Trump tariff threat hits Wall Street for second day

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[August 02, 2019]   By Amy Caren Daniel

(Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures slid on Friday, after an escalation in trade tensions with China renewed fears of a global economic slowdown, ahead of a closely watched jobs report.

 

President Donald Trump's threat to slap a 10% tariff on $300 billion of Chinese imports from next month, sent global markets tumbling overnight and investors fleeing for perceived safe-havens like U.S. Treasuries and the Japanese yen.

China on Friday said it would not be blackmailed and warned of retaliation.

"The negative mood across markets suggests that investors are jittery," Lukman Otunuga, senior research analyst at FXTM, said in a note, warning again on the potential impact on growth.

Industrial bellwethers Boeing Co <BA.N> and Caterpillar Inc <CAT.N> fell 0.5% and 1%, respectively, in premarket trading.

Shares of tariff-sensitive Apple Inc slid 1.1%, while chipmakers, which get a large portion of their revenue from China, also took a hit.

The sudden escalation in the trade rhetoric comes days after the Federal Reserve played down expectations of further aggressive monetary policy actions after cutting interest rates for the first time in a decade.

Hopes that the Fed would be more accommodative to counter the impact of the bruising trade war had helped Wall Street's main indexes hit record highs last month.

The Labor Department's jobs report, due at 8:30 a.m. ET, will likely show U.S. job growth slowed in July after outsized gains in the prior month, with wages maintaining their moderate pace of increase.

At 6:39 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis <1YMcv1> were down 44 points, or 0.17%. S&P 500 e-minis <EScv1> were down 8 points, or 0.27% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis <NQcv1> were down 41.5 points, or 0.53%.

Semiconductor stocks Micron Technology <MU.O>, Nvidia Corp <NVDA.O>, Applied Materials Inc <AMAT.O> and Intel Corp <INTC.O> fell between 1% and 3%.

The second-quarter earnings season is in full swing, with 74.4% of the 355 S&P 500 companies that have reported so far beating profit estimates, according to Refinitiv data.

Analysts now see S&P 500 earnings growth of 2.5%, up from 0.3% a month ago, according to Refinitiv data.

NetApp Inc <NTAP.O> slumped 18.8% after the data storage equipment maker lowered its forecast for the first quarter and 2020, blaming a weakening macro environment in the latter half of the quarter.

Pinterest Inc <PINS.N> jumped 17.1% after the online scrapbook company raised its full-year sales forecast and reported second-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates.

(Reporting by Amy Caren Daniel in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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