NEW YORK, May 28 — Wall Street today rose at the opening bell for a second day, casting aside uncertainties about US trade relations as investors returned from a holiday weekend.
The upbeat mood came as President Donald Trump did little to resolve questions about the future of trade relations with Beijing and Tokyo.
Ten minutes into the day’s trading session, the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.5 per cent at 25,701.63.
The S&P 500 had gained 0.4 per cent, rising to 2,838.36, and the Nasdaq had added 0.7 per cent at 7,687.49.
Following Trump’s visit to Japan over the holiday weekend, Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com said today the news on trade continued to be “a cry of stalemate as opposed to checkmate.”
He added, “the ‘new’ news sounds like the ‘old’ news of prior weeks, which has already been weighing on the market.”
Signals from both Beijing and Washington yesterday suggested both sides were no nearer to a deal on trade.
The Chinese foreign ministry said any negotiations should be based on “mutual respect” while Trump told reporters in Japan that, while a deal was possible “sometime in the future,” US tariffs were poised to go up “very, very substantially.”
Meanwhile, Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters that US and Japanese views on trade were “not in perfect harmony,” suggesting that a US-Japan trade deal could be further off than the August horizon Trump suggested.
Among individual companies, Fiat Chrysler jumped eight per cent after offering to merge with France’s Renault. — AFP
