Most stock markets around the world went down on Wednesday because new rules in the U.S. made it harder to sell advanced computer chips, like those from Nvidia, which are used for artificial intelligence.

The S&P 500 is expected to fall by 1.2%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is expected to fall by 0.6%.

Shares of the computer chip company Nvidia dropped by 6.3% after the market closed. This happened because the company announced that the U.S. had placed stricter limits on exporting one of its chips used for artificial intelligence. Shares of AMD, another chip company, also fell by 7.1% after the U.S. markets closed.

Worries about a trade war started again when the Trump government announced they would investigate imports of important minerals, like rare earths. These minerals are used in many products, such as smartphones and electric cars.

In early trading in Europe, the main stock index in Britain, the FTSE 100, went down by 0.2% to 8,233.10. This happened after the government said that prices in the UK fell for the second month in a row in March, mostly because gas prices were lower.

The DAX index in Germany went down by 0.7% to 21,107.68, and the CAC 40 index in Paris also went down by 0.6% to 7,289.67.

Share prices in China fell more than other countries in the region. This happened after the Chinese government announced that their economy, the second biggest in the world, grew by 5.4% in the last three months of the year. This growth was strong because factories made many goods, people bought a lot in shops, and the country sold many things to other countries. However, if we look at the growth from one three-month period to the next, it was slower. It grew by 1.2% from January to March, which is less than the 1.6% growth in the last three months of 2024.

The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong went down by 2% to 20,922.54. But the Shanghai Composite index got back some of its losses, going up by 0.1% to 3,271.19.

Economists in private companies have lowered their predictions because President Donald Trump recently increased taxes on most goods from China to 145%, and China also increased its taxes on goods from the U.S. to 125%.

Experts at ANZ Research said that business activity in this quarter is already getting weaker.

Raymond Yeung and other experts from ANZ wrote in a report that they think the main problem with tariffs is that the rules are always changing, not the tariffs themselves. They also said that President Trump's announcements have had a bad effect on businesses and the economy.

In Tokyo, the main stock market index, the Nikkei 225, fell by 1% to 33,920.40. This was due to big technology companies' shares going down. For example, Advantest, a company that makes equipment for testing chips, had its shares drop by 6.6%, and Disco Corp.'s shares fell sharply by 8%.

The Kospi stock index in South Korea dropped by 1.2% to 2,447.43. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 index also dropped slightly, by less than 0.1%, to 7,758.90.

The Sensex in India did not change much, and Bangkok's SET went down slightly by 0.1%.

On Tuesday, US stock markets changed very little. The S&P 500 went down slightly by 0.2%, and the Dow dropped 0.4%. The Nasdaq composite also went down a tiny bit, less than 0.1%.

Investors were unsure about what President Donald Trump's tariffs would do, so they waited to see what would happen.

The U.S. bond market seemed calmer after its big changes last week made people doubt if U.S. government bonds were still a safe place during uncertain times.

The interest rate on government bonds stayed about the same, which showed that investors were less worried.

The value of the U.S. dollar also became stable after falling last week. This made people more worried that Trump's trade conflict might also be weakening its position as a safe investment.

Palantir Technologies' shares went up by 6.2% for the second day in a row. This happened after NATO announced it would use the company's AI technology in its operations.

Early on Wednesday, the price of US oil dropped by 69 cents to $60.64 per barrel, while international oil (Brent crude) decreased by 65 cents to $64.01 per barrel.

Trump's taxes on imported goods have made people think that economies will grow more slowly, which means less demand for oil and other resources.

The value of the US dollar went down against the Japanese yen, from 143.24 to 142.26 yen. Meanwhile, the euro increased in value compared to the dollar, going up from $1.1283 to $1.1377.