Closing post: Trump says tariffs on chips coming in next two weeks
Time to wrap up…
Donald Trump will announce tariffs on imports of semiconductors and steel in the coming weeks, he told reporters aboard Air Force One while travelling to Alaska for his meeting with Vladimir Putin.
The US president said:
I’ll be setting tariffs next week and the week after on steel and on, I would say, chips…I’m going to have a rate that is going to be lower at the beginning - that gives them a chance to come in and build - and very high after a certain period of time.
Shares in Intel jumped by as much as 8.9% in early trading on Friday, also boosted by a report that the Trump administration is considering taking a stake in the chipmaker.
Meanwhile in the UK, the FTSE 100 briefly surpassed its intraday high this morning, although it is now trading down 0.3% at 9,150.90 points.
The owner of Kingsmill also agreed to buy its rival bakery business Hovis today, in a deal that could make the biggest bread brand in the country if it gets the green light from regulators.
Elsewhere Shein, the online fast-fashion retailer founded in China, increased sales in the UK by about a third to more than £2bn last year, overtaking the British rival Boohoo and closing in on Asos.
It is a slow open for Wall Street, with the blue chip S&P 500 index slipping by 0.1% in early trading. It hit an all-time high earlier this week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, another key US stock index, also hit an all-time intraday high, briefly surpassing its previous peak of 45,073.63 points. It was helped by a big jump in UnitedHealth Group shares, which are up by more than 9%, after it emerged that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has invested in the insurer. The Dow is now at 45,076.20 points.
