NEW YORK: Wall Street was on track to a cautious opening on Tuesday as investor appetite for risk waned after China retaliated against new trade restrictions announced by US President Donald Trump with counter tariffs.
Minutes after US President Donald Trump’s 10 per cent tariff on Chinese goods kicked in at 12:01 am ET (0501 GMT), China’s finance ministry announced levies on some US imports, effective February 10.
Beijing’s limited reply to Trump’s imposition underscored its attempts to engage the US president in talks and avert an outright trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
“The tariff gun is clearly loaded… we don’t know if it eventually is going to fire, (but) we now have some time in between the announcement and the implementation,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth.
“Markets are going to take the pause and try to price in the uncertainty.”
Biotechnology firm Illumina and PVH Corp the holding company for brands including Calvin Klein, dropped more than 4 per cent each in premarket trading after China placed the firms in its “unreliable entity list”.
Trump had also imposed a 25 per cent tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada over the weekend, but agreed to a 30-day pause in the levies on Monday, in return for border and crime concessions from both countries.
The last-minute change helped the three major US stock indexes pare some of the heavy losses suffered earlier on Monday and closed trading well off session lows.
The S&P 500 came as close as eight points to all-time highs on Friday before selling off, as the tariffs rattled global markets.
Three Federal Reserve officials warned on Monday that trade tariffs carried inflation risks, with one arguing that uncertainty over the outlook for prices called for slower interest-rate cuts than otherwise.
Traders are pricing in no interest-rate action from the US Federal Reserve before June, with bets on a cut in June at 62 per cent, according to CME’s FedWatch.
Comments from three Fed leaders including Atlanta’s Raphael Bostic are expected through the day.
In economic data, a December job openings reading is due at 10:00 am ET on Tuesday, with the all-important January nonfarm payrolls report expected on Friday.
At 08:30 am ET, Dow E-minis were down 58 points, or 0.13 per cent, S&P 500 E-minis were up 4.5 points, or 0.07 per cent, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were up 46.25 points, or 0.22 per cent.
In earnings-driven moves, PepsiCo fell 2.2 per cent after it forecast annual profit below expectations and missed quarterly revenue estimates.
Merck dropped 7.9 per cent after the drugmaker said it would pause shipments of Gardasil to China through at least mid-year, as continued weak demand for the HPV vaccine there is expected to hurt the company’s 2025 revenue.
Palantir jumped 24 per cent after the data analytics company forecast first-quarter and annual revenue above Wall Street estimates.
Pfizer rose 1.3 per cent after it beat estimates for fourth-quarter profit, helped by strong sales of its heart-disease drug and a smaller-than-feared drop in COVID-19 vaccine sales.