Dow Futures Surge After Trump’s ‘Very, Very Good’ China Trade Brag
President Donald Trump has claimed to have productive talks with representatives from Beijing. | AP Photo/Jim Mone
Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) futures rose in Friday’s premarket hours as President Donald Trump expressed optimism over the outcome of the ongoing US-China trade talks.
After the end of the first day of talks, Trump told reporters that ‘we had a very, very good negotiation with China’. On Friday, the US president is expected to meet with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He.
Dow futures continuing Thursday’s ascent
After going up by 0.57% on Thursday, Dow futures ticked up by 0.74% in the premarket hours of Friday at 4:49 AM. This was an increase of nearly 200 points after the index closed at 26,496 points on Thursday.
The futures prices of other US stock indices such as the Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 also rose. The S&P 500 went up by 0.82%. On the other hand, the Nasdaq Composite climbed by 1.05% a few minutes to 5:00 AM.
Is the China-US trade war over?
This is the first time in two months that the US and China are holding high-level trade talks. Vice Premier Liu has already met with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
While announcing his scheduled meeting with Liu, Trump was, however, a bit cryptic. In a Thursday tweet, Trump had suggested he was not as desperate as the Chinese in making a deal:
Big day of negotiations with China. They want to make a deal, but do I? I meet with the Vice Premier tomorrow at The White House.
Misery loves company
The US tariff hikes that are set to affect Chinese goods worth $250 billion starting next weeks are not the only source of tensions between the world’s two largest economies though.
Over the weekend a row erupted after a National Basketball Association (NBA) team official sided with Hong Kong protestors. The NBA’s attempts to assuage China, however, invited bipartisan political backlash back home.
(Watch video of NBA scandal uniting Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Republican Senator Ted Cruz)
Earlier this week, 28 Chinese entities were blacklisted by the US government for facilitating human rights abuses of religious minorities in China’s Xinjiang region. Mid-week, Apple which is one of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average index , also had to remove an app used by protestors in Hong Kong to evade the police. The app is known as the HKmap. This was after the Dow 30 company was heavily criticized by Chinese state media for allowing the app on its store.
