Wall Street is on edge about tariffs.
The Dow opened up 120 points, but lost all those gains and then some after House Speaker Paul Ryan said he was open to “more surgical and more targeted” tariffs than President Trump planned. The Dow was down more than 50 points in the late morning.
Ryan dashed investors’ hopes that he and top GOP leaders would put pressure on the Trump administration to abandon the tariffs. On Monday, Ryan came out in opposition to Trump’s 25% tariff on steel imports and a 10% tariff on aluminum. Investors worry that other countries will retaliate, sparking a global trade war.
Stocks finished Monday up 336 points.
Top American allies, including Canada and the European Union, have pledged to retaliate if Trump follows through on the plan. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that no countries will be excluded from the tariffs.
The Dow got an initial bounce Tuesday after South Korea’s national security chief Chung Eui-yong said North Korea is willing to talk to the United States about giving up its nuclear weapons.
Chung said the two Koreas would hold a summit next month, the first in more than a decade.
Growing tensions with North Korea have concerned investors.
“No question this is great to hear,” Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group, wrote in a note to clients.
— CNN’s Joshua Berlinger and Jungeun Kim contributed to this report.
