Investing.com – Wall Street was lower on Wednesday amid fresh trade war concerns after the White House threatened fresh trade tariffs against China.
The S&P 500 lost 14 points or 0.51% to 2,779.58 as of 9:43 AM ET (13:43 GMT) while the Dow composite decreased 140 points or 0.56% to 24,779.06 and tech heavy NASDAQ Composite was down 43 points or 0.56% to 7,715.99.
On Tuesday U.S. President Donald Trump threatented to impose tariffs of 10% on an additional $200 billion of Chinese goods. China has said it will retaliate but doesn’t import enough from the U.S., so is looking at other ways to hit back.
Technology stocks slumped, with Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) falling 1.74% and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) decreasing 2.38%. Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) was down 0.37% after the drug maker announced it would reorganize its business into three units, while Boeing (NYSE:BA) dipped 0.99%.
Elsewhere Visa Inc (NYSE:V) rose 0.74% while Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) inched up 0.03%. Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) rose 0.04% despite being fined in the UK for breaching the data protection law after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Industrial supply distributor Fastenal Company (NASDAQ:FAST) surged 3.89% after its earnings results came in higher than expected.
In Europe stocks were down. Germany’s DAX fell 183 points or 1.45% while in France the CAC 40 decreased 71 points or 1.32% and in London, the FTSE 100 was down 84 points or 1.10%. Meanwhile the pan-European Euro Stoxx 50 lost 45 points or 1.32% while Spain’s IBEX 35 slumped 126 points or 1.28%.
In commodities, gold futures fell 0.33% to $1,251.20 a troy ounce while crude oil futures decreased 1.13% to $73.27 a barrel. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was up 0.04% to 93.89.