Us-China Trade War: Stock rally fizzles as hopes dim

NEW YORK: A rally on hopes for progress in the US-China trade war fizzled late on Friday, sending Wall Street into the red after bourses elsewhere had drifted higher earlier in the day.

A delegation of Chinese officials on Friday abruptly cancelled hastily-scheduled visits to farms Nebraska and Montana. While mid-level trade talks continued uninterrupted in Washington, the visits’ sudden cancellation spooked investors on Wall Street, sending all three major indices in the red. US stocks fell for the week after three straight weeks of gains.

Earlier in the day, reports that President Donald Trump was exempting hundreds of Chinese imports from tariffs imposed last year had lifted spirits in Frankfurt, Paris and Shanghai. The results capped a tumultuous week during which attacks on Saudi oil facilities sent oil prices skyrocketing and investors reacted ambivalently to a widely-anticipated interest rate cut by the US central bank. Central bankers also took emergency action for the first time in a decade to pump cash into the US money market to prevent the Fed from losing control of interest rates.  

Published in The Express Tribune, September 22^nd, 2019.

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