US: Stocks fall as Trump doubles down on Mexico, Canada tariffs

US STOCKS closed sharply lower on Monday (Mar 3), after President Donald Trump appeared to confirm tariffs would come into effect the following day against major trading partners Mexico and Canada.

“No room left for Mexico or for Canada,” Trump said at the White House when a reporter asked whether the levies would come into force from Tuesday.

“The tariffs, you know, they are all set, they go into effect tomorrow,” he said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 1.5 per cent to 43,191.24, while the broad-based S&P lost 1.8 per cent to finish at 5,849.72.

The tech-rich Nasdaq took a harsher tumble, closing down 2.6 per cent at 18,350.19, while the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX – colloquially known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge” – surged, hitting its highest level since December.

But despite the uncertainty, “the backdrop remains a favourable one”, Angelo Kourkafas from Edward Jones said.

Monday’s trading, he added, was consistent with the choppiness we have seen over the past three months in the financial markets.

Among individual stocks, chip titan Nvidia slumped 8.7 per cent after the Singaporean authorities announced a probe into whether servers containing its chips that ended up in Malaysia may have contravened US laws against chip sales to China.

The servers were supplied to Singapore-based companies by US firms Dell and Super Micro Computer, according to Interior Minister K Shanmugam.

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Super Micro closed down 13.0 per cent, while Dell’s shares fell 7.0 per cent. AFP