise even more than under the system just struck down by the Supreme Court.
Korean Kospi The stock rose for the third consecutive session, rising 1.7% to a new all-time high. Leading companies in the index, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, rose more than 3% and 2%, respectively.
The small-cap Kosdaq rose 0.74%.
australian S&P/ASX 200 It added 0.17% in early trading.
hong kong futures Hang Seng Index 26,855, higher than the previous closing price of 26,413.35.
Markets in China and Japan were closed for public holidays.
Oil prices finally fell, erasing earlier gains. international benchmark brent Crude oil futures fell 0.6% to $71.33 per barrel. west texas intermediate Futures fell 0.78% to $65.96.
“The Supreme Court’s decision is a setback…but it’s not the end of his policy agenda,” said Arthur Laffer Jr., president of Laffer Tengler Investments.
Laffer said countries like Vietnam and India that have trade deals with the United States should think twice before withdrawing from them, arguing that trade remains a central pillar of President Trump’s political and economic strategy and that the president is likely to continue pursuing the issue.
U.S. stocks rose on Friday after a Supreme Court ruling that could provide relief to companies burdened by higher costs from tariffs and ease fears of persistent inflation still plaguing the U.S. economy.
of S&P500 It rose 0.69% to close at 6,909.51. Nasdaq Composite It rose 0.9% to settle at 22,886.07. of Dow Jones Industrial Average It added 230.81 points (0.47%) and finished at 49,625.97. The 30-stock index recovered from an early drop of 200 points due to disappointing economic data.
—CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to this report.
