After being held back on Tuesday by the new threats of tariffs from American President Donald Trump, European stock markets are expected to open higher on Wednesday.

The pharmaceutical laboratory Sanofi announced on Wednesday that it had completed the acquisition of Vigil Neuroscience, an American biotech company specialized in the development of innovative drugs for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. The amount of the operation is 470 million dollars.

Around 7:30 a.m., the CAC 40 futures contract sold 0.5%, according to data from broker IG.

While the tariff dossier and quarterly earnings releases remain in the spotlight, European equity market futures rose on Wednesday. According to data from the broker IG, the DAX 40 futures contract in Frankfurt gained 0.7%, while that on the FTSE 100 in London grew by 0.5%, around 7:30am.
While the European Union and the United States are finalizing a joint statement on their trade agreement concluded at the end of July, Donald Trump raised new threats of customs surcharges on certain sectors on Tuesday afternoon

During an interview on CNBC, the American president warned that he could impose massive new tariffs on the pharmaceutical and semiconductor sectors to force companies to repatriate their production to the United States. “We want pharmaceutical products to be manufactured in our country”, Donald Trump told CNBC in particular, threatening the sector with tariffs of up to “up to 250%” in the long term. He did not specify the level of taxes envisaged for semiconductors.
The New York Stock Exchange closed lower on Tuesday, cooled by poor economic indicators and by new threats of tariffs from Donald Trump.
The Dow Jones index closed down 0.1% to 44,111.74 points, while the S&P 500 lost 0.5% to 6,299.19 points. For its part, the Nasdaq Composite index, rich in technological stocks, fell by 0.7% to 20,916.55 points.
Investors reacted poorly to the announcement of a disappointing indicator on the service sector. The ISM index came in at 50.1 last month, just above the 50 threshold between contraction and expansion of activity, while economists expected it at 51.2. The survey also revealed a sharp contraction in hiring and a “worrying” rise in prices in the sector.
The paid prices sub-index accelerated to 69.9 from 67.5 in June. It has been above the 60 mark for the eighth month in a row and had not reached such a level since October 2022.
This inflationary component has upset investors, while the deterioration of certain indicators, in particular job creation, had led them in recent days to rely on a more accommodative Federal Reserve (Fed) to support the American economy.
In Asia, the Nikkei index on the Tokyo Stock Exchange rose by 0.5% on Wednesday at the end of trading. The Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.3%, while the Hang Seng Index on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange rose 0.1%.

The two-year stock rate was unchanged at 3.74% at around 7:30am. The 10-year US Treasury bond rate rose by 1 basis point to 4.23%

The euro was stable at 1.1578 dollars. The greenback lost 0.1% against the Japanese currency, at 147.46 yen, around 7:30.

After four consecutive downturns, oil prices rose this morning. According to Mariano Alonso of Rystad Energy, “no matter what indicator or dashboard you look at, the market currently lacks a clear direction.” According to him, uncertainty persists as the United States prepares possible measures against Russia and buyers of Russian oil.

The September contract for light sweet crude (WTI) listed on Nymex rose by 40 cents, or 0.6%, to $65.56 per barrel. At around 7:30am, the October North Sea Brent contract listed in London gained 42 cents, or 0.6%, to $68.06