Under a White House policy that had been telegraphed, import duties rose from 10% to levels between 15% and 41% for a list of trading partners.

About 20 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4% at 44,361.65.

The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 0.5% to 6,379.11, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.9% to 21,357.96, above its all-time closing record.

In the last day alone, US President Donald Trump has also announced higher tariffs on India and 100% levy on semiconductor companies that don’t build in the US.

But investors have been embracing a view that the US economy remains on solid footing and that the impact of levies has not been as bad as feared.

“The chip tariffs certainly sound terrible on the headline,” said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers.

“But there’s so many exemptions… so it’s perceived to be having so many loopholes that it’s not bad news.”

Investor mood “has been relentlessly positive, interpreting the news flow like a glass half-full day”, Sosnick said.

The early gains on Wall Street came as the Bank of England cut its key interest rate by a quarter point to 4%, the lowest level in 2.5 years.

Among individual companies, Intel dropped 1.3% as Trump called on the chipmaker’s CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, to resign after a Republican senator raised national security concerns over his links to firms in China.

Eli Lilly plunged 13.1% despite reporting a near-doubling of profits on higher revenues.

The drugmaker also released results of clinical testing of a weight loss pill that looked positive “on the surface”, but indicated less impact than candidates by other companies, said Briefing.com.