Wall Street’s focus returned on Tuesday to a fast escalating trade war and the damage it could do to business confidence and economic growth. Global stock benchmarks and commodity prices fell.

The trigger for the drop was the statement by President Trump on Monday that his administration was prepared to impose tariffs on a further $200 billion of Chinese goods, and that there could be even more penalties if Beijing fought back. The United States and China have already announced plans for tit-for-tat tariffs on $50 billion worth of imports each.

With the latest threat from Mr. Trump, the White House is warning that it could impose trade restrictions on as much as $450 billion of imports from China, a figure that is nearly equivalent to the total value of goods that China sold to the United States last year.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Geng Shuang, said the United States was “abandoning all the consensus that has been achieved, changing its mind constantly.”