Investing.com – Wall Street was slightly lower on Friday as the threat of fresh trade tariffs and a tepid jobs report weighed on investors.
The U.S. economy added just 164,000 jobs in July, compared to 193,000 in June, which could give the Federal Reserve reason to to cut interest rates again in September.
"Job numbers were not too far from expected, it shows the trend is slowing down. It's consistent with another rate cut either in September or October," said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Increasing trade tariffs were also of concern to investors, as President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he will levy tariffs by 10% on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, effectively broadening the scope of tariffs to cover all U.S. imports from China. Beijing warned it would retaliate.
The Dow slumped 150 points or 0.6% by 9:52 AM ET (13:52 GMT), while the S&P 500 was down 19 points or 0.7% and the Nasdaq composite lost 71 points or 0.9%.
Technology stocks were dragged down, with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) falling 1.7%, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) down 1% and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) dipping 1.6%.
Elsewhere, Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) rose 0.4%, after its earnings beat analyst expectations thanks to big ramp up of production in the Texas shale basins, while Restaurant Brands (NYSE:QSR) surged 3.2% after reporting strong results due to increased traffic at Burger King.
Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) lost 1%, while JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) inched down 0.2%.
In commodities, crude oil jumped 3.2% to $55.66 a barrel, although the recovery is still barely half of Thursday's loss, while gold futures rose 1.3% to $1,451.95 a troy ounce. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, slumped 0.2% to 97.982.
-Reuters contributed to this report