Dow jumps 598 points as Trump eases off on tariff plans

Stocks surged on Monday as Donald Trump said he may scale back tariffs set to be unveiled on April. 2. The Nasdaq Composite index gained 2.3%, as all Magnificent 7 stocks surged, the S&P 500 gained 1.8%, and the Dow Jones industrial average gained 1.4%, or almost 600 points.
The reciprocal tariffs may stop short of his pledge to equalize with levels charged by foreign countries on U.S. goods, the president told reporters, according to the Wall Street Journal. The administration may also delay duties on particular lines of goods, including autos, lumber, drugs and chips.
This apparent moderation came even as Trump announced a 25% additional tariff on all countries that import oil from Venezuela. China is the biggest foreign buyer of Venezuelan oil. India, Cuba and several European countries are also customers.
Big tech was a big beneficiary of Monday’s rally, with Tesla (TSLA) stock adding almost 12%, cutting its year-to-date decline to about 27%. The increases for the rest of the Mag 7 shares were 3.7% for Meta (META), 3.6% for Amazon (AMZN), 3.2% for Nvidia (NVDA), 2.2% for Google (GOOGL), 1.1% for Apple (AAPL), and 0.5% for Microsoft (MSFT).
BYD’s (BYDDY) stock jumped almost 5.4% in New York after the Chinese electric vehicle maker’s 2024 earnings topped expectations, overtaking Tesla in revenue. Its revenue jumped 29% from 2023 to 777 billion yuan ($107 billion), compared with $97.7 billion for its chief U.S. rival.
Tesla still leads in profit, however, at $7.1 billion, compared with its rival’s $5.6 billion. BYD’s profit gained 34% year-over-year, topping the StreetAccount consensus estimate, with its net margin widening to 5.2% from 5.0%.
Crypto stocks also got buoyed by the shift into riskier assets, also reflected in increased token prices. MicroStrategy (MSTR) surged 10% after saying it’d boosted its bitcoin holdings to more than 500,000. Coinbase (COIN), Robinhood (HOOD) and Hut 8 (HUT) all also advanced.
Not all the news was good today: Manufacturing shrank again this month, after a brief reprieve in January and February, according to the flash manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for March. The entire economy is probably slowing, Citi (C) economists wrote.
—With reporting by William Gavin, Britney Nguyen, and Harri Weber