By ALEX VEIGA AP Business Writer
A choppy day in the markets left major U.S. stock indexes little changed Tuesday as the Trump administration pressed its campaign to win more favorable trade deals with nations around the globe by leaning into tariffs on goods coming into the U.S.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% a day after posting its biggest loss since mid-June. The benchmark index remains near its all-time high set last week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gave back 0.4%. The Nasdaq composite eked out a gain of less than 0.1%, staying near its own record high.
The sluggish trading came as the market was coming off a broad sell-off following the Trump administration’s decision to impose new import tariffs set to go into effect next month on more than a dozen nations.
Still, the modest pullback in the markets is a sign that Wall Street may be betting that the U.S. and its trading partners may eventually negotiate deals that will reduce or eliminate the need for punishing tariffs, said Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird.
“I think today you’re basically seeing a market that doesn’t quite believe the worst of this is going to come to bear and is just kind of waiting for any sort of clarity because we seem back in that in that kind of phase where things change every couple of hours,” Mayfield said.
On Monday, President Donald Trump set a 25% tax on goods imported from Japan and South Korea and new tariff rates on a dozen other nations scheduled to go into effect on Aug. 1.
Trump provided notice by posting letters on Truth Social that were addressed to the leaders of the various countries. The letters warned them to not retaliate by increasing their own import taxes, or else the Trump administration would further increase tariffs.
Just before hefty U.S. tariffs on goods imported from nearly every country around the globe were to take effect in April, Trump postponed the levies for 90 days in hopes that foreign governments would be more willing to strike new trade deals. That 90-day negotiating period was set to expire before Wednesday.
With the tariffs set to kick in now on Aug. 1, the latest move by the White House amounts to essentially a four-week extension of its previous 90-day pause, wrote Tobin Marcus, an analyst at Wolfe Research.
“At a very basic level, nothing actually happened based on Trump sending these letters, so there’s no reason to panic over headlines,” he wrote. “But we think these moves do contain some signal about where the trade war is heading, and that signal is mostly hawkish.”
During a cabinet meeting Tuesday, Trump said he would be announcing tariffs on pharmaceutical drugs at a “very, very high rate, like 200%.” He also said he would sign an executive order placing a 50% tariff on copper imports, matching the rates charged on steel and aluminum.
Shares in mining company Freeport-McMoRan rose 2.5% following Trump’s remarks. The price of copper for September delivery jumped 13.1% to $5.69 per pound.
This latest phase in the trade war heightens the threat of potentially more severe tariffs that’s been hanging over the global economy. Higher taxes on imported goods could hinder economic growth, if not increase recession risks.
Gains in technology, energy and health care stocks helped outweigh a pullback in banks and other sectors.
Intel jumped 7.2%, Exxon Mobil rose 2.8% and AbbVie rose 1.1%. JPMorgan and Bank of America each fell 3.1%.
Amazon shares fell 1.8% as the online retail giant kicked off Prime Day, which, beginning this year, lasts four days. Amazon launched the membership sales event in 2015 and expanded it to two days in 2019.
Elsewhere in the market, First Solar slid 6.5% after Trump issued an executive order ending subsidies for foreign-controlled energy companies.
Hershey Co. lost 3.2% after the chocolate maker announced that Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner will succeed current CEO Michele Buck, who is retiring.
Shares in WeightWatchers parent WW International gave up an early gain and dropped 1.1% after the company announced that it has completed its reorganization and relisting on Nasdaq. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May to eliminate $1.15 billion in debt and focus on its transition into a telehealth services provider.
Bond yields mostly rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 4.40% from 4.39% late Monday.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 4.46 points to 6,225.52. The Dow lost 165.60 points to 44,240.76, and the Nasdaq added 5.95 points to 20,418.46.
The market’s downbeat start to the week follows a strong run for stocks, which pushed further into record heights last week after a better-than-expected U.S. jobs report.
In stock markets overseas, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia. In two of the bigger moves, South Korea’s Kospi surged 1.8%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index climbed 1.1%.
The National Federation of Independent Business reported Tuesday that its small business optimism index fell slightly last month, in line with analysts’ expectations. The index tracks how small firms view the U.S. economy and their business prospects.
On Wednesday the Federal Reserve will release minutes from its policymaking committee’s meeting last month. The Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, has said the central bank wants to wait and see how Trump’s tariffs affect the economy and inflation before making its next move on interest rates.