Wall Street sank more than 1 percent and the benchmark S&P 500 hit a near one-month low on Tuesday as comments from President Donald Trump stoked fears of a significant delay in resolving a bruising trade dispute with China.
This story by Arjun Panchadar originally appeared in Reuters.
Speaking to reporters in London, Trump raised the possibility of the trade deal being delayed until after the U.S. presidential elections in November 2020.
“I have no deadline, no. In some ways I think it’s better to wait until after the election with China,” Trump said ahead of a meeting of NATO leaders.
Tuesday’s declines have pulled the main U.S. stock indexes firmly away from record highs hit last month on hopes that the world’s top two economies will hammer out a “phase one” trade deal soon.
The latest fallout from the trade war on the domestic economy was weak factory activity data on Monday.
At 10:00 a.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 364.25 points, or 1.31 percent, at 27,418.79, the S&P 500 was down 34.65 points, or 1.11 percent, at 3,079.22 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 99.85 points, or 1.17 percent, at 8,468.14.
