U.S. Stock Index Futures Drop After Trump China Tariffs Kick In

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. stock index futures tumbled in Asia on Monday after the Trump administration slapped tariffs on roughly $110 billion in Chinese imports on Sunday.

S&P 500 Index futures expiring in September slid as much as 1.1%, before paring loss to 0.6% as of 7:30 a.m. in Tokyo, while contracts fell 0.9% on the Nasdaq 100 and dropped 0.5% on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The underlying S&P 500 gained 0.1% on Friday. The U.S. stock market will be closed on Monday for Labor Day.

“The fact that those tariffs would be effective during the weekend was already expected, and it’s not news,” Lee Jae-mahn, strategist at Hana Financial Investment, said by phone from Seoul. “Still, U.S. stocks can be hit by this, considering the levels of its equity indexes are much higher than other markets. Markets like Asia won’t be that affected as they are already very battered.”

The 15% U.S. duty hit Chinese consumer goods ranging from footwear and apparel to home textiles and certain technology products like the Apple Watch. A separate batch of about $160 billion in Chinese goods -- including laptops and cellphones -- will be hit with 15% tariffs on Dec. 15.

China’s retaliation took effect as of 12:01 p.m. Sunday in Beijing, with higher tariffs being rolled out in stages on a total of about $75 billion of U.S. goods.

To contact the reporters on this story: Naoto Hosoda in Tokyo at nhosoda@bloomberg.net;Heejin Kim in Seoul at hkim579@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lianting Tu at ltu4@bloomberg.net, Kurt Schussler

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.