Investing.com - U.S. futures rose on Thursday amid reports that the White House will wait for six months to increase auto tariffs on car imports from Europe and Japan, even as the U.S. administration exacerbated the trade war with China with an effective ban on Huawei products.
Dow futures surged 83 points or 0.3% by 6:40 AM ET (10:40 GMT), while S&P 500 futures was up 9 points or 0.3%. Tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures gained 25 points, also a rise of 0.3%.
Trump declared a national emergency on Wednesday and prohibited U.S. companies from using telecom technology that is owned, controlled or directed by a foreign adversary, which would effectively ban Chinese-owned technology company Huawei from selling its network gear on the American market.
Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) fell 0.2% in premarket trading after the news, as the company uses sells Huawei chips for many of its products. Micron (NASDAQ:MU) dipped 0.8%.
Still, markets were relieved by reports that the U.S. is drafting an executive order that would put off any imposition of tariffs on imported European and Japanese cars for six months, avoiding a further, immediate extension of the trade war.
Uber (NYSE:UBER) inched up 0.1%, while Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) surged 3.4% after its earnings beat estimates, and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) was up 0.5%. Walmart (NYSE:WMT) fell 0.2% after its first-quarter revenue missed estimates.
On the economic front, housing starts, weekly jobless figures and the Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook are all out at 08:30 AM ET (12:30 GMT).
In commodities, crude oil rose 0.8% to $62.52 a barrel amid rising tension in the Middle East, while gold futures fell 0.2% to $1,294.85 a troy ounce. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, inched down 0.1% to 97.355.