New York (AFP)

Wall Street was down on Friday, Donald Trump undermining the prospects of the upcoming signing of a trade agreement between the United States and China.

Its flagship index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, lost 0.51% to 26,243.71 points, around 14:10.

The Nasdaq, with strong technological color, fell by 0.92%, to 7,065.58 points, and the expanded S & P 500 index by 0.65%, to 2,919.04 points.

Taking advantage of a relative lull on the Sino-US front, the New York Stock Exchange rebounded Thursday after a difficult start to the week: the Dow Jones had taken 1.43% and the Nasdaq 2.24%.

But Donald Trump's most recent remarks were likely to revive the fears of market players.

"The United States is not ready to sign a trade deal with China," the US president said Friday just before leaving for a vacation in his Bedminster golf course in New Jersey.

This statement further formalizes the stalemate in the negotiations between the two countries to end the trade war.

Sino-US tensions have mounted a notch for about ten days after last week's announcement by Trump of additional tariffs on Chinese imports starting in September.

In the process, the Chinese currency has depreciated greatly, which has been interpreted by many analysts as a retaliatory measure on the part of Beijing.

"Investors continue to doubt the global economy," commented analysts Briefing.com.

"In China, producer prices unexpectedly fell by 0.3% year-on-year in July, which is a sign of deflation." The UK's GDP, on the other hand, 0.2% in the second quarter, to everyone's surprise, "they added.

The surprise government crisis in Italy, the third largest economy in the eurozone, also fears turbulence ahead.

The head of the extreme right and strongman of the government, Matteo Salvini, decided on Wednesday to pop the populist coalition in power for 14 months, plunging Italy into uncertainty.

On Wall Street, the technology sector, which many companies source in China, continued to suffer sharp tensions between Washington and Beijing, the world's two largest economies.

The sector sub-index within the S & P 500 was down 1.06% at around 1350 GMT.

That of semiconductors, also dependent on Sino-US trade relations, dropped a little over 1%.

The session was also marked by the 8.54% fall of Uber, which announced to have cashed in the second quarter a record loss of over $ 5 billion.

In the bond market, the 10-year US debt rate stood at 1.7052%, slightly down.

© 2019 AFP