Stocks Plunge Across Board After Trump's Tariffs Threat

A monthslong calm on Wall Street shattered Friday, with US stocks tumbling after President Trump threatened to crank tariffs much higher on China.

• The Dow fell 878 points, or 1.9%, to 45,479.60, for a drop of 2.7% for the week.
• The S&P 500 fell 182.60 points to 6,552.51. The 2.7% drop made Friday the index's worst day since April. The S&P closed the week down 2.4%.
• The Nasdaq fell 820.20, or 3.6%, to 22,204.43, ending the week down 2.5%.

Stocks had been heading for a slight gain in the morning, the AP reports, until Trump took to his social media platform and said he's considering "a massive increase of tariffs" on Chinese imports. He also said "now there seems to be no reason" to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, after earlier agreeing to do so. The ratchet higher in tensions between the world's largest economies was followed by widespread drops across Wall Street, with roughly 6 out of every 7 stocks in the S&P 500 falling. Nearly everything weakened, including Big Tech companies like Nvidia and Apple and stocks of smaller companies looking to get past uncertainty about tariffs and trade.

Levi Strauss dropped 12.6% for one of the market's larger losses, though it reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its forecast for profit over the full year was also within range of Wall Street's estimates, but the jeans and clothing company could simply be facing the challenge of heightened expectations after a big run. Its stock price came into the day with a surge of nearly 42% for the year so far. Some of Friday's strongest action was in the oil market, where the price of a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude sank 4.2% to $58.90.