NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks rose early Thursday, extending an upward run as markets shrugged off a spate of fresh US tariff increases that went into effect at midnight.
Under a White House policy that had been telegraphed, import duties rose from 10 percent to levels between 15 percent and 41 percent for a list of trading partners.
About 20 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4 percent at 44,361.65.
The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 0.5 percent to 6,379.11, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.9 percent to 21,357.96, above its all-time closing record.
Wall Street boosted by earnings, Fed rate cut hopes
In the last day alone, US President Donald Trump has also announced higher tariffs on India and 100-percent levy on semiconductor companies that don’t build in the United States.
But investors have been embracing a view that the US economy remains on solid footing and that the impact of levies has not been as bad as feared.
“The chip tariffs certainly sound terrible on the headline,” said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers. “But there’s so many exemptions … so it’s perceived to be having so many loopholes that it’s not bad news.”
Investor mood “has been relentlessly positive, interpreting the news flow like a glass half-full day,” Sosnick said.
The early gains on Wall Street came as the Bank of England cut its key interest rate by a quarter point to four percent, the lowest level in 2.5 years.
Among individual companies, Intel dropped 1.3 percent as Trump called on the chipmaker’s CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, to resign after a Republican Senator raised national security concerns over his links to firms in China.
Eli Lilly plunged 13.1 percent despite reporting a near-doubling of profits on higher revenues.
The drugmaker also released results of clinical testing of a weight loss pill that looked positive “on the surface,” but indicated less impact than candidates by other companies, said Briefing.com.
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