NEW YORK, March 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. stocks ended lower on Thursday after U.S. President Trump moved forward with substantial new tariffs on auto imports.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 155.09 points, or 0.37 percent, to 42,299.7. The S&P 500 fell 18.89 points, or 0.33 percent, to 5,693.31, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 94.98 points, or 0.53 percent, to 17,804.03.
Eight of the 11 primary S&P 500 sectors closed lower, with energy and communication services leading the losses, down 0.85 percent and 0.84 percent, respectively. Consumer staples and health care were the only gainers, rising 1.00 percent and 0.19 percent, respectively.
On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order imposing a 25 percent tariff on foreign-made automobiles, set to take effect in early April, the same week that reciprocal tariffs are scheduled to begin.
Market concerns deepened after Trump warned on Thursday that even higher tariffs would be imposed on Canada and the EU if they collaborated to "do economic harm" to the United States. Both trading partners have strongly opposed the new measures.
"I think it's just the almost scattershot way that trade policies being implemented that maybe has investors on edge ... just the approach DOGE has taken worries folks that something may fall through the cracks. It's not so much the policy, it's the way they're going about it," said Sameer Samana, Wells Fargo Investment Institute senior global market strategist.
"If in the next couple weeks we have a trade and tariff framework in place, and companies and consumers can start to make decisions again with some clarity, it's possible that this was all a near-term speed bump and we start to get kind of back on track," he added.
The U.S. economy expanded at a slightly stronger pace in the final quarter of 2024 than initially reported, according to the Commerce Department on Thursday.
The department revised fourth-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth to an annualized rate of 2.4 percent, up from the previously estimated 2.3 percent. This followed a 3.1 percent expansion in the third quarter.
Among chip stocks, Nvidia fell more than 2 percent, while Broadcom and AMD dropped over 4 and 3 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, shares of Alibaba gained 2.59 percent on Thursday after the company launched its latest AI model in its "Qwen series."
