US stock futures wavered on Friday as investors weighed President Trump’s fresh round of punishing tariffs and waited for a fresh inflation reading to test rate-cut bets.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) inched up roughly 0.2%, while those on the S&P 500 (ES=F) ticked up 0.1%. Meanwhile, contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) swung between slight gains and falls, with the major US gauges coming off a third straight day of losses.
Investors are treading carefully as they get to grips with Trump’s threat to put a 100% levy on imports of branded drugs. The rate will apply to any pharma company that isn’t already building a manufacturing plant in the US, the president said in a social media post late Thursday, but offered no further details. Shares of drugmakers in Europe and Asia faltered after the move.
Imports of heavy trucks and certain categories of furniture also face new heftier tariffs, Trump said, with the new duties to come into effect on Oct. 1 — less than a week away.
The trade salvo adds fresh uncertainty for markets already grappling with jitters about the AI boom, a high risk of US government shutdown, and signs of a resilient economy that have dented the case for more Federal Reserve rate cuts this year. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) is eyeing its first weekly loss this month after a Wall Street slump snapped a record-setting rally.
That has intensified the already high focus on the August print of the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, due Friday. The Personal Consumption Expenditures index update is expected to show an easing in price pressures when it is released at 8:30 a.m. ET, with growth of 0.3% month-on-month and 2.7% year-on-year forecast.
Meanwhile, Trump signed an order approving a deal to spin off TikTok’s US operations from China’s ByteDance, though Beijing still needs to sign off on the agreement. But the proposed $14 billion price tag was greeted with surprise on Wall Street, seen as undervaluing a global leader in social media estimate to potentially be worth $40 billion.
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