Markets Rally On China-U.S. Tariff Reprieve, Lodging And Industrial REITs Soar
U.S. stocks rallied Monday after President Donald Trump’s administration announced it had reached a trade agreement with China.
The two countries agreed to cut the massive tariffs imposed on each other’s imports for 90 days, the White House announced. The levies put in place by both sides will shrink to 10%, while an additional 20% tariff on Chinese goods first imposed by the Trump administration will remain in place.
The detente, hammered out over weekend trade talks in Geneva, will last 90 days while negotiations continue.
“Just remember why we’re here in the first place — the United States has a massive $1.2 trillion trade deficit, so the President declared a national emergency and imposed tariffs, and we’re confident that the deal we struck with our Chinese partners will help us to work toward resolving that national emergency,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement Sunday.
Negotiations for a more lasting trade deal are likely to start in the next few weeks, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday morning on CNBC.
Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, called the deal a “best case scenario” for investors, while Oxford Economics analysts said the agreement “implies less of a drag on the economy through the rest of this year.”
The announcement sent stocks soaring Monday, with the three major U.S. indexes up by more than 2% in early trading, led by a 3.2% rally from the tech-heavy Nasdaq.
The three indexes have recovered all of the losses that came in the days after the White House’s tariff announcement on April 2, which went far beyond investor expectations and led to a sharp sell-off.
Real estate stocks were buoyed by Monday’s announcement. While the FTSE Nareit All Equity REITs Index was up roughly 40 basis points Monday, sectors with more exposure to tariffs saw larger jumps.
FTSE’s U.S. industrial REIT index was up 4.9% early Monday, share prices for regional mall REITs were up more than 5%, and lodging and resorts had a nearly 6% jump, while shopping center REITs were up more than 3%.
Bond investors had a muted reaction to the temporary climb down from the U.S. and China, with the yield on 10-Year Treasury bonds moving up by 6 basis points to 4.44% Monday.
Brokerage executives on earnings calls in recent weeks said investors are getting more comfortable with trading assets in this elevated interest rate environment. The leading brokerages posted strong first-quarter earnings but said tariffs were impacting deal velocity.
Still, the message from brokerage leadership on Q1 calls was that the trade war is just a small hurdle in the commercial real estate sector’s broader recovery.
“What we're not witnessing is a freeze in decision-making, and that's in large part why we see our Q2 numbers and, frankly, our 2025 performance staying intact,” Cushman & Wakefield CEO Michelle MacKay told analysts on the brokerage’s April 29 earnings call.
