Stocks rose on Thursday, marking a third consecutive daily rally as investors hope for an easing of President Trump’s trade wars and weigh comments from a Federal Reserve official on tariffs’ economic impacts.
The S&P 500 gained 2 percent after stalling in early trading. The index has seesawed this week: Monday saw a sharp sell-off, followed by three days of sizable gains after President Trump on Tuesday said that he was prepared to be “very nice” in trade negotiations with China.
The rally then paused after officials in China said they were not holding talks with the United States about easing trade tensions. But indexes continued to swing on scraps of information about tariffs and monetary policy, in the absence of concrete developments about the escalating global trade war.
On Thursday, Christopher Waller, a Fed governor, told Bloomberg that the economic hit from Mr. Trump’s tariffs would take time to show up in the data, suggesting that the central bank was not poised to lower interest rates soon. But when asked what would prompt him to favor a rate cut, Mr. Waller said: “If I saw enough movement in the unemployment rate to make me think that things were going bad, or growth prospects started tanking, or consumer spending started really going down, then I’d be ready to go.”
He Yadong, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce, said on Thursday that “there are currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States, and any claims about progress in China-U.S. economic and trade negotiations are baseless rumors without factual evidence.”
A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guo Jiakun, reiterated China’s stance, which is that the tariff war was started by the United States and that China would only engage in talks under certain conditions. “China’s attitude is consistent and clear: If you want to fight, we will fight to the end; if you want to talk, the door is open,” he said.