Wall Street loses more than half of historic surge as US-China trade tensions escalate

NEW YORK (RNS, 11-04-25): U.S. stocks are diving Thursday and surrendering much of their historic gains from the day before as President Donald Trump's trade war continues to confuse and threaten the economy, even if its temperature has cooled a bit.

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The S&P 500 was down 5% in midday trading, slicing into Wednesday's surge of 9.5% following Trump's decision to pause many of his tariffs worldwide. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,724 points, or 4.2%, as of 12:40 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 5.7% lower.

“Trump blinks,” UBS strategist Bhanu Baweja wrote in a report about the president's decision on tariffs, “but the damage isn’t all undone.”Trump has focused more on China, raising tariffs on its products to well above 100%. Even if that were to get negotiated down to something like 50%, and even if only 10% tariffs remained on other countries, Baweja said the hit to the U.S. economy could still be large enough to hurt expected growth for upcoming U.S. corporate profits.

The losses for U.S. stocks accelerated Thursday after the White House clarified that Chinese imports will be tariffed at 145%, not the 125% rate that Trump had written about in his posting on Truth Social Wednesday, once other previously announced tariffs were included. The drop for the S&P 500 reached 6.3% at one point.