Sensex Drops 176 Points On Tariff Uncertainty; Nifty Dips Below 25,500

(RTTNews) - Indian shares fell modestly on Wednesday as uncertainty prevailed over U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff plans.

Trump said Tuesday his extended Aug. 1 deadline for his "Liberation Day" tariffs will stick, after previously suggesting it wasn't "100 percent firm."

Adding to the uncertainty, he also announced a 50 percent tariff on copper imports as part of a set of looming sectoral tariffs and threatened a 200 percent tariff on pharmaceutical imports.

The benchmark S&P/BSE Sensex ended the session down 176.43 points, or 0.21 percent, at 83,536.08 while the broader NSE Nifty index dropped 46.40 points, or 0.18 percent, to 25,476.10.

The BSE mid-cap index finished marginally lower while the small-cap index rose half a percent.

The market breadth was strong on the BSE, with 2,075 shares rising while 1,929 shares declined and 138 shares closed unchanged.

Among the prominent decliners, BEL, Reliance Industries, Tech Mahindra and HCL Technologies declined 1-2 percent.

Tata Steel fell 1.8 percent and Hindalco lost 1.9 percent as Trump expanded trade measures already in place for steel and aluminum.

Vedanta tumbled 3.4 percent and its subsidiary Hindustan Zinc gave up 2.6 percent after a report by short-seller Viceroy Research raised red flags about their parent company Vedanta Resources Ltd.

Union Bank of India slumped 3.8 percent after its Q1 business update.

Transformers & Rectifiers jumped 5 percent after the company appointed Mukul Srivastava as its new CEO.