Investing.com - U.S. futures tumbled on Tuesday after President Donald Trump said that a trade deal with China may have to wait until after next year’s election.
"In some ways, I like the idea of waiting until after the election for the China deal, but they want to make a deal now and we will see whether or not the deal is going to be right," Trump told reporters in London.
The news was a sharp change in tone from assurances over the last two weeks that the two countries had a "consensus" on the major points of a 'phase-1' deal. Adding to the sour mood, The Global Times reported that China will release a blacklist of "unreliable entities" that appears set to include U.S. companies, in what would be a direct retaliation to Trump's signing of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act last week.
Tensions also rose with Europe, after France said it would retaliate if the White House follows through on additional tariffs on French imports. The Trump administration is considering the tariffs in response to France’s digital services tax. ING analysts said it's not clear whether Trump has the legal authority to impose the tariffs, after missing a six-month deadline to do so in November.
Nasdaq 100 fell 30 points or 0.4% by 6:40 AM ET (11:40 GMT), while Dow futures were down 89 points or 0.3% and S&P 500 Futures slumped 8 points or 0.3%.
Stocks sensitive to trade news were lower in premarket trade, with Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) falling 0.8%, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) down 1.7% and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) slipping 1.4%.
Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) fell 1.8% after analyst Andy Hargreaves at KeyBanc Capital said that its customer acquisition costs will increase due to increasing competition.
Elsewhere, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) inched up 0.8% and United States Steel Corporation (NYSE:X) continued to rise, gaining 0.6% on Trump’s decision on Monday to re-introduce tariffs on steel imports from Brazil and Argentina.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.4% to $1,474.95 a troy ounce, while the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was flat at 97.760. Crude oil futures rose 0.3% to $56.11 a barrel.