For a Reuters live blog on U.S., UK and European stock markets, click LIVE/ or type LIVE/ in a news window.

Updates before markets open

By Kanchana Chakravarty and Sukriti Gupta

June 4 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were set for a muted open on Wednesday as much weaker-than-expected private payrolls data deepened concerns about the Trump administration's erratic trade policies pressuring the labor market.

Private payrolls increased by only 37,000 jobs in May, while economists polled by Reuters had forecast an increase of 110,000.

"I think you get very short term volatility from the ADP number, but I don't think that it means that much until we see the payrolls number," said Larry Tentarelli, chief technical strategist at Blue Chip Daily Trend Report.

Investors are awaiting Friday's nonfarm-payrolls data for more signs on how trade uncertainty is affecting the U.S. economy.

Washington doubled tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to 50% on Wednesday, the same day by which Trump had wanted trading partners to make their best offers to avoid other punishing import levies from taking effect in early July.

Investor focus is squarely on tariff negotiations between Washington and its trading partners, with Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping expected to speak sometime this week as tensions simmer between the world's two biggest economies.

May was the best month for the S&P 500 index .SPX and the tech-heavy Nasdaq .IXIC since November 2023, thanks to a softening of Trump's harsh trade stance.

With fresh tariff announcements in place, the S&P 500 remains about 3% away from its record highs touched in February.

Barclays joined a slew of other brokerages in raising its year-end price target for the S&P 500, pointing to easing trade uncertainty and expectations of normalized earnings growth in 2026.

Other data releases scheduled for Wednesday include S&P Global and ISM's services sector activity readings for May.

At 08:54 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis YMcv1 were down 20 points, or 0.05%, S&P 500 E-minis EScv1 were down 0.25 points and Nasdaq 100 E-minis NQcv1 were down 3.5 points, or 0.02%.

Megacap and growth stocks were mixed in premarket trading. Apple AAPL.O dipped 0.5% after brokerage Needham downgraded the iPhone maker to "hold" from "buy".

Shares of Hewlett Packard Enterprise HPE.N rose 6.6% as demand for the company's artificial-intelligence servers and hybrid cloud segment helped it beat estimates for second-quarter revenue and profit.

Wells Fargo WFC.N shares rose 2.4% after the U.S. Federal Reserve removed a $1.95 trillion asset cap imposed in 2018 following years of missteps.

Shares of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike CRWD.O slumped 7.6% after it forecast quarterly revenue below estimates.

Dollar Tree DLTR.O fell nearly 2% after the discount store operator forecast second-quarter adjusted profit would be as much as 50% lower than a year ago due to tariff-driven volatility.

(Reporting by Kanchana Chakravarty and Sukriti Gupta in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

((Kanchana.Chakravarty@thomsonreuters.com;))