By Wallace Witkowski, MarketWatch
Losses in Chinese tech stocks outpaced their U.S. counterparts on Thursday, with those losses holding into the close after President Donald Trump announced tariffs on tens of billions of dollars’ worth of goods from China.
On Thursday, Trump said he instructed the office of the U.S. Trade Representative to draw up a list of tariffs on Chinese products totaling at least $50 billion with an emphasis on sensitive technologies.
The subject of Chinese tariffs has rattled markets in recent days on fears that they will trigger a trade war with the world’s second-largest economy. U.S. trade groups recently urged Trump to halt the tariff plan, warning that it would trigger a chain reaction of negative consequences for the U.S. economy.
While U.S. tech stocks were having a rough day along with the broader market, as evidenced by the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund /zigman2/quotes/207444675/composite XLK +3.38% finishing down 2.6%, Chinese tech stocks were having an even worse day. In fact, following the tariff announcement, U.S. tech stocks saw a brief paring of losses, before sliding back down with the broader market.
U.S. shares of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. /zigman2/quotes/201948298/composite BABA -1.13% closed down 5.5%, Tencent Holdings Ltd. /zigman2/quotes/204605823/delayed HK:700 +2.27% shares fell 5% and Baidu Inc. /zigman2/quotes/209050136/composite BIDU +2.13% U.S. shares closed down 5.6%.
In the U.S., shares of Amazon.com Inc. /zigman2/quotes/210331248/composite AMZN +3.66% finished down 2.3%, Alphabet Inc. /zigman2/quotes/205453964/composite GOOG +4.16% /zigman2/quotes/202490156/composite GOOGL +4.20% fell 3.8% and Facebook Inc. /zigman2/quotes/205064656/composite FB +1.83% shares closed down 2.7%.
In comparison, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index /zigman2/quotes/210598365/realtime COMP +3.33% closed down 2.4%, the S&P 500 index /zigman2/quotes/210599714/realtime SPX +2.47% fell 2.5% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average /zigman2/quotes/210598065/realtime DJIA +1.76% dropped 2.9%.
Other big declines in U.S.-traded stocks of Chinese companies included Sina Corp. , which fell 6.8%, and Weibo Corp. /zigman2/quotes/206830028/composite WB +0.32% , which dropped 7%. JinkoSolar Holding Co. /zigman2/quotes/207601099/composite JKS -2.09% shares fell 8%, NetEase Inc. /zigman2/quotes/201683625/composite NTES +2.47% shares dropped 5.4% and Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. shares dropped 7.2%
While not as bad as other Chinese stocks, U.S. shares of JD.com Inc. /zigman2/quotes/205122565/composite JD +1.82% , 51job Inc. and Ctrip.com International Ltd. all finished down more than 2%.
In another sign of trade friction with China, Best Buy Co. /zigman2/quotes/205918291/composite BBY +2.36% reportedly plans to stop selling Huawei Technologies Co. phones in the U.S. Shares of Best Buy finished down 1.7%.
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