By Amy Caren Daniel
(Reuters) - U.S. stock indexes fell on Wednesday in a broad-based decline, hurt by concerns over the strong dollar and Turkey's currency crisis, as well as the trade tensions with U.S. trading partners that have dominated the first half of 2018.
While the lira continues to pull back from record lows against the dollar, Turkey on Wednesday doubled tariffs on some U.S. imports including alcohol, cars and tobacco in retaliation to U.S. moves.
Meanwhile, Beijing has lodged a complaint to the World Trade Organization to help determine the legality of U.S. tariff and subsidy policies.
The trade-sensitive industrial sector fell 1.31 percent. A 2.9 percent drop in Caterpillar and a 1.4 percent slide in Boeing weighed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
"Markets are going back into the cautious trend that we were in prior to yesterday," said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.
"China's complaint escalates the trade skirmish to the next level, which continues to be a drag on the markets as it has been over the last couple of months."
U.S. listed shares of Chinese e-commerce companies fell. E-commerce giant Alibaba fell 2.6 percent, JD.com was down 5.8 percent and Baidu 2.3 percent.
High-flying technology stocks Microsoft, Google-parent Alphabet and Facebook fell between 0.6 percent and 1.2 percent, weighing on the technology sector overall .
Intel slid 1 percent after disclosing three more possible flaws in some of its microprocessors.
At 9:53 a.m. EDT the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 217.85 points, or 0.86 percent, at 25,082.07, the S&P 500 was down 22.52 points, or 0.79 percent, at 2,817.44 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 61.79 points, or 0.79 percent, at 7,809.10.
(Reporting by Amy Caren Daniel in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)