The US markets extended their losses and settled in red territory on Friday as investors overlooked a jobs report in line with expectations and focused on threats by President Trump to extend tariffs to essentially all Chinese imports. The President Donald Trump announced plans to impose a 10 percent tariff on the remaining $300 billion worth of Chinese imports. Trump revealed the plan shortly after US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wrapped up the latest round of trade talks in Shanghai. The president accused China of failing to follow through on pledges to buy large quantities of US agricultural products and stop the sale of Fentanyl to the US. The new tariffs announced by Trump represent the latest escalation in the trade war between the US and China, which has been a dark cloud over the global economy for over a year.
Besides, the Labor Department report showed that US job growth slowed in the month of July but came in line with economist estimates. The report said non-farm payroll employment climbed by 164,000 jobs in July after jumping by a downwardly revised 193,000 jobs in June. Street had expected employment to increase by 164,000 jobs compared to the spike of 224,000 jobs originally reported for the previous month. The Labor Department also said the unemployment rate held at 3.7 percent in July, unchanged from June and in line with market participants estimates.
Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 98.41 points or 0.37 percent to 26485.01, Nasdaq slipped 107.05 points or 1.32 percent to 8004.07 and S&P 500 was down by 21.51 points or 0.73 percent to 2932.05.
