Wall Street ended mixed on Tuesday, a day after a broad sell-off in response to the Trump administration setting new tariffs on more than a dozen nations.
- The S&P 500 fell 4.46 points, or 0.1%, to 6,225.52 .
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 165.60 points, or 0.4%, to 44,240.76.
- The Nasdaq composite rose 5.95 points, or less than 0.1%, to 20,418.46.
The sluggish trading came a day after the S&P 500 had is biggest drop since June as President Trump announced a 25% tax on imports from Japan and South Korea and new tariff rates on other nations scheduled to go into effect Aug. 1, the
AP reports.
"At a very basic level, nothing actually happened based on Trump sending these letters, so there's no reason to panic over headlines," wrote Tobin Marcus, an analyst at Wolfe Research. "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 were up 2.5% following Trump's remarks. The price of copper was up 8.7% to $5.47 per pound.
On Wall Street, gains among health care and technology stocks helped outweigh a pullback in banks and other sectors. Intel jumped 7.2% and Eli Lilly and Co. was 0.7% higher. JPMorgan and Bank of America both fell 3.1%. Amazon shares fell 1.8% as the online retail giant kicked off Prime Day, which, beginning this year, lasts four days. Elsewhere in the market, First Solar fell 6.5% after Trump issued an executive order ending subsidies for foreign-controlled energy companies. Hershey Co. fell 3.2% after the chocolate maker announced that Wendy's CEO Kirk Tanner will succeed current CEO Michele Buck, who is retiring.