- The S&P 500 posted a 0.27% decline on Wednesday as investors weighed Trump’s scant-on-details trade deal with China as well as an inflation report that outperformed analysts’ expectations.
The stock markets dropped on Wednesday despite a seemingly positive development in the trade war between the U.S. and China alongside a better-than-expected inflation report for May. The S&P 500 dipped 0.27%, the Nasdaq fell 0.50%, and the Dow Jones closed the day essentially flat.
“OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE, SUBJECT TO FINAL APPROVAL WITH PRESIDENT XI AND ME,” President Donald Trump posted Wednesday morning on his social media platform, Truth Social, referring to President Xi Jinping of China.
Trump gave few specifics but said that China would continue to export magnets and rare earth materials to the U.S. and only implement a 10% tariff on American goods. The U.S., in turn, would enforce a 55% tariff on exports from the People’s Republic of China to the U.S. and let Chinese students continue to attend American colleges and universities.
The U.S. and China had previously levied tariffs as high as 145% and 125% on each other, respectively. Trump’s administration had also signaled it would start to cancel student visas for Chinese students in a move that a Chinese foreign minister called “discriminatory.”
It remains unclear when the trade deal between the two superpowers goes into effect or whether the U.S. offered China any more concessions. Xinhua, a Chinese state news agency, said the U.S. and China had “candid and in-depth talks” in its evaluation of the agreement.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its consumer price index report for May. The U.S. agency noted that inflation had only crept up by 0.1% from April to 2.4%. That was slightly less than the median estimate of 2.5% from economists polled by FactSet.
Analysts had worried that Trump’s aggressive set of tariffs would increase prices for American consumers. Still, some warn that the full effect of the White House’s trade war hasn’t percolated throughout the economy. “It’s encouraging to see inflation moderate further, and yet we are aware of the possibility of some tariff-related lift in prices coming in the back half of the year,” wrote Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock.
Wednesday’s market dip followed a week of gains. In June, the S&P 500 neared the all-time highs it posted in February, which was shortly after the 47th president’s inauguration.
