Warner Bros Discovery, Disney, Netflix stocks rebound as Donald Trump pauses tariffs for 90 days
Shares in US studios and streamers surged on Wednesday as part of a broader market rebound after US president Donald Trump said he would put a 90-day pause on tariffs imposed on dozens of countries.
Of the US studios and streamers, Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) posted the biggest recovery, climbing around 20% on Wednesday to US$9.26 per share. However, the stock is still down around 12% compared to the day before Trump’s “Liberation Day” on April 2.
It was a similar story for Disney stock, up around 10% to US$90 but still down around 6.5% since last week’s market crash, while Comcast shares climbed more than 7% and Paramount Global was up almost 5%.
Netflix stock jumped 9% to US$945 per share, wiping out all losses incurred since Trump’s tariff announcement sent global markets nosediving.
Tech stocks also rebounded, with Amazon climbing 12% and Apple up 15%. However, the latter is still down more than 11% over the week as it is the most exposed to the trade war between the US and China, where it manufactures a large amount of its products.
Across the board, markets rallied with the NASDAQ jumping 8.5%, the S&P 500 climbing 9.5% and the Dow Jones up 7.8% as investors reacted to the news of the tariff pause, which was first announced via a Trump post on Truth Social.
After imposing so-called “reciprocal tariffs” on around 60 countries last week, media stocks took a hammering, with Disney, WBD, Paramount, Comcast and Netflix and others seeing billions wiped off their valuations as markets reacted. Under those measures, Trump imposed a “baseline” 10% tariff on all goods being imported to the US, while certain territories were set to receive higher rates, including European Union at 20%.
Those higher tariffs will now be paused for 90 days, with the 10% baseline tariff being applied across the board – except for China, which has been slapped with a 125% tariff.
Trump said his reason for pausing the majority of the higher tariffs was because more than 75 countries had made contact with the US’s various department to negotiate solutions to the trade matters.
While the tariff pause is a welcome reprieve for US studios and streamers, the broader market uncertainty will no doubt continue to cause wild market fluctuations. Most pertinent for the studios and streamers is a potential advertising pullback, which has been predicted by economists as big brands navigate the market fluctuations wrought by Trump’s changing whims.
The legacy US studios are more exposed to the ad market than the streamers, meaning they would be more likely to feel the pinch of brands pulling back. However, both Netflix and Amazon are continuing to invest heavily in building out their own advertising businesses, so a long-term decline in ad spending would also impact them.
For the most part, the heads of the studios and streamers have remained quiet on Trump and the market reaction to his trade war. But this could change when Netflix kicks off earnings season next week, followed by all the other majors, with analysts keen to hear commentary on this month’s events.
