ASX set to slide lower as Wall Street retreats
The S&P 500 closed 0.3 per cent lower a day after setting a record high. The benchmark index's loss for the week followed two straight weekly gains.
The Dow Jones dropped 0.6 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite gave up 0.2 per cent after drifting between small gains and losses much of the day. The tech-heavy index was coming off its own all-time high on Thursday. The Australian sharemarket is set to retreat, with futures pointing to a slide of 13 points or 0.2 per cent at the open. The Australian dollar was fetching 65.75 US cents at 5.20am AEST.
The US selling capped an uneven week in the market as Wall Street kept an eye on the Trump administration's rollout of new tariff threats against trading partners like Canada and looked ahead to the upcoming corporate earnings reporting season.
President Donald Trump said in a letter on Thursday that he will raise taxes on many imported goods from Canada to 35 per cent, deepening the rift between the longtime North American allies. The letter to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is an aggressive increase to the top 25 per cent tariff rates that Trump first imposed in March.
The move was the latest bid by the White House to use threats of higher tariffs on goods imported into the US in hopes of securing new trade agreements with countries around the globe, even historically close trading partners like Canada.
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The administration had initially set Wednesday as a deadline for countries to make deals with the US or face heavy increases in tariffs. But with just two trade deals announced since April, one with the United Kingdom and one with Vietnam, the window for negotiations has been been extended to August 1.
Trump also floated this week that he would impose tariffs of as much as 200 per cent on pharmaceutical drugs and place a 50 per cent tariff on copper imports, matching the rates charged on steel and aluminum.
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