U.S. stock futures were falling early Wednesday. The market is watching U.S.-China developments following the imposition of mutual tariffs between the world’s two largest economies.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were falling 150 points, or 0.3%. S&P 500 futures were dropping 0.7% and Nasdaq 100 futures were losing 1.0%.
Several Chinese government bodies announced actions targeting U.S. goods and companies on Tuesday after the U.S. formally increased tariffs on imports of all Chinese-made goods by an additional 10%.
Traders were put on edge after a U.S. official said that President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping wouldn’t speak on Tuesday. A U.S. official said Trump and Xi could speak on Wednesday.
Domestically, U.S. job openings fell to 7.6 million to end the month of December, according to the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. That was below economists’ expectations at 7.9 million. Hires and total separations were both little changed at 5.5 million, and 5.3 million, the Labor Department said.
“From a market point of view, it was in a goldilocks zone where it wasn’t showing inflationary pressures from a tight labour market, but it didn’t show a serious deterioration either,” wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Henry Allen in a research note.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note stood at 4.502% early on Wednesday, broadly flat from the previous day.
