Investing.com - Wall Street rose on Wednesday on the hope that the U.S. and China will make a trade agreement soon after Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said such a deal is "90% complete,” while U.S President Donald Trump said he could still put tariffs on the country if a deal is not reached.
The S&P 500 inched up 8 points, or 0.3%, by 9:48 AM ET (13:48 GMT). The Dow rose 59 points, or 0.2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite was up 74 points, or 0.9%.
Trump said on Fox Television that he is “very happy with where we are now. We’re taking in a fortune, and frankly [it's] not a very good thing for China, but it is a good thing for us.”
He added that he is willing to put tariffs on the remaining $350 billion of goods that are imported to the U.S. should the two countries reach an impasse.
Mnuchin’s and Trump’s comments boosted hopes that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will avoid escalating their dispute over trade when they meet on Saturday on the sidelines of the G20 summit.
"Any good news on trade is good news for the equity markets. As long as the two countries are negotiating, it's a good thing and that's what is going moving markets at this time," said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago.
Semiconductor company Micron (NASDAQ:MU) was among the top gainers after the bell, surging 11% after its earnings beat expectations. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was up 2.3%, while trade-sensitive Boeing (NYSE:BA) inched up 0.6%.
Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) jumped 3.2%, while Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) rose 1.5%.
Elsewhere, General Mills (NYSE:GIS) fell 8.2% as it reported a decline in snack purchases in North America and Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) was down 0.5%.
In commodities, crude oil jumped 2.6% to $59.44 a barrel. Gold futures slipped 0.6% to $1,410.05 a troy ounce, while the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, recovered 0.2% to 95.808.
-- Reuters contributed to this report.