Singapore, Malaysia markets rise, while Taiwan stocks drop as Trump sets new tariff rates

[SINGAPORE] Singapore stocks opened slightly up on Friday (Aug 1), while Malaysia markets jumped and Taiwan slumped, following the announcement of US President Donald Trump’s global tariff rates.

Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia were hit by 19 per cent levies, while Taiwan will face a 20 per cent rate on its US exports. The global baseline rate will be kept to 10 per cent. This comes ahead of the Aug 1 deadline.

Singapore is likely to remain at the 10 per cent baseline rate, which Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said earlier was “not ideal” but something the country can “live with”.

The Straits Times Index (STI) had a modest gain of 0.2 per cent shortly after the market opened, up 8.52 points to reach 4182.29. This comes after a 2.3 per cent drop across six days from its record high of 4273.05 last Thursday (Jul 24).

The trio of local banks were all marginally up at the open. DBS was up 0.13 per cent or S$0.06 to S$47.97. UOB was up 0.44 per cent or S$0.16 at S$36.35, and OCBC was up 0.47 per cent or S$0.08 at S$16.95. Pre-market open, OCBC announced second-quarter profit fell 7 per cent to S$1.82 billion and declared a quarterly dividend of S$0.41 a share.

Among Asia markets, Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur Composite Index was up 0.66 per cent at 1,523.27 points, while Taiwan’s Taiex index dived 1.6 per cent initially but last dropped 0.88 per cent at 23,335.55 points.

The Singapore dollar continued its week-long rise at 1.2975 per US dollar, up from 1.2768 on Wednesday (Jul 23). Spot gold traded 0.05 per cent higher around US$3,292 as at 9.16 am.