Slump on Wall Street continues
Report of plan for more tariffs fuels investor anxiety; S&P on track for its worst month since crisis
NEW YORK — Stocks sank again Monday on fears that the Trump administration will escalate its trade dispute with China by imposing tariffs on all remaining imports from China to the U.S.
The declines came during another dizzying day of trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average swung between a gain of 352 points and a loss of 566 before closing down 245.39 points, or 1 percent, at 24,442.92.
Bloomberg News reported in the afternoon that the Trump administration will put tariffs on the rest of the country’s imports from China if Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping don’t make substantial progress in easing the trade dispute next month. The month comes in the midst of a corporate earnings season where a number of big companies have warned tariffs already in place have raised their costs.
Technology and internet companies, industrials and retailers took steep losses after the Bloomberg report as Wall Street’s recent bout of volatility continued. The S&P 500 index has dropped 9.4 percent in October and is on track for its worst monthly loss since February 2009. That was right before the market hit its lowest point during the 2008-09 financial crisis. The S&P 500 fell 17.44
STOCKS
points Monday, or 0.7 percent, to 2,641.25.
The Nasdaq composite, which is heavily weighted with technology stocks, lost 116.92 points, or 1.6 percent, to 7,050.29. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks gave up 6.51 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,447.31.
Stocks have plunged since early October, breaking a long period of relative calm over the summer, and trading has been especially volatile the last few days.
The S&P 500, the main benchmark for the U.S. stock market, has fallen 9.9 percent from its latest record high Sept. 20. The Nasdaq has plunged 13 percent from its record high reached Aug. 29.
For most of this year, investors have remained hopeful the U.S. and China would work out their disagreements on trade policy and that many of the tariffs would be reduced or eliminated. But in recent weeks they’ve lost some of their confidence, and their fear that the dispute will last longer and have bigger effects has contributed to the market’s tumble.
The effects of higher tariffs could be especially severe for technology companies, which make many of their products in China, and for industrial companies, which are already paying higher prices for metals.
The U.S. and China are the world’s largest economies, and their trade relationship is the world’s largest, so the higher taxes on imports could slow global economic growth and increase inflation.