Asia-Pacific markets mostly fall as Trump rattles defense firms and oil prices slide

Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell Thursday after Wall Street closed lower amid rising geopolitical tensions and comments from U.S. President Donald Trump.

U.S. defense stocks fell after Trump said he “will not permit” defense companies to issue dividends or stock buybacks until they address his complaints about the industry, including executive pay packages and production issues.

Oil prices also dropped overnight after Trump said that Venezuela’s interim authorities would turn over as much as 50 million barrels of crude to the U.S., raising concerns about an increase in global supply.

Brent crude futures fell 0.51% to $60.39 a barrel, while the U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude added 0.61% to $56.33 per barrel, as of 7.30 a.m. Singapore time (Wednesday 6.30 p.m. EST).

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 1.63%, weighed down by basic materials and technology stocks. Among the biggest decliners were SoftBank, which plunged 7.59%, and Tokyo Electron, which provides essential chipmaking equipment to foundries that manufacture Nvidia’s chips, was 4.01% lower. The broader Topix index retreated 0.77%.

South Korea’s Kospi settled slightly above the flatline at 4,552.37, while the small-cap Kosdaq retreated 0.35%.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 closed 0.29% higher at 8,720.8. Shares of BlueScope Steel fell 1.57% after the company rejected a $9 billion takeover bid from U.S.-based Steel Dynamics and Australian conglomerate SGH, which also saw its stock drop 1.92%.

On Thursday afternoon, BlueScope’s biggest investor, AustralianSuper, increased its voting power in the steel company to 13.52%, from 12.5%, according to a filing after the bell.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index declined 1.59%, led lower by losses in basic materials and technology stocks. Lenovo Group fell 3.44%, Kuaishou Technology lost 2.85%, and Baidu traded 2.76% lower. The mainland’s CSI 300 fell 1.04%.

Shares of Knowledge Atlas Technology JSC, better known as Zhipu, rose as much as 15% on their Hong Kong debut, following a $558 million initial public offering that made it the first of China’s “AI tigers” to go public.

India’s Nifty 50 fell 0.83%, while the BSE Sensex index was 0.63% lower.

U.S. equity futures were little changed in early Asian hours, after the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average snapped a three-day winning streak.

Overnight, the broad market index shed about 0.3% while the Dow fell 466 points, or roughly 0.9%.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained nearly 0.2%, aided by a 2.4% jump in Google parent Alphabet that led the company’s market cap to surpass Apple’s for the first time since 2019.

— CNBC’s Pia Singh and Sean Conlon contributed to this report.