Investing.com -- U.S. stock futures traded lower on Monday as reports suggested that it will be hard to nail down even the minimalist agreement on trade between the U.S. and China.
Bloomberg reported that China wants additional concessions from the U.S. before President Xi Jinping agrees to sign Friday’s “phase-1” agreement. Specifically, Xi wants the U.S. to suspend the increase in tariffs on imports from China that is currently scheduled to come into force in December, Bloomberg said.
The U.S. had already suspended the planned September tariff increase on $250 billion of Chinese goods last week.
By 6:55 AM ET (1005 GMT) Dow futures had trimmed losses on the news but were still marked down 86 points, or 0.3%, while S&P 500 futures were down 0.3% and Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.4%.
Trading may be somewhat thinner than usual on Monday, given the Columbus Day holiday. There are no major corporate earnings announcements due, but the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ are both open as normal.
Overnight, data out of the euro zone and China both continued to point to the damaging effects of the trade dispute on activity. China’s exports and imports both fell more sharply than expected in September, while the euro zone’s factory output fell 2.8% on the year, more than expected.
In corporate news, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) stock may come under continued scrutiny after major payments firms Visa (NYSE:V), Mastercard (NYSE:MA) and Stripe joined PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) in abandoning its Libra digital currency project.
Elsewhere, Crude Oil futures continued to fall on worries about global demand. U.S. crude futures were down 2.1% at $53.55 a barrel, while gold futures rebounded 0.7% to $1,499.15 a troy ounce.
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of developed market currencies, rose 0.2% to 98.178, gaining against the British pound as hopes for a Brexit deal faded, but falling slightly against haven currencies such as the yen and Swiss franc.