Wall Street tried but couldn't complete a four-day winning streak.

A rally during most of Thursday's session fizzled into the close after President Trump said he will have an announcement regarding China on Friday.

The White House has been ratcheting up rhetoric after a Chinese crackdown on Hong Kong.

The Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq gave up gains to settle with modest losses.

Earlier in the session- Wall Street took some comfort in the fact weekly job-loss filings are getting smaller as states reopen and people go back to work.

Still, for the 10th week in a row - new applications for jobless benefits topped the 2 million mark, bringing the total number of Americans filing for initial benefits to nearly 41 million since March.

Social media companies struggled throughout the day. President Trump signed an executive order to review a law that has long protected internet companies from liability for content posted by users. His decision appeared to be sparked by Twitter's decision earlier this week to fact-check a Trump tweet. Facebook lost nearly 2 percent. Twitter was down more than 4 percent.

Dollar Tree was a big winner Thursday. The ultra-discount retailer beat quarterly sales and profit forecasts. The stock surged nearly 12 percent.

And Boeing has restarted production of the much-maligned 737 MAX. That news helped the stock stay in positive territory - despite the broad-market sell-off.