Amid weeks of financial market ups and downs over tariffs, a sense of investor calm began to emerge early Wednesday. Even so, the electronics industry remained cautious.
A big reason for the apparent change: President Trump said Tuesday that tariffs on goods from China will “come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.” He spoke during a White House news conference on Tuesday.
Separately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a private meeting with investors on Tuesday, called the high tariffs on China, now 145%, unsustainable and that he expected a “de-escalation” in the trade war with China. The comments were reported by the Associated Press.
Markets started the week Monday in the negative, but improved broadly on the Tuesday comments by Trump and Bessent. Technology analysts welcomed the market uptick, but were cautious about what the long-term tariff situation will be, especially given Trump’s continued insistence on using tariffs to prompt companies to move manufacturing to the US.
“We still don’t know what to expect,” one industry source told Fierce early Wednesday.
Nvidia has been a case study of market impacts on its stock. When Trump announced a broad set of tariffs on April 2, Nvidia saw its share value of $110 decline to $94 on April 4. Then the value improved again two weeks later, only to drop back to nearly $99 on Tuesday. For the past month, Nvidia shares have lost 18% of their value. Year-to-date, Nvidia is down 28%.
Even so, Nvidia’s share price improved in pre-market trading Wednesday by more than 5% on the comments from Trump and Bessent. And Apple was up by 3% pre-market as well. The overall Nasdaq was up 2.7%, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Sector index of chip stocks was also up 2.1%.
Intel will report earnings on Thursday, which might include comments by recently-installed CEO Lip-Bu Tan on tariffs and their impact on the fragile state of his company. It will be his first earnings call since assuming the CEO post, amid a major transition that has included losses and layoffs.