U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, March 11, 2026. President Trump will visit Ohio and Kentucky today to introduce two local companies.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Hello, my name is Hui Jie from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.
With US allies seemingly caught between attacks on Iran and criticism of the US president, investors are also keeping an eye on events in the AI space and the Fed’s future interest rate decisions.
What you need to know today
“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” The first part of this African proverb appears to characterize US President Donald Trump’s strategy against Iran after its allies refused to join the Middle East war.
President Trump has criticized the NATO alliance for its reluctance to get involved in the conflict, saying it is making “stupid mistakes” and insisting the United States does not need any support for ongoing military operations.
U.S. allies in the Gulf have become victims of a conflict in which they are not directly involved, as Iran steps up attacks on the United Arab Emirates, targeting its energy infrastructure.
As the conflict escalates, cracks are beginning to appear in President Trump’s own administration. In the United States, Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation on Tuesday, saying Iran had never posed a threat to the United States.
Away from the wars, the technology is back on investors’ minds since Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said his open source autonomous AI agent platform OpenClaw is “definitely the next ChatGPT.”
The head of the world’s most valuable company also said that Nvidia is preparing to offer H200 processors to some customers in China. “We have received orders and are restarting production,” Huang said. Nvidia currently has permission to sell the H200 in both the US and China.
And on the technology front, OpenAI is attracting employee and investor attention to its enterprise business as it prepares to go public by the end of the year, CNBC has learned.
Ironically, while political America is trying to move quickly and alone, technological America is trying to work together and go far.
— Lim Huijie
And finally…
The Fed will announce its latest interest rate decisions on Wednesday. Here’s what you can expect
The Fed has little choice but to stay on the sidelines this week as it navigates the complex and contradictory combination of forces playing out in the U.S. economy.
Markets are pricing in a near zero chance that the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates, will cut rates at this meeting or any other meeting in the near future. Futures pricing suggests that policymakers won’t consider easing until at least September, and likely October, and even then, they will cut rates only once this year.
— Jeff Cox
