US stocks sink again as more companies detail damage they’re taking because of Trump’s trade war
U.S. stocks closed lower Tuesday as quarterly results show more companies are scrubbing their forecasts for upcoming profits because of uncertainty created by President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The S&P 500 fell 0.8%, its second drop after breaking a nine-day winning streak, its longest such run in more than 20 years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.9%, and the Nasdaq composite finished 0.9% lower.
Palantir Technologies was one of the heaviest weights on the market as it sank 12%. The company, which offers an AI platform for customers, dropped even though it reported a profit for the latest quarter that met analysts’ expectations and raised its forecast for revenue over the full year.
AI-related companies have been finding it more difficult recently to convince investors to support their stocks after they’ve already shot so high. Palantir’s stock’s price remains near $110, when it was sitting at only $20 less than a year ago.
The return to Earth for AI stocks is happening as Trump’s tariffs change the economic landscape for other companies.
Clorox CEO Linda Rendle said her company saw changes in shopping behavior during the first three months of the year, for example, that led to lower revenue. The company reported both weaker revenue and profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Clorox expects the slowdowns to continue in the current quarter, and its stock fell 2.4%.
Mattel, meanwhile, said it’s “pausing” its financial forecasts for 2025, in part because the “evolving U.S. tariff landscape” is making it difficult to predict how much U.S. shoppers will spend over the holiday season and the rest of this year.
The toymaker closed 2.8% higher after also reporting better results for the latest quarter than analysts feared.
Ford Motor said it’s expecting to take a $1.5 billion hit this year because of tariffs. The automaker also said it’s canceling financial forecasts for the full year because of “tariff-related uncertainty.” The stock rose 2.7%.
They’re the latest companies to join a lengthening list that have yanked their forecasts for the year given uncertainty about what Trump’s on-again, off-again rollout of tariffs will do to the economy. The hope is that Trump will relent on some of his tariffs after reaching trade deals with other countries. Without them, many investors expect the economy to fall into a recession.
Regardless, all the will-he-won’t-he uncertainty around tariffs has already made U.S. households more pessimistic about the economy and could affect their long-term plans for purchases. That uncertainty has helped fuel a surge in imports ahead of potentially more severe tariffs ahead.
The U.S. trade deficit soared to a record $140.5 billion in March as consumers and businesses alike tried to get ahead of tariffs that went into effect in April and others that have been postponed until July. That follows another update from last week showing that the U.S. economy shrank at a 0.3% annual pace during the first quarter of the year because of a surge in imports.