CNBC Business News Update - Market Midday: Stocks Lower, Dow Flirts With Correction Territory, Target CEO Says Prices Will Rise for Consumers 3/4/25

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

From Wall Street to Main Street, the latest on the markets and what it means for your money. Updated regularly on weekdays, featuring CNBC expert analysis and sound from top business newsmakers. Anchored by CNBC's Jessica Ettinger.

I'm Jessica Edinger CNBC. It's a sell-off again today on Wall Street. The Dow flirting with correction territory now that the Trump tariffs are in effect and retaliatory tariffs are coming from Mexico, Canada and China. The Dow down 658 points, one and a half percent being led lower by shares of Boeing. The S&P 500 index down 78 points. That's more than 1 percent. The Nasdaq now down 174 points. That's 1 percent. Checking shares of Nvidia this afternoon. They're down just a tenth of a

percent. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke saying there are no winners in a trade war. They're talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense. Canadians are reasonable and we are polite, but we will not back down from a fight. Not when our country and the wellbeing of everyone in it is at stake. At the moment, the US tariffs came into effect

in the early hours of this morning, and so did the Canadian response. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There's just vast confusion. No one knows. I mean, the automakers don't know what this is gonna mean. The packaged goods companies don't know what it's gonna mean when it comes from another country.

There's no clarity whatsoever. Anyone who thinks that there's clarity is just completely wrong. It isn't like they've said, okay, look, here's the schedule, here's the tariff. When you were in Europe and they did Brexit, you got the schedule, you got the tariff. You said, okay, I owe this. They haven't given us anything. We don't know what we owe, what we don't owe. We don't know where it's paid.

We don't know if it isn't paid. Do we owe them? Do who owes it? Does the buyer owe it? I mean, the lack of any thought about this is stunning. That's CNBC's Jim Cramer, the CEO of Target says, you, the consumer, will pay higher prices on certain things almost right away. Like fruits and vegetables, we depend on Mexico during the winter.

The consumer will likely see price increases over the next couple of days. Over the next couple of days? So those are really short supply chains. You think about all the fresh produce. We're going to try to make sure we can do everything we can to protect pricing. But a 25% tariff, those prices will go up. For things like what? Strawberries, avocados, bananas.

What are we talking about? You've got that list right. Target CEO Brian Cornell at CNBC's Becky Quick. Target, meantime, reported strong fourth quarter results, but its outlook is more cloudy and it says sales in February were soft, adding to worries about the health of the U.S. consumer. Terrors are going to be a challenge across retail sector and the most likely case is that terrorists are simply going to be inflationary. That's UBS retail analyst Michael Lasser on CNBC. Best Buy out with better than expected quarterly results but says you can expect to feel pressure from inflation and higher prices in the months

ahead. More than half of what Best Buy sells comes from either China or Mexico. While the tariffs may be helping somebody, mortgage rates have dropped to their lowest since last October for a 30-year fixed home loan. Mortgage News Daily says today's rate is 6.6 percent. Jessica Edinger, CNBC. Weeknights. I think bonds represent safety in a world where the president of noninflation has become the chief impediment to higher stock prices. CNBC.