Wall Street slumped Friday as U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mexico tariff threat increased investor fear of a global recession.
The S&P 500 fell 34 points, or 1.3%, by 9:48 AM ET (13:48 GMT), while the Dow lost 299 points, or 1.2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite was down 103 points, or 1.4%.
Trump tweeted on Thursday that he would impose a 5% tariff starting June 10 on all Mexican exports to the U.S. unless the country stopped immigrants from crossing the border. The news also increased the likelihood that a trade deal between the U.S. and China is not likely any time soon.
“It is a very sticky situation,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities.
“American companies needed to find supply chains outside of China when it looked like the (U.S.-China) trade deal is going to take much longer and one of those countries that was pointed to outside the Pacific was Mexico.”
Technology stocks were down, with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) falling 1.6%, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) slipping 1% and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) down 1.7% as the electric car maker struggles to increase sales in China.
Shares of banks were also down, with JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) slumping 1.4% and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) dipping 1.9%.
Meanwhile, Uber (NYSE:UBER) rose 0.3% after it posted a net loss of $1 billion, which was in line with forecasts.
In commodities, Gold futures rose 0.8% to $1,297.00 a troy ounce, while crude oil slumped 2.9% to $54.95. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, inched down 0.2% to 97.882.
-- Reuters contributed to this report.
