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Dow Jones NewsApr 1, 9:03 PM UTC
DJ Asian Morning Briefing: Trump's Tariffs Will Take Effect Immediately, White House Says
MARKET SNAPSHOT
U.S. stocks ended mostly higher as investors bet that clarity on trade will bring stability to markets as they awaited news on tariffs. Treasury yields fell as investors move away from riskier assets ahead of Trump's tariff announcement. Oil prices turned lower in choppy trade, retreating from five-week highs reached Monday after Trump said he could sanction buyers of Russian oil. Gold fell, snapping a three-session winning streak.
MARKET WRAPS
EQUITIES
U.S. stocks were mostly higher as traders awaited details of the Trump administration's much-anticipated new plan for tariffs Wednesday after the market close. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that her understanding is the new tariffs "will be effective immediately."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was flat. The S&P 500 gained 0.4% and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.9%.
"I know we're going to have tariffs," said Jim Caron, chief investment officer of the portfolio solutions group at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. "Now the game is something that we on Wall Street are very, very well equipped to understand." Shares of Johnson & Johnson tumbled 7.6% after a bankruptcy judge dismissed an attempt by the healthcare-products company to resolve its mass talc liabilities through chapter 11.
Earlier Tuesday, Chinese shares were mostly higher, with the pharmaceutical industry leading the gains. Trump's tariff announcement remained in focus.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.4%, the Shenzhen Composite Index was 0.4% higher, and the ChiNext Price Index edged 0.1% lower. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index rose 0.4%.
Japan's Nikkei Stock Average ended flat as gains in pharmaceutical and utility stocks offset losses in chip and bank shares.
Stocks in Australia rose as the S&P/ASX 200 finished up 1%.
New Zealand's NZX-50 closed up 0.4%, benefiting from a post-session adjustment higher and gains by some large-cap stocks.
COMMODITIES
Oil futures fell as crude's sanction-fueled rally ran out of steam as the market braced for the Trump administration to unveil its tariff plan on Wednesday, which many in the market see as likely to hurt global growth and demand.
"The market's response has been fairly muted as participants partially consider this as a mechanism to accelerate the ceasefire and ending the [Russia-Ukraine] war," Janiv Shah of Rystad Energy said. The threat also coincides with OPEC+ starting to gradually unwind 2.2 million barrels a day of output cuts with an estimated 138,000 b/d this month.
West Texas Intermediate dropped 0.4% to $71.20 a barrel. Brent lost 0.4% to $74.49 a barrel.
Gold futures lost 0.1%, falling to $3,118.90 a troy ounce. It was the largest one-day dollar and percentage decline since March 24. But this was the second-highest close in history.
TODAY'S TOP HEADLINES
Trump's Tariffs Will Take Effect Immediately, White House Says. Brace for Market Volatility.
President Donald Trump has called April 2 "Liberation Day" because that is when he will announce tariffs aimed at bolstering U.S. businesses and eliminating huge trade imbalances with other countries.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday called Wednesday "one of the most important days in modern American history," adding that the "days of being ripped off are over." A Rose Garden event is slated for 4 p.m. on Wednesday. The tariffs "will be effective immediately," Leavitt said.
Trump has said he wants three things from tariffs: to raise revenue to fund tax cuts, to strengthen American manufacturing, and to gain leverage with other countries in other areas.
U.S. Hiring, Quits and Layoffs Were Steady in February
Hiring and layoffs mostly held steady in February, the Labor Department said Tuesday, showing that an equilibrium of fewer opportunities but also with few big staff reductions continued in the first full month of the Trump administration.
The number of job openings was steady in February at 7.6 million, although the number had been nearly 900,000 greater a year earlier, according to the monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The rate of job openings, which compares openings to the number of workers, was steady at 4.5%.
Hiring also held steady. The number of people who got new jobs was stuck at 5.4 million, a rate of 3.4% that was unchanged from January.
EU Has Plan to Retaliate on U.S. Tariffs, Von der Leyen Says
The European Union has a plan to counteract the swathe of tariffs U.S. President Trump is planning to impose on foreign goods, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
"Europe has not started this confrontation," she said Tuesday in Strasbourg, France. "We do not necessarily want to retaliate, but we have a strong plan to retaliate if necessary."
Von der Leyen said the bloc is waiting for announcements Wednesday on U.S. tariffs, adding that policymakers will assess them carefully to calibrate a response. She said more tariffs would only fuel inflation, which is "exactly the opposite of what we want to achieve."
Trump Tariff Threat Mobilizes Car Shoppers
Business was robust over the weekend at Rhett Ricart's four auto dealerships around Columbus, Ohio. So was the volume of incoming phone calls, with many customers asking about tariffs.
"One out of four of the people who called in were talking about tariffs-'Does this car have a tariff on it? A Hyundai? A Kia? A Nissan?' That's what they wanted to know about," Ricart said.
Most automakers are scheduled to report their latest U.S. sales tallies on Tuesday, offering an early look at how President Trump's spate of threatened vehicle tariffs has affected car shopping.
Elon Musk's Megadeal Between X and xAI Breaks Wall Street's Rulebook
Elon Musk struck what could be considered the biggest deal of the year, and he broke all the normal rules.
Musk's splashy merger of the social-media company X and his artificial-intelligence startup xAI values the combined company at over $110 billion. That would be a blockbuster deal on Wall Street. But this one is unorthodox, even by Musk's standards, for a whole host of reasons.
The valuation was surprising and so was how the companies got there. Only one set of advisers worked for both sides, when a deal of this size would normally take armies. In short, the unusual process resulted in a megadeal few public companies could get away with.
Trump's Tariffs Could Hit the Economy More This Time, Fed's Barkin Says
Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin is seeing some evidence that the Trump administration's tariffs could have a bigger impact on the economy than the levies imposed during the president's first term.
The murky economic outlook makes it more challenging to determine the path of interest rates going forward, he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday.
Yet Barkin said he is remaining cautious on formulating economic outlooks until the tariff policies are fully fleshed out. But there are indications that the latest trade policy decisions could affect the economy more this time around.
U.S. Factory Activity Retreated in March on Tariff Concerns
U.S. manufacturing activity fell back into contraction in March, reflecting renewed concerns about cost pressures and demand in light of the uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration's trade policy.
The Institute for Supply Management said Tuesday that its purchasing managers' index of manufacturing activity fell to 49.0 in March, from 50.3 in February. That was weaker than the 49.5 from a consensus of economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.
That meant activity measured below the 50-mark that divides growth and contraction, after expansions in January and February that themselves followed 26 consecutive months of contraction.
Expected Major Events for Wednesday
00:30/INA: Mar Indonesia Manufacturing PMI
00:30/MAL: Mar Malaysia Manufacturing PMI
00:30/PHI: Mar Philippines Manufacturing PMI
07:59/AUS: Feb Building Approvals
13:00/SIN: Mar Singapore Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI)
21:00/SKA: Mar International Reserves
22:00/AUS: Mar Australia Services PMI
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This article is a text version of a Wall Street Journal newsletter published earlier today.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 01, 2025 17:03 ET (21:03 GMT)
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