CATCo Share News (CAT)

* Trump tweets: "Trade wars are good, and easy to win"

* J.C. Penney slumps after disappointing quarter

* Wall St registers losses for week after posting gains forlast 2

* Dow off 0.3 pct, S&P up 0.5 pct, Nasdaq up 1.1 pct(Updates to close)

By Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK, March 2 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 ended anotherturbulent week on an upbeat note Friday, but major indexesposted their worst week of losses since early February asPresident Donald Trump's threat to impose import tariffs onsteel and aluminum rattled investors.

The gains on Friday came as investors who had been spookedby the prospect of a global trade war backed off those concernsand noted a trade war was far from certain at this point.

Trump on Thursday threatened a 25 percent tariff on steelimports and 10 percent on aluminum without exemptions for anycountries, igniting a selloff in a market already on edge overrising U.S. interest rates and bond yields.

Trump struck a defiant tone on Friday, saying trade warswere "good, and easy to win", and U.S. Commerce Secretary WilburRoss, appearing on CNBC, said tariffs would have a "trivialeffect."

Phil Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Investorsin New York, said Trump's announcement was made to calleveryone's attention to the U.S. trade deficit but investorsdecided that a full-blown global trade was not going to happen.

"For a real estate guy like that, you pound the podium, yourattle some sabers, you get everybody's attention and then younegotiate back to some reasonable midpoint."

The tariffs could dampen profits for everything from carmakers to beer companies and result in higher prices forconsumers.

Shares of big U.S. steel companies and manufacturers wereunder pressure on uncertainty over the effects of tariffs.

Shares in Caterpillar, a buyer of raw materials anda big exporter of construction machinery products, were down 2.6percent after falling 2.8 percent in the previous day's session.General Motors was down 1 percent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 70.92 points,or 0.29 percent, to 24,538.06, the S&P 500 gained 13.58points, or 0.51 percent, to 2,691.25 and the Nasdaq Compositeadded 77.31 points, or 1.08 percent, to 7,257.87.

For the week, the S&P 500 dropped 2 percent, while the Dowwas down 3 percent and the Nasdaq fell 1 percent. Wall Streethad posted gains in the previous two weeks as it recovered fromits steep early-February selloff.

Those losses in early February pushed the S&P 500 down morethan 10 percent from a Jan. 26 record high, confirming themarket was in a correction.

The tariffs are unlikely to significantly hurt CorporateAmerica's overall earnings, according to stock marketstrategists, who were not immediately adjusting their profitestimates following Trump's announcement.

"The impact on total corporate earnings first would bedriven by the impact on the economy," said Keith Parker, U.S.equity strategist for UBS in New York.

McDonald's dropped 4.8 percent after RBC lowered itsprice target on the stock and cut its 2018 earnings estimate,citing a disappointing early sales impact from McDonald's valuemenu. The stock was the biggest drag on the S&P and the Dow.

J.C. Penney Co Inc shares fell 5.4 percent after thedepartment store chain missed same-store sales estimates.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a1.69-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.99-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted one new 52-week high and 25 new lows; theNasdaq Composite recorded 59 new highs and 65 new lows.

About 7.7 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges.That compares with the 8.4 billion daily average for the past 20trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data.(Additional reporting by Herbert Lash in New York and AnkurBanerjee and Sruthi Shankar and in Bengaluru; Editing by NickZieminski and James Dalgleish)