NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes drifted closer to their records on Monday, coming off their stellar May, which was Wall Street’s best month since 2023.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4% after erasing an early loss from the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 35 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.7%.
Indexes had been down close to 1% in the morning following some discouraging updates on U.S. manufacturing. President Donald Trump has been warning that U.S. businesses and households could feel some pain as he tries to use tariffs to bring more manufacturing jobs back to the country, and their on-and-off rollout has created lots of uncertainty.
But stocks rallied back as the day progressed, and gains for a few influential stocks helped lift the S&P 500 even though more stocks within it fell than rose. Nvidia climbed 1.7%, and Meta Platforms rose 3.6%, for example.
Some of Monday’s strongest action was in the oil market, where the price of crude spurted more than 3%. The countries in the OPEC+ alliance decided to increase their production again, a move that often pushes crude prices down because it puts more on the market, but analysts said investors were widely expecting it.
The past weekend’s attacks by Ukraine in Russia, meanwhile, helped to raise uncertainty about the flow of oil and gas around the world.
Monday’s market moves also came after more harsh rhetoric crossed between the world’s two largest economies, just a few weeks after the United States and China had agreed to pause many of their tariffs that had threatened to drag the economy into a recession.
China blasted the United States for moves that it said hurt China’s interests, including issuing AI chip export control guidelines, stopping the sale of chip design software to China and planning to revoke Chinese student visas.
“These practices seriously violate the consensus” reached during trade discussions in Geneva last month, the Commerce Ministry said in a statement. That followed President Donald Trump’s accusation at the end of last week, where he said China was not living up to its end of the agreement that paused their tariffs against each other.
Hopes for lower tariffs because of potential trade deals between Trump and other countries were the main reasons for Wall Street’s big rally last month, which brought the S&P 500 back within 3.8% of its all-time high. The index had dropped roughly 20% below the mark in April.
But Trump on Friday told Pennsylvania steelworkers he’s doubling the tariff on steel imports to 50% to protect their industry, a dramatic increase that could further push up prices for a metal used to make housing, autos and other goods. That helped stocks of U.S. steelmakers climb. Nucor jumped 10.1%, and Steel Dynamics rallied 10.3%.
