US STOCKS-Wall St retreats on slowing jobs growth, U.S.-China friction

* U.S. economy added 1.76 mln jobs in July - report
* Congress to continue talks on coronavirus relief bill
* Trump moves to ban WeChat, TikTok, amps up friction with
Beijing
* Indexes off: Dow 0.27%, S&P 0.07%, Nasdaq 0.17%

(Adds comments; updates prices)
By Sagarika Jaisinghani and Ambar Warrick
Aug 7 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 retreated from a near
six-month high in choppy trading on Friday with data showing a
sharp slowdown in U.S. employment growth, while U.S.-China
tensions escalated with President Donald Trump's move to ban
WeChat and TikTok.
With the benchmark index now about 1% below its record high,
gains were led by utilities .SPLRCU , communication services
.SPLRCL and real estate .SPLRCR stocks. Energy .SPNY was
among the biggest decliners in morning trading.
The Labor Department's closely watched report showed nonfarm
payrolls increased 1.76 million in July. While that was better
than the 1.6 million jobs economists surveyed by Reuters had
forecast, it was much lower than the record 4.8 million in June.
"Expectations of a negative jobs print had been hanging over
investors for the past month, preventing them from fully
enjoying the run of strong economic data," said Seema Shah,
chief strategist at Principal Global Investors in London.
"In fact, it was better than expected and means a record
high level for the S&P 500 index is potentially in grasp."
Underlining the disconnect between U.S. economic health and
a stimulus-led rally on Wall Street, the Nasdaq closed Thursday
above 11,000 for the first time as traders counted on Congress
to agree on another coronavirus relief package.
However, Democrats and Trump's top aides have so far failed
to make substantial progress, with differences partly centered
around continuing an extra $600-per-week in unemployment
benefits. Meanwhile, Trump late on Thursday unveiled sweeping bans on
U.S. transactions with the Chinese owners of messaging app
WeChat and video-sharing app TikTok. In response, China said the
companies complied with U.S. laws and warned Washington would
have to "bear the consequences" of its action. New York-listed Tencent Music Entertainment Group TME.N ,
which was spun off from WeChat-owner Tencent Holdings Ltd
0700.HK in 2018, fell 3.3%, while Facebook Inc FB.O jumped
3.8%.
Microsoft Corp MSFT.O , which is seeking to buy TikTok's
U.S. operations, was down-0.9%. U.S.-listed Chinese stocks such
as Baidu Inc BIDU.O , Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA.N and
JD.com Inc JD.O fell between 1.9% and 4.1%.
At 11:34 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI
was down 75.11 points, or 0.27%, at 27,311.87, the S&P 500
.SPX was down 2.23 points, or 0.07%, at 3,346.93, and the
Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was down 19.23 points, or 0.17%, at
11,088.84.
With the second-quarter corporate earnings season largely
over, about 82% of S&P 500 companies that have reported so far
have beaten dramatically lowered estimates, with earnings on
average coming in 22.5% above expectations, the highest on
record.
T-Mobile US Inc TMUS.O jumped 8.1% as it added
more-than-expected monthly phone subscribers and said it had
overtaken rival AT&T Inc T.N as the second-largest U.S.
wireless provider. AT&T dipped 0.6%. Advancing issues nearly matched decliners on the NYSE and
outnumbered decliners 1.27-to-1 on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded 28 new 52-week highs and no new low,
while the Nasdaq recorded 97 new highs and six new lows.