Months of relative calm in the long-simmering trade war between the U.S. and China may be coming to an end.

Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on in New York City. (CNN) - Stocks slipped in afternoon trading on Friday, putting stocks on track to finish the week lower. A Chinese delegation in the United States canceled a scheduled visit to US farm country in Montana, according to Reuters. Earlier, things looked better on the trade front, with Washington announcing it has excluded more items from the import tariffs on Chinese goods, according to notices from the US Trade Representative. The New York Fed embarked on its fourth repo operation in a row Friday to inject liquidity into overnight lending markets for the weekend ahead.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images(CNN) - The Dow is looking to add on from Monday's sharp gains, but a day after optimism over progress in the U.S.-China trade spat pushed stocks higher, the stock market seems quieter. Futures for the Dow are a modest 0.1% higher, while those for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite are up 0.2% and 0.3%, respectively. "Hope triumphed over realism yesterday, and realism is fighting back," today, wrote Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex. Stocks rallied in response, retracing some of the losses they had incurred on Friday when the trade spat escalated. With three trading days left in the month of August, the Dow is on pace for a more-than-3.5% drop.