Europe midday: Stocks steady despite trade storm clouds on the horizon

Also helping to steady sentiment in Europe was news that Beijing's national regulator had indicated a desire to increase investment in its local market, which acted as a 'fire break', keeping the losses seen in the US from spilling over into the Asian and European trading hours.

Even so, as Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK, commented: "There still remains an underlying concern that the US may well widen the scope of its tariffs to include the remaining $257bn of Chinese goods, however for now Asia markets appear to be accentuating the positive."

As of noon, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was edging higher by 0.08% or 0.29 points to 355.78, alongside a dip for Germany's Dax of 0.16% or 18.28 points to 11,317.20, while the Cac-40 was off by 0.08% or 3.99 points at 4,985.36.

Spain's Ibex 35 meanwhile was up by 0.37% or 28.70 points to 8,832.40.

Overnight, shares on Wall Street had finished another session in the red after Bloomberg reported that the White House was ready to extend its 25% tariffs on Chinese exports to all of the goods sold by the Asian giant, possibly as soon as early February.

And yet the news-flow was hardly better on the domestic economic front in the Continent, as Eurostat reported that the pace of expansion in the euro area halved over the three months to the end of September, to just a 0.2% quarter-on-quarter clip.

Those numbers came close on the heels of a report earlier in the session according to which Italy's economy stagnated in the third quarter when compared with the previous quarter (consensus: 0.2%).

In parallel, other data revealed much softer than expected household consumption in France, where it fell by 1.7% on the month, and in Spain, where retail sales shrank by 0.4%.

Still ahead for later in the session, Germany's Ministry of Finance was scheduled to release a final reading on harmonised CPI for October (consensus: 2.4%).

As well, investors Stateside will be asked to digest a barrage of company results, including those for: Amgen, Coca Cola, Facebook, Electronic Arts, Pfizer and Mastercard.

Stock of BP was leading to the upside after the oil major signaled confidence in the market outlook, telling shareholders it will finance the acquisition of BHP through recourse to its cash pile, instead of by selling fresh equity.

Stock in Volkswagen was another big gainer, posting much better-than-expected third quarter operating profits of €3.51bn.