Trump walks back on Hormuz tolls in TACO Tuesday

Hello, this is Hui Jie writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.

U.S. President Donald Trump walked back on his proposal for imposing fees on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, though the U.S. continued targeting Iran with fresh strikes.

Wall Street looked past geopolitics even as oil prices climbed on the back of lower-than-expected inflation figures that sent tech stocks higher.

President Donald Trump took the toll road on Tuesday, before quickly finding the off ramp as he reversed his announcement on collecting a fee from ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, after anointing the U.S. as the “guardian angel” of the waterway.

The fee will now be paid by Gulf states in the form of investments in the U.S., he said.

Oil prices rose as Washington continued its strikes on Iran, but U.S. stock markets seemed to look past that development, as they have often done in the past.

All three U.S. stock indexes ended in positive territory, boosted by a cooler-than expected-inflation figure of 3.5%, with chip stocks boosting equity markets.

A notable outlier was IBM that saw its worst day on record. The company’s shares tumbled 25% after it released preliminary second-quarter results that fell short of expectations.

Asia markets also tracked the gains on Wall Street, with most major markets up, while U.S. futures were also in positive territory.

Despite the lower growth in consumer prices, Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Warsh talked tough on inflation in front of Congress, calling it an “unfair burden,” and reiterating his call for “regime change” at the central bank.

“It has been a tax on the American people and businesses. We plan on getting rid of that tax,” he said. “That means we need a regime change in policy, and we need new consideration of practices, some of which have been working, some of which haven’t.”

Separately, Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffery Kessler said to Congress that “very few” of Nvidia’s H200 artificial intelligence chips have been shipped to China and Hong Kong.

That could be a sign that H200 shipments to China have restarted, potentially boosting Nvidia’s sales. Since last year, Nvidia has excluded any potential Chinese AI chip revenue from its forecasts.

In Asia, investors will look out for key economic data from China later in the day, including its second-quarter GDP, retail sales and investment numbers.

— Lim Hui Jie

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