The S&P 500 jumped nearly 8% Wednesday following President Donald Trump’s announcement that a 90-day pause would be put on the proposed tariffs for non-retaliating countries. That does not include China, which will see a 125% tax rate increase on imported goods.
Many media and tech stocks rallied amid the announcement, which had increased as follows at the time of publication: Warner Bros. Discovery (+17%), Netflix (+6.5%), Disney (+10%), Paramount (+6%), Amazon (9.6%), Apple (+9.5%), Meta (+11%), Alphabet (+7.6%), Nvidia (+16%), Fox Corp. (+7.8%) and Microsoft (+8.64%).
The boost comes after days of sharp drops for the U.S. stock market tied to fears that President Trump’s sweeping tariffs would ignite a massive trade war and lead to an economic recession.
On Friday the S&P 500 closed down 5.97% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 2,231.07 points, down 5.5%, which were, at that time, both the biggest single-day declines since June 2020 during the COVID pandemic. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.8%, pushing the tech-centric index into bear-market territory as it has fallen more than 20% from a high in December 2024.
The Trump tariffs set a 10% baseline levy on imports from all countries, with higher rates for certain regions and countries including China (34%), South Korea (25%), Japan (24%), Taiwan (32%) and the European Union (20%). The 10% tariffs took effect April 5 and the higher duties were set to begin Wednesday.
More to come…
Read the full article here
