A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on April 2, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
U.S. stocks fell in after hours trading as President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs of a minimum 10%, but even higher for some countries.
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500, lost about 2%. The Invesco QQQ ETF, which corresponds to the Nasdaq-100 Index, shed 3.3%. The SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (DIA) lost 1%.
Shares of companies that are big importers were hit Wednesday evening. Nike lost 6%. General Motors tumbled 3%. Shares of hard hit stocks over the past month as tariff fears swirled continued falling. Nvidia and Tesla were each off about 3%.
The White House unveiled a baseline tariff rate of 10% on all countries that goes into effect April 5. Even bigger duties will be charged against countries in coming days that levy higher rates on the U.S.
“We will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us,” said Trump in a press conference from the White House Rose Garden. “So, the tariffs will be not a full reciprocal.”
That halved figure includes “the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers and other forms of cheating,” he said.
What’s likely spooking traders is that these rates will end up being much higher than expected for many nations. For example, the effective tariff rate for China will now be 54%. Traders had hoped a 10% rate would be a universally applied cap, not a starting baseline rate.
“What was delivered was as haphazard as anything this administration has done to date, and the level of complication on top of the ultimate level of new tariffs is worse than had been feared and not yet priced into the market,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth Management.
Wednesday saw further volatility roil markets as tensions ran high ahead of Trump’s announcement, but stocks ultimately ended the session in the green on hopes maybe the tariff would be less stringent than feared. The S&P 500 closed 0.7% higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 235 points, or 0.6%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 0.9%.
The broad-based S&P 500 was down for five out of the past six weeks because of the heightened uncertainty caused by Trump’s haphazard tariff announcements, which have been rolling out since February. Ongoing tensions with key U.S. global trading partners has started to show up in some sluggish economic data, which further pressured stocks by heightening recession fears.
The S&P 500 crossed briefly again into correction territory on Monday, meaning a 10% slide from its last high, and saw its worst monthly percentage drop since December 2022 in March. The index first slipped into a correction in mid-March.
In February, Trump had announced tariffs of 25% on Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% on China, quickly prompting retaliatory tariffs. He also announced a 25% import tariff on steel and aluminum in February and announced a plan in March to impose 25% tariffs on automobiles and parts now set to take effect on Thursday.
Trump said on Wednesday previously announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico will remain and a reciprocal rate will not be added to those.
“More severe tariff rates are currently rocking share prices, but Trump is still negotiating,” said Jeff Kilburg of KKM Financial.
