Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 11, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Stocks slid Thursday as U.S. President Donald Trump threatened setting unilateral tariffs on trading partners in two weeks.
The S&P 500 lost 0.1%, while the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was also lower by 191 points, or 0.5%.
Dow component Boeing shed 4% after an Air India Dreamliner 787 crashed after takeoff with 242 passengers on board. Shares of Oracle surged 11% after the company reported fiscal fourth-quarter results that beat on the top and bottom lines and indicated more cloud growth ahead.
Stocks were weaker even as investors got another batch of data hinting at a solid economy. The May producer price index, a measure of final demand prices in the U.S. economy, rose just 0.1% for the month after decreasing 0.2% in April. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a 0.2% increase for last month.
Wall Street awaits further developments on trade policy, especially between the U.S. and China, as talks between the two countries have been a focal point this week. Trump said Wednesday he would be willing to extend a July 8 deadline for finishing trade talks with countries before higher U.S. levies take effect, but that the extensions may not be necessary.
“I would, but I don’t think we’re going to have that necessity. We made a great deal with China,” Trump told reporters. “We’re dealing with Japan, we’re dealing with South Korea. We’re dealing with a lot of them. So we’re going to be sending letters out, in about a week and a half, two weeks, to countries, telling them what the deal is, like I did with EU.”
U.S. and Chinese officials reached a framework for future talks in London after two days of discussion this week, but the vague deal outline still awaits approval from Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two countries did agree to ease some restrictions around rare earth metals and foreign students.
The market is coming off of a losing session on Wednesday, as the S&P 500 snapped its three-day win streak along with the Nasdaq Composite. But the moves were slight. While the day’s losses put the S&P 500 a bit further away from reaching a new record high, the index is just more than 2% below its late February record. The previous session’s losses come after consumer prices rose less than expected in May.
“I don’t think the market has a lot of faith that we’re not going to see at least a little bit higher inflation,” Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” Wednesday.
“With all the things going on, the economy slowing, earnings growth likely to slow, lots of trade negotiations to still work through, is there really a good reason to take a run at the record high? I don’t know about that. It makes a lot of sense to me that we’d be choppy and maybe see a little downside here,” Wren added.