US stock futures edged lower on Tuesday as investors braced for more tariff policy shifts from President Donald Trump, and focus turned to inflation with testimony from Federal Chair Jerome Powell on deck.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) moved 0.2% lower, while S&P 500 futures (ES=F) dropped 0.3%. Contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) pulled back roughly 0.5%, after a winning day on Wall Street.
The tone is cautious in the wait for Trump to reveal his plan for universal like-for-like tariffs, promised for announcement midweek. The president on Monday imposed 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports from March 4, putting further pressure on top trading partners Canada and Mexico.
Investors are trying to gauge how far Trump’s tariff threats will translate into action, as they worry about the impact of a trade war on corporate earnings, the global economy, and on inflation in particular. Gold (GC=F) set a fresh record as investors sought shelter from the uncertainty, before retreating on Tuesday.
Amid those concerns, markets are looking to Powell’s two-day testimony in Congress, starting Tuesday in the Senate, for any hint to the Fed’s thinking how the tariffs could affect price pressures. Meanwhile, the countdown is on for January’s Consumer Price Index reading on Wednesday and its wholesale counterpart on Thursday, as inflation stays persistent.
On the earnings front, Coca-Cola (KO) shares rose 3% as it beat estimates for fourth quarter profit and revenue as soda demand stayed robust amid price rises. But Shopify’s (SHOP) stock tumbled 7% after the e-commerce company’s downbeat first quarter profit forecast outweighed better-than-expected holiday sales.
Meanwhile, an Elon Musk-led bid to buy OpenAI captured Wall Street’s attention as AI spending fears continue to weigh on the Magnificent Seven. The AI nonprofit’s CEO Sam Altman shot down the unsolicited offer of $97.4 billion, a significant undershoot of its valuation.
Elsewhere in tech, Meta (META) began to lay off workers as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge to cut thousands of jobs in a pivot to finding AI talent.
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