U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after landing on Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, July 19, 2026.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
Hello, my name is Hui Jie from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.
US President Donald Trump’s administration is extremely busy. Canada is subject to new tariffs, while military strikes against Iran continue.
In the technology space, Nvidia may be at the top of the AI hardware space, but other players such as AMD are also making some strides.
What you need to know today
US President Donald Trump has reinstated tariffs, a signature solution to many of the problems he perceives.
The White House announced Monday that it will impose 50% tariffs on some exports from Canada to the United States, “from wine to hockey sticks to cement,” according to a notice from the White House.
This was in response to trade discrimination claims against multiple products and industries in the United States, including automobiles, alcohol, and dairy products.
The tariffs fall under Section 338 of the rarely used Tariff Act of 1930 and are scheduled to go into effect 30 days after President Trump signs the proclamation.
Tariffs didn’t move the market needle, but the Iran war did. The US president said the Iranian government would “pay” for the deaths of American service members in the conflict. Three US military personnel were recently killed in an Iranian attack.
Separately, US Central Command has been carrying out 10 consecutive nights of attacks against the country, but the cost of the conflict appears to be slowly increasing for Washington.
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said “nearly 100” service members have sustained some type of injury since July 7, and 96% of them have returned to duty.
According to the Pentagon’s National Casualty Analysis System, 14 U.S. troops have been killed and 427 injured since the war began.
market recession
Oil prices rose on Monday on threats after Yemen’s Houthi militants also declared a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia.
However, oil prices fell slightly as Asian markets opened, with Brent crude oil futures down 0.62% to $88.70 per barrel. US West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures fell 0.3% to settle at $82.98.
The Iranian threat also caused markets to fall, with all three US indexes falling.
However, there are still bright spots in the tech sector. AMD stock rose more than 4% on Monday after the company announced it was preparing to ship its first rack-scale system for artificial intelligence, called Helios, which rivals NVIDIA’s wildly popular Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems.
Among the buyers of AMD’s Helios is Microsoft, whose stock also rose more than 1% after announcing on Monday that it would use Helios systems in its data centers.
Elsewhere, Alphabet shares rose 1.51% on Monday after The Information reported that the company is internally developing a new server chip called “Frozen v2” designed to run the Gemini model more efficiently.
And finally…
FIFA appears to have cropped Trump from Spain World Cup photo
After defeating Argentina to lift the World Cup trophy, FIFA posted a commemorative photo of the team hoisting the trophy.
However, keen observers noticed that the FIFA photo appeared to crop out US President Donald Trump, who was standing near the players.
The White House later posted its own set of photos featuring the US president.
— Lim Huijie
