Investing.com – Wall Street was flat on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would make a decision on more China tariffs after the G20 summit on June 28-29, stoking fears of a further escalation of the current trade dispute.
The S&P 500 inched up 2 points or 0.1% by 9:46 AM ET (13:46 GMT), while the Dow gained 38 points or 0.2% and tech-heavy Nasdaq composite was down 5 points or 0.1%.
"We’ll see what happens ... I could go up another at least $300 billion and I’ll do that at the right time,” Reuters reported Trump as saying as he headed to France to observe the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in World War 2.
Separate meetings between the U.S. and Mexican officials over trade and immigration have also made little progress. A 5% tariff on all Mexican goods is set to kick in on Monday.
"It feels like an escalation of tension and may be an elongated trade war and we might have to recalibrate lower," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York.
"We're up significantly in two days, at that place it doesn't take much to roll markets over."
Wall Street had rallied for two days after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell indicated that the central bank could cut rates if low inflation and a weakening economy warranted it.
Meanwhile, the European Central Bank pushed back the date for its first interest rate hike until the middle of next year at the earliest, while President Mario Draghi indicated that a number of his fellow policy-makers had already argued for a resumption of quantitative easing.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) jumped 4.1% on reports that the electric car maker was on track for record sales numbers in North America, while Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) rose 0.6% and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) gained 4% on a stock upgrade.
At Home Group (NYSE:HOME) slumped 43.2% after the home decor retailer missed earnings estimates and its guidance was below forecasts, due to adverse weather.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.4% to $1,338.85 a troy ounce, while crude inched up 0.3% to $51.81. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was down 0.2% to 97.088.
-Reuters contributed to this report.