US STOCKS-Wall St drops to 1-month low on trade, growth fears

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* Trump vows to slap more tariff on Chinese imports
* U.S. employment growth slows in July
* Tech leads slide among major S&P sectors
* NetApp tumbles after slashing forecast
* Indexes down: Dow 0.48%, S&P 0.57%, Nasdaq 0.85%

(Updates to open)
By Amy Caren Daniel
Aug 2 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes sank to
one-month lows on Friday after a sharp escalation in U.S.-China
trade tensions and tepid job growth in July reinforced fears of
a global economic slowdown.
The Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls increased by
164,000 jobs last month and the economy created 41,000 fewer
jobs in May and June than previously reported. However, July's
numbers were in line with economists' expectations. "Job numbers were not too far from expected. It shows the
trend is slowing down. It's consistent with another rate cut
either in September or October," said Scott Brown, chief
economist at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Florida.
"The bigger issue for the Fed policy outlook is tariffs
because that implies you will see higher costs for finished
goods rather than intermediate goods that we have been importing
from China."
The jobs report comes a day after President Donald Trump
threatened to slap a 10% tariff on $300 billion of Chinese
imports from next month, sending global markets tumbling
overnight and investors fleeing to safe-haven U.S. Treasuries
and the Japanese yen.
China on Friday said it would not be blackmailed and warned
of retaliation. Technology companies .SPLRCT , which get a sizeable portion
of their revenue from China, were the hardest hit, down 1.34%,
weighed by iPhone maker Apple Inc AAPL.O and chipmakers.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor index .SOX slipped 1.06%,
while shares of Apple fell 1.5%.
Boeing Co BA.N , the single largest U.S. exporter to China,
fell 0.8% and Caterpillar Inc CAT.N declined 0.6%.
The sudden escalation in trade rhetoric follows the Federal
Reserve on Wednesday playing down expectations of further
aggressive monetary policy actions after cutting interest rates
for the first time in a decade.
Hopes that the Fed would be more accommodative to counter
the impact of the bruising trade war had helped Wall Street's
main indexes hit record highs last month.
Fed funds futures implied traders were positioned for a 100%
chance the central bank would reduce its target range on
interest rates by a quarter point in September, CME Group's
FedWatch program showed. MMT/
At 9:46 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was
down 128.15 points, or 0.48%, at 26,455.27, the S&P 500 .SPX
was down 16.70 points, or 0.57%, at 2,936.86. The Nasdaq
Composite .IXIC was down 68.59 points, or 0.85%, at 8,042.53.
The defensive utilities sector .SPLRCU rose 0.3%, while a
surge in oil prices helped the energy sector .SPNY eke out
small gains. O/R
The second-quarter earnings season is in full swing, with
74.4% of the 355 S&P 500 companies that have reported so far
beating profit estimates, according to Refinitiv data.
NetApp Inc NTAP.O slumped 20.7% after the data storage
equipment maker lowered its forecast for the first quarter and
2020, blaming a weakening macro environment.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 2.24-to-1 ratio
on the NYSE and for a 2.25-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded four new 52-week highs and four new
lows, while the Nasdaq recorded seven new highs and 76 new lows.