By Chibuike Oguh NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. stocks fell on Friday, notching a weekly loss, after President Donald Trump recommended 50% tariffs on European goods, reopening a new front in global trade tensions and unleashing a fresh wave of market uncertainty. All three main Wall Street indexes pared early losses but each still ended lower […]
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Wall St falls as Trump tariff threats spark market uncertainty
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By Chibuike Oguh
NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. stocks fell on Friday, notching a weekly loss, after President Donald Trump recommended 50% tariffs on European goods, reopening a new front in global trade tensions and unleashing a fresh wave of market uncertainty.
All three main Wall Street indexes pared early losses but each still ended lower and shed more than 2% for the week. Technology, communication services and consumer discretionary stocks were the biggest losers of the S&P 500’s 11 subsectors. Utilities, consumer staples and energy stocks gained.
Apple touched a two-week low and finished down 3% after Trump warned the iPhone-maker it could face potential 25% tariffs on phones sold to U.S. customers but not manufactured in the country.
Treasury yields eased from multi-month highs, falling 4.4 basis points to 4.509% for the benchmark U.S. 10-year note.
“If I were to put a headline on today’s story, it would be ‘Here We Go Again!'” said James St. Aubin, chief investment officer at Ocean Park Asset Management in Santa Monica, California.
“This is Trump turning on the temperature on the tariff conversation with the EU and Apple. The markets were hoping that the worst was behind us when it comes to the tariff rhetoric. But in reality, there’s still some smoldering embers when it comes to the tariff talk,” St. Aubin added.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 256.02 points, or 0.61%, to 41,603.07, the S&P 500 lost 39.19 points, or 0.67%, to 5,802.82 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 188.53 points, or 1.00%, to 18,737.21.
For the week, the Dow lost 2.47%, the S&P 500 fell 2.61%, and the Nasdaq shed 2.48%.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Trump did not believe the EU’s trade offers were of sufficient quality. He also said he hoped the threat of fresh tariffs would “light a fire under the EU” in negotiations.
Most megacap and growth stocks fell, including Amazon, Nvidia and Meta Platforms – which all lost more than 1%. Tesla ended down 0.5%.
The CBOE Volatility Index, Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” hit a more than two-week high and finished up 10%. Semiconductor stocks dropped 1.5%.
Deckers Outdoor slumped nearly 20% after the maker of UGG boots forecast first-quarter net sales below estimates and said it would not provide annual targets due to tariff-led macroeconomic uncertainty. Sportswear maker Nike dropped 2.1%.
Volume on U.S. exchanges was 17.67 billion shares, compared with the 17.73 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.
(Reporting by Chibuike Oguh in New York; additional reporting by Shashwat Chauhan and Kanchana Chakravarty in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai and Richard Chang)