Dow set to tumble 600 points after China announces new tariffs
CNN/Stylemagazine.com Newswire | 4/4/2018, 8:01 a.m.
Ivana Kottasová
(CNN Money) -- US stocks were poised to open sharply lower on Wednesday after China announced plans for heavy tariffs on $50 billion worth of US exports.
The Dow is set to fall 600 points when the markets open. Futures pointed to losses of more than 2% for the Nasdaq and Dow. S&P 500 futures were off by roughly 1.6%.
The pain extended to US companies that could be harmed by the planned sanctions. The 106 affected products will include soybeans, chemicals, aircraft and autos.
Boeing, General Motors, Ford and Caterpillar all posted steep declines in premarket trade.
US oil futures plunged almost 2% to trade at $62.35 per barrel. The price of soybeans, a major US agricultural export to China, fell more than 4%.
"There has been a lot of rhetoric surrounding trade wars for some time now, but the transformation of these threats into actions in recent days is alarming and is clearly roiling markets," said David Cheetham, chief market analyst at XTB.
Global stocks were also hit. European markets were lower, with some indexes shedding more than 1%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng, which had been higher in morning trade, closed with a loss of 2.2%.
The announcement from China came less than 24 hours after the Trump administration published a list of about 1,300 Chinese exports that it plans to target with tariffs.
