The Spanish stock index IBEX 35 opened the week in negative territory, weighed down by threats from US President Donald Trump to impose a 30% tariff on imports from two of the United States' largest trading partners starting August 1.

Trump announced the latest round of tariffs on Saturday in separate letters to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, which were published on his Truth Social platform.

Meanwhile, the European Union has already prepared a list of retaliatory tariffs worth €21 billion on US products if the two sides fail to reach a trade agreement, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said in a newspaper interview on Monday.

However, investors have grown increasingly indifferent to Trump's repeated tariff threats.

"Tariffs are having less and less impact, and we are entering a period marked by a seasonal slowdown in activity on the one hand, and by Q2 corporate earnings on the other," analysts at Bankinter commented on their Telegram channel.

"Although the week is starting off weak due to Trump's announcement of the 30% tariff, it's likely to recover soon... albeit without much enthusiasm, as the typical summer lull is already being felt," they added.

On the macroeconomic front, no major data releases are expected in either Europe or the United States on Monday.

However, traders may get a better sense of the Federal Reserve's future interest rate path when June inflation data is released on Tuesday, with expectations that US consumer prices edged up slightly last month.

For now, markets are pricing in more than 50 basis points of Fed easing by December.

As of 0701 GMT on Monday, Spain's IBEX 35 index was down 107.40 points, or 0.77%, at 13,905.10, while the pan-European blue-chip FTSE Eurofirst 300 index slipped 0.53%.

In the banking sector, Santander lost 1.10%, BBVA fell 0.93%, Caixabank dropped 1.26%, Sabadell declined 1.33%, Bankinter shed 0.71%, and Unicaja Banco was down 0.68%.

Among major non-financial stocks, Telefónica slipped 0.33%, Inditex fell 1.01%, Iberdrola edged up 0.03%, Cellnex dropped 0.59%, and oil company Repsol lost 0.50%.

 

(Reporting by Benjamín Mejías Valencia; editing by María Bayarri Cárdenas)