US STOCKS-Wall St set to fall at open as Trump signals delay in China trade deal

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* Trump says no deadline for China deal
* President says might be better to wait for 2020 election
* Trade-sensitive chipmakers, industrials fall
* Futures off: Dow 0.89%, S&P 0.74%, Nasdaq 0.99%

(Adds comments, updates market action)
By Arjun Panchadar
Dec 3 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were set to drop at the open
on Tuesday after comments from President Donald Trump sparked
fears of a delay in resolving a bruising tariff dispute with
China until after the presidential election in November 2020.
"I have no deadline, no. In some ways I think it's better to
wait until after the election with China," Trump told reporters
in London where he was due to attend a meeting of NATO leaders.
Trade-sensitive Apple Inc AAPL.O was down 1.8% in
premarket trading, while chipmakers such as Nvidia Corp
NVDA.O , Micron Technology MU.O and Advanced Micro Devices
AMD.O fell between 2.7% and 3.7%.
Industrial giants Boeing Co BA.N and Caterpillar Inc
CAT.N slid more than 1%.
Hopes that the two sides will hammer out a "phase one" trade
deal had driven U.S. markets to record highs last month. The
latest news dampened the expectations, fueling fresh worries
about a global slowdown and a hit to corporate earnings.
"I suspect it is people wondering whether or not we're going
to get something accomplished," said Randy Frederick, vice
president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in
Austin, Texas.
"Keep in mind that we've new tariffs scheduled to kick in on
Dec. 15. And those tariffs are going to apply to consumer goods
that have not had any tariffs placed on them yet."
The latest fallout of the trade war on the domestic economy
was weak factory activity data on Monday, which led Wall
Street's main indexes to pull back for a second straight
session.
At 8:46 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis 1YMcv1 were down 247 points,
or 0.89%. S&P 500 e-minis EScv1 were down 23 points, or 0.74%
and Nasdaq 100 e-minis NQcv1 were down 82.5 points, or 0.99%.
In corporate news, shares of Audentes Therapeutics Inc
BOLD.O more than doubled in value after Japan's Astellas
Pharma Inc 4503.T said it would buy the U.S. drugmaker for
about $3 billion in cash. AK Steel Holding Corp AKS.N rose about 6% after miner
Cleveland Cliffs Inc CLF.N agreed to buy the steel maker for
about $1.1 billion in an all-stock deal. Shares of
Cleveland-Cliffs tumbled 9.6%.