Wall Street futures slide as Trump's new tariffs, Amazon weigh
Hours ahead of the tariff deadline, President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing duties ranging from 10% to 41% on U.S. imports from foreign countries.
Rates were set at 25% for U.S.-bound exports from India, 20% for Taiwan, 19% for Thailand and 15% for South Korea.
The deadline set by Trump came with little to no hope of an extension, as made clear by the White House in its stance.
However, China is facing an August 12 deadline to reach a durable tariff agreement with Trump's administration after Beijing and Washington reached preliminary deals in May and June to end tit-for-tat tariffs and a cut-off of rare earth minerals.
"The August 1 announcement on reciprocal tariffs is somewhat worse than expected," analysts at Societe Generale said.
The CBOE Volatility index, also known as Wall Street's fear gauge, jumped to a more than two-week high of 18.40 points.
At 5:54 a.m. ET, S&P 500 E-minis were down 58.25 points, or 0.91%, Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 234.75 points, or 1%, and Dow E-minis were down 398 points, or 0.9%.
Meanwhile, Amazon slid 7.6% in premarket trading after growth in its cloud computing unit failed to impress investors, in contrast to robust gains reported by AI-focused rivals Alphabet and Microsoft.
Apple posted its current-quarter revenue forecast well above Wall Street estimates, but CEO Tim Cook warned U.S. tariffs would add $1.1 billion in costs over the period. The stock was up 2%.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq retreated from intraday record highs to end lower as AI-driven enthusiasm following blockbuster earnings from Microsoft and Meta Platforms fizzled out.
Microsoft briefly surpassed $4 trillion in market value, becoming only the second publicly traded company to reach this milestone after Nvidia.
A key driver for Wall Street on Friday could be U.S. jobs data. Estimates show a rise of 110,000 in July payrolls, while the jobless rate is seen rising to 4.2% from 4.1%, according to economists polled by Reuters.
A strong reading could trim bets for a September interest rate cut, after data this week showing stronger-than-expected second-quarter GDP data and an uptick in June inflation influenced expectations on the rate path.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's remarks following Wednesday's policy decision - when rates were kept unchanged - also showed no urgency for a September rate cut.
In other earnings-related moves, Coinbase Global shed 11.1% after the crypto exchange reported a drop in adjusted profit for the second quarter, marred by weaker trading activity amid reduced cryptocurrency volatility.
(Reporting by Nikhil Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
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