A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on April 2, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
U.S. stock futures cratered as President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs of at least 10% and even higher for some countries, raising the risks of a global trade war that hits the already sputtering U.S. economy.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1,143 points, or 2.7%. S&P 500 futures dropped 3.9%. Nasdaq-100 futures lost 4.7%.
Shares of multinational companies tumbled in extended trading. Nike lost 7% and Apple dropped 6%. Shares of big sellers of imported goods were among the hardest hit. Five Below lost 11% and Gap plunged 12%. Tech shares dropped in an overall risk-off mood, with Nvidia off 4% and Tesla down 5%.
The White House unveiled a baseline tariff rate of 10% on all countries that goes into effect April 5. Even bigger duties against countries that levy higher rates on the U.S. will be charged in coming days, according to the administration.
“We will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us,” said Trump in a press conference from the White House Rose Garden. “So, the tariffs will be not a full reciprocal.”
That halved figure includes “the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers and other forms of cheating,” he said.
What’s likely spooking traders is that these rates will end up being much higher than expected for many nations. For example, the effective tariff rate for China will now be 54% when accounting for the new reciprocal rate and duties already levied against the country, the White House clarified to CNBC. Traders had hoped a 10%-to-20% rate would be a universally applied cap, not a minimum starting point.
“What was delivered was as haphazard as anything this administration has done to date, and the level of complication on top of the ultimate level of new tariffs is worse than had been feared and not yet priced into the market,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth Management.
The S&P 500 rose for a third day Wednesday on hopes Trump would not announce a severe tariff plan on the risk it would tip the economy into a slowdown and raise already sticky inflation.
The benchmark has been hit hard since late February with it falling into correction territory — or 10% down from its record — because of the heightened uncertainty caused by Trump’s ongoing tariff announcements. This uncertainty has started to show up in some sluggish economic data, which further pressured stocks by heightening recession fears.
“If he would have come in with just the 10%, I think the markets would probably be up quite a bit right now,” said Larry Tentarelli, chief technical strategist at the Blue Chip Trend Report. “But because the tariffs came in bigger than many expected, I think what that does is it creates more downside volatility right now.”
Extrapolating the losses in after hours Wednesday trading, the S&P 500 is on course to fall back into a correction during regular hours trading Thursday.
