Wall St Tumbles Amid Tariff Whiplash

Next up for Wall Street is a report coming Friday from the US Labor Department on how many workers US employers hired last month. A solid job market so far, along with the solid spending by US households that it's allowed, have been linchpins in preventing a recession

New York: Wall Street's sell-off kicked back into gear on Thursday, and a US stock market rattled by the whiplash created by President Donald Trump's tariffs and uncertainty about the economy fell sharply.The S&P 500 tumbled 1.8 per cent to resume its slide after a mini-recovery from the prior day clawed back some of its sharp drop over recent weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 427 points, or 1 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite sank 2.6 per cent to finish more than 10 per cent below its record set in December.

Stocks fell even though President Trump on Thursday offered a one-month reprieve from his 25 per cent tariffs on many goods imported from Mexico and Canada. That's unlike the bounce stocks got the prior day from his giving a one-month exemption specifically for automakers. All the moves keep hope alive that Trump may be using tariffs as just a tool for negotiations rather than as a permanent policy and that he may ultimately avoid a worst-case trade war that grinds down economies and sends inflation higher.

But Trump is still pressing ahead with other tariffs scheduled to take effect April 2. And the growing pile of dizzying back-and-forth moves on tariffs is only amping up the uncertainty. It was just on Monday that Trump said there was “no room” left for negotiations that could lower the tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which took effect Tuesday.