by Matthew Rusling
WASHINGTON, May 17 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. stock market on Friday was unable to pull off a full rebound after the sell-off earlier this week, signaling a volatile market caused by the trade tensions with China, experts said.
The U.S. Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Friday at 25,764, four days after Monday's selloff, which saw the Dow tumble over 600 points during the year's worst trading day.
While the week saw stocks inch back upward, the Dow failed to see a full rally on Friday back to the previous week's levels.
Experts warn of increasing sell-offs like the one earlier this week, contending that without an end to the trade tensions, U.S. market volatility could continue and even increase.
Desmond Lachman, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Xinhua that if the trade war persists, the U.S. stock market will have a lot of difficulty in regaining its past highs.
"If it persists we could very well see a repeat of what we saw last November and December when the U.S. stock market declined by around 20 percent," Lachman said.
"One should keep in mind that the U.S. stock market valuation is still high by historic standards," Lachman said, adding that the market could see a drop if the trade war heats up further.
David Dollar, a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, told Xinhua that the main negative outcome of the ongoing trade disputes will be a loss of jobs in firms that rely on parts and components from China and that make up the distribution and retail chain that brings products to consumers.
While U.S. media have speculated that the trade tensions could hike inflation, some experts said the main factor putting pressure on the White House would be a U.S. market selloff.
"The main way that import tariffs would put pressure on the Trump administration would not be through higher U.S. inflation, but would rather be if we were to see a big sell-off in the U.S. stock market," Lachman said.
