Sky News halted for 'painful' breaking Donald Trump announcement

was halted this morning for a "painful" breaking news update as US president doubled down on his tariffs across the world. Stock markets are down globally, with presenter Wilfred Frost delivering an urgent update as he awaited the London market opening at 8am on April 7th. A breaking news strap flashed across the screen with the caption: "Markets open down in Asia following tariffs fallout".

On the show, Wilfred announced: "Our top story, stock markets falling sharply overnight in Asia after a weekend that showed no reprieve in President Trump's painful tariffs. The largest was Hong Kong's Hang Seng index, which has shared over 10%. We await the open of the London market at 8am in an hour's time and markets across Europe as well. Meanwhile US Futures signalling they're expecting a weak open themselves again with the S&P 500 Futures market down itself some 3% as we speak."

The news proved a blow to Trump, as he said in a video from Airforce One: "I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world, they're dying to make a deal but I said we're not gonna have deficits with your countries, because to me a deficit is a loss. We're gonna have surpluses or at worst we're going to be breaking even.

"What's gonna happen with the market, I can't tell you, but I can tell you our country has gotten a lot stronger. I don't want anything to go down but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something and we have such a horrible... we have been treated so badly by other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen."

Later in the show, Wilfred discussed the UK market, telling viewers: "Let's have a look at the markets again for you - a little bit of a reprieve. Having fallen immediately at the open, it has bounced a little bit. Currently the FTSE 100 is down 3%, the broader Stocks 600 across continental Europe is down 3.2%, France down 2.4%, Italy down 1.4%.

"These are the Asian markets for you, as you can see sharply low across the board with a little bit of time left in trade in Hong Kong, down 12.5%, Asian markets obviously significantly lower here in Europe as well. The DAX in Germany is down 9% as we speak, of course a very export heavy economy."