Mining, Minerals & Metals plc Share News (MMM)

* Tariffs will not necessarily spark a trade war, Navarro

* Industrial stocks gain for first time in four sessions

* Alibaba up on report of China listing plans

* Dollar General up after results

* Dow up 0.82 pct, S&P 0.13 pct, Nasdaq off 0.04 pct(Updates to early afternoon)

By Sruthi Shankar

March 15 (Reuters) - The Dow Jones Industrial Average addedmore than 200 points on Thursday as industrial stocks gainedafter the White House trade adviser sought to play down chancesof a trade war due to protectionist policies.

President Donald Trump's tough approach to global trade,including new tariffs on metals imports, will not necessarilyprovoke retaliation from trading partners, Peter Navarro, thetop adviser on international economic exchanges, said on CNBC.

"It was very destabilizing to the markets that the WhiteHouse is aware of that and they dialed back the rhetoric to anextent," said Peter Kenny, senior market strategist at GlobalMarkets Advisory Group in New York.

Corporates, especially manufacturers, have been underpressure from Trump's tariff plans, including a move to imposeduties of up to $60 billion on Chinese imports while pushing for$100 billion cut in trade surplus.

Thursday's gains helped the Dow erase much of itslosses since Trump announced tariff plans on March 1. Theblue-chip index is still trading about 6 percent below itsrecord highs hit on Jan. 26 and was last up 0.82 percent at24,960.4 points.

"Prices of equities have become modestly more attractive inthe recent days as a result of the compression in prices," saidKenny.

The S&P industrial index rose 0.44 percent and wason course for its first session of gains in four days.

General Electric, 3M and Caterpillarwere up more than 1 percent. Boeing, which investors saymay be particularly vulnerable to a trade war, was marginallyup.

The S&P 500 pared some of its early gains and was up0.13 percent at 2,752.97 as energy and material stocksweighed. The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.04percent to 7,494.06 points.

The markets also found support from economic data thatshowed weekly jobless claims fell last week, pointing to astrong labor market.

A bigger-than-expected rise in U.S. import prices inFebruary indicated a steady pick up in inflation.

Among stocks, Alibaba jumped 3.2 percent on reportthat the Chinese e-commerce giant was planning a secondarylisting in China.

Dollar General rose 3.6 percent after the discountretailer's quarterly same-store sales beatestimates.

Qorvo tumbled 5.9 percent to the bottom of the S&P500 after Bank of America said the RF chipmaker could lose outto Broadcom for a spot in upcoming iPhones.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers on the NYSE for a1.55-to-1 ratio, and for a 1.13-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by ArunKoyyur)