US STOCKS-Wall St set to open lower after Trump's tariff threat, slow job growth

* Trump vows to slap 10% tariff on $300 bln of Chinese
imports
* U.S. employment growth slows in July
* Pinterest jumps on FY sales forecast raise
* NetApp tumbles after slashing forecast
* Futures fall: Dow 0.33%, S&P 0.43%, Nasdaq 0.78%

(Changes comment, updates prices)
By Amy Caren Daniel
Aug 2 (Reuters) - Wall Street was set to open lower on
Friday after a sharp escalation in U.S.-China trade tensions
and tepid job growth in July reinforced fears of a global
economic slowdown.
The Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls increased by
164,000 jobs last month and the economy created 41,000 fewer
jobs in May and June than previously reported. However, July's
numbers were in line with economists' expectations. "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.
"The bigger issue for the Fed policy outlook is the tariff
issue because that implies you will see higher costs for
finished goods rather than intermediate goods that we have been
importing from China."
The report comes a day after President Donald Trump
threatened to slap a 10% tariff on $300 billion of Chinese
imports from next month, sending global markets tumbling
overnight and investors fleeing for perceived safe-havens like
U.S. Treasuries and the Japanese yen.
China on Friday said it would not be blackmailed and warned
of retaliation. Industrial bellwethers Boeing Co BA.N and Caterpillar Inc
CAT.N fell 0.5% and 0.6%, respectively, in premarket trading.
Shares of tariff-sensitive Apple Inc slid 1.1%, while
chipmakers, which get a large portion of their revenue from
China, also took a hit.
The sudden escalation in the trade rhetoric comes after the
Federal Reserve on Wednesday played down expectations of further
aggressive monetary policy actions after cutting interest rates
for the first time in a decade.
Hopes that the Fed would be more accommodative to counter
the impact of the bruising trade war had helped Wall Street's
main indexes hit record highs last month.
Fed funds futures implied traders were positioned for a 100%
chance the central bank would reduce its target range on
interest rates by a quarter point in September, CME Group's
FedWatch program showed. MMT/
At 8:43 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis 1YMcv1 were down 87 points,
or 0.33%. S&P 500 e-minis EScv1 were down 12.75 points, or
0.43% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis NQcv1 were down 61.25 points, or
0.78%.
Semiconductor stocks Micron Technology MU.O , Nvidia Corp
NVDA.O , Applied Materials Inc AMAT.O and Intel Corp INTC.O
fell between 1.3% and 3%.
The second-quarter earnings season is in full swing, with
74.4% of the 355 S&P 500 companies that have reported so far
beating profit estimates, according to Refinitiv data.
NetApp Inc NTAP.O slumped 17.9% after the data storage
equipment maker lowered its forecast for the first quarter and
2020, blaming a weakening macro environment in the latter half
of the quarter.
Pinterest Inc PINS.N jumped 15.2% after the online
scrapbook company raised its full-year sales forecast and
reported second-quarter revenue above estimates.