Wall Street keeps shaking, and stocks lose a big morning gain as Trump's trade war escalates
Wall Street keeps shaking because of tariffs. After jumping to a big early gain on an encouraging inflation update, the U.S. stock market lost all of it after other countries announced their retaliations following President Donald Trump's latest escalation in his trade war.
The S&P 500 was down 0.3% in midday trading after erasing an initial leap of 1.3%. The unsettled trading comes a day after the index briefly fell more than 10% below its all-time high set last month.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average also swung sharply, pinging between a gain of 287 points and a loss of 423. It was down 346 points, or 0.8%, as of 11:15 a.m. Eastern time, while the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher. The Nasdaq held up much better because of gains for Nvidia, Tesla and AI-related companies.
Dragging the market lower were U.S. companies that could be set to feel pain because of Trump's trade war. Brown-Forman, the company behind Jack Daniel's whiskey, tumbled 7%, and Harley-Davidson sank 5.1%.
U.S. bourbon and motorcycles are just two of the products the European Union is targeting with its own tariffs announced Wednesday. The moves were in response to Trump's 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum that kicked in earlier in the day.
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«We deeply regret this measure,» European Union President Ursula von der Leyen said. «Tariffs are taxes. They are bad for business, and worse for consumers.»
The question hanging over Wall Street is how much pain Trump will let the economy endure through tariffs and other policies in order to