US Imposes Tariffs on Canada, Iran Conflict Escalates, Tech Sector Sees AI Advances

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has been busy. Canada is being subjected to new tariffs, while military strikes continue for Iran.

In tech, Nvidia's may be the top dog in the AI hardware space, but other players have been making some breakthroughs, like AMD.

U.S. President Donald Trump has revived his signature solution to many of his perceived problems: tariffs.

On Monday, the White House announced the imposition of 50% duties on certain Canadian exports to the U.S., "ranging from wine to hockey sticks to cement," according to the notice from the White House.

This was in response to alleged trade discrimination against multiple U.S. products and industries, like motor vehicles, alcohol and dairy.

The tariffs, which fall under the rarely used Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, are set to take effect 30 days from when Trump signs the proclamations.

While the duties did not move the needle for markets, the Iran war did. The U.S. President said that Tehran "will pay" for causing the deaths of American servicepersons in the conflict. Three U.S. servicepersons were recently killed by Iranian strikes.

Separately, while U.S. Central Command has conducted a 10th straight night of strikes on the country, the cost of the conflict seems to be creeping up for Washington.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that "nearly 100" servicepersons had some degree of injury since July 7, saying 96% of those have returned to duty.

The Pentagon's Defence Casualty Analysis System put U.S. deaths at 14 and wounded at 427 since the start of the war.

Oil prices rose Monday after the threats as Houthi militants in Yemen also declared a maritime embargo on Saudi Arabia.

However, crude prices eased slightly as Asia markets began trading, with Brent crude futures, dipping 0.62% to $88.70 per barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures dropped 0.3% to settle at $82.98.

Markets dipped on the Iran threats as well, with all three U.S. indexes falling.

The tech sector remains a bright spot, however. Shares of AMD climbed more than 4% on Monday after the company announced that it is preparing to ship its first rack-scale system for artificial intelligence, called Helios, which will rival Nvidia's wildly popular Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems.

Among the buyers of AMD's Helios was Microsoft, who also saw its stock climb more than 1% after it announced Monday it will use the Helios system in its data centers.

Elsewhere, Alphabet shares climbed 1.51% on Monday after The Information reported the company is developing a new server chip, internally dubbed "Frozen v2," designed to run Gemini models more efficiently.

FIFA appears to crop Trump out from Spain's World Cup photo

After defeating Argentina and lifting the World Cup trophy, FIFA posted its commemorative photo of the team lifting the trophy.

But sharp eyed observers noticed that the FIFA photo seemed to crop out U.S. President Donald Trump, who was standing near the players.

The White House then posted its own set of photos, with the U.S. President in them.