China announces retaliatory tariffs, U.S. unemployment rises: Morning Buzz

The major averages were sharply lower again near noon, continuing yesterday’s post-tariff slide. China has retaliated with additional tariffs of 34% on all U.S. goods a day after the Trump administration imposed its own sweeping levies. Meanwhile, the latest U.S. jobs data show that nonfarm payrolls rose by a higher-than-forecast 228,000 jobs, though the unemployment rate has ticked higher.

Looking to commodities, oil prices are sharply lower due to a planned output increase promised by OPEC+ as well as concerns about what the trade war may due to global economic growth. Additionally, gold prices are falling nearly 2% to below $3,100.

Get caught up quickly on the top news and calls moving stocks with these five Top Five lists.

1. STOCK NEWS:

2. WALL STREET CALLS:

• Booking Holdings (BKNG) upgraded to Buy at BTIG ahead of expected Q1 beat

• Nordstrom (JWN) downgraded to Sell at Citi

• JPMorgan cut Tesla (TSLA) estimates on “unprecedented brand damage”

• Dow Inc. (DOW) downgraded to Neutral at JPMorgan

• BTIG downgraded Upwork (UPWK) with fundamentals “primed to take another leg down”

3. AROUND THE WEB:

• Ford (F) is extending its employee discounts to all new car buyers, WSJ reports

• Stellantis (STLA) plans to extend its employee-discount program to the public on most new models, WSJ says

• Nio (NIO) has commenced a new round of layoffs in Europe in an effort to lower operational costs by 25% at a global scale, EV reports

• Meta’s (META) latest large language model for AI, Llama 4, is running behind schedule as the company has pushed back the release date of Llama 4 at least twice and could do so again, The Information says

• Oracle (ORCL) told customers a hacker broke into a computer system and stole old client log-in credentials, Bloomberg reports

4. MOVERS:

• GameStop (GME) increases after announcing CEO Ryan Cohen bought 500K shares

• BCE (BCE) gains in New York after National Bank upgraded the stock to Outperform

• Toyota (TM) falls after Nikkei Asia said the company will help cover suppliers’ higher costs tied to tariffs

• DuPont China (DD) lower after China Daily reported China’s State Administration for Market Regulation has launched a probe into the company for suspected monopolistic practices

• Renovaro (RENB) slips after Predictive Oncology (POAI) terminated their merger transaction