Highlights for this morning: Trump imposes new duties, Apple pleases investors and the debut of Figma

Apple reported record revenue of $94 billion and a 13% increase in iPhone sales, while stepping up investments in artificial intelligence. Amazon beat earnings and revenue expectations, but the stock sagged due to a weak outlook for its AWS cloud business. Figma debuted on the stock exchange with a rise of more than 250% to its offering price, demonstrating a resurgence of investor interest in new tech offerings. These and other topics are in our review of key events for the morning of August 1.

The White House on Thursday night unveiled new details of President Trump's plan to radically overhaul U.S. trade policy. The signed executive order imposes new tariffs ranging from 10% to 40% on virtually all of the country's global trading partners, reports Yahoo Finance.

What stands out is the increase in duty on Canada - from 25% to 35%. The measure will take effect as early as Friday and is linked to a separate decree to combat drug trafficking. For the rest of the countries, the new tariffs will take effect seven days later, rather than from midnight on Friday as previously anticipated. In addition, there is a delay for goods loaded before Aug. 7 and arriving in the U.S. before Oct. 5 - they will be subject to the previous, lower rates.

Under the new decree, India will face a 25% duty, while Taiwan will face a 20% duty. The European Union, South Korea and Japan will be subject to a 15% rate. Southeast Asian countries - under 19-20%. The UK has retained the current rate of 10%. For Mexico, the tariffs have been left at 25% for now - Trump called it the result of a "very successful" phone call.

For dozens of other, smaller trading partners, tariffs were raised from 10% to 15%. However, some countries with trade surpluses with the U.S. retained the 10 percent level - contrary to Trump's previous statements about 15 percent as the new "floor rate." The executive order also includes an anti-transshipping provision: goods suspected of circumventing duties through third countries could be subject to an additional tariff of 40%, although a specific definition of violations has not yet been given.

Apple reported strong results for its fiscal third quarter, beating analysts' expectations on key metrics. The company's revenue grew 10%, the fastest pace since the end of 2021. iPhone sales rose 13% to $44.58 billion, helped by strong demand for the new iPhone 16 lineup. Total revenue was $94.04 billion and earnings per share reached $1.57, beating the consensus forecast.

The Mac division showed the highest growth of nearly 15%, with revenue of $8.05 billion. The services division, including subscriptions, iCloud and the App Store, brought in $27.42 billion, up 13% from a year earlier. Sales of iPads and wearable electronics were down 8%. In China, despite a decline in activity in the last half of the year, Apple's revenue grew by 4%, helped by government subsidies.

CEO Tim Cook said the company is significantly increasing its investment in artificial intelligence and integrating it into products, platforms and business processes. Apple has $133 billion in free cash and has already acquired about seven companies this year, although none of the deals were "large" in dollar terms, Cook said. AI devices will not supplant the iPhone, he said, but will be an extension of it: "It's hard to imagine a world without an iPhone." Apple expects revenue growth of 5-9% in the next quarter, despite additional costs due to duties.

Amazon released its second-quarter financial results after the close of trading on Thursday, beating analysts' expectations for both earnings and revenue. The company also provided an upbeat outlook for the third quarter with expected revenue of $174 billion to $179.5 billion, while the market was expecting $173.2 billion, reports Yahoo Finance.

Nevertheless, Amazon shares fell more than 2% after the report - investors were disappointed with the results of the AWS cloud division, which were weaker than those of rivals Google and Microsoft. Third-quarter operating profit is expected to be $15.5-20.5 billion, while analysts were expecting $19.5 billion.

Amazon earned $1.68 per share on revenue of $167.7 billion in the second quarter, while the market expected $1.33 and $162.1 billion, respectively. By comparison, a year ago, earnings per share were $1.26 and revenue was $147.9 billion. AWS revenue came in at $30.8 billion, slightly above the $30.7 billion forecast and up significantly from $26.2 billion a year earlier. Amazon's online store sales totaled $61.4 billion.

Against this backdrop, competitors are showing acceleration in the cloud segment: Microsoft's Azure revenue reached $75 billion, which helped the company break the $4 trillion mark in terms of market capitalization. Alphabet reported a 32% increase in cloud revenue and a 38% increase in its order book. Google's search business also beat expectations, growing revenue by 12% year-over-year, the publication recalls. Wedbush analysts note that consumer demand was generally stronger than expected despite macroeconomic uncertainty.

Figma's stock began trading Thursday at $85 a share and closed above $117, more than 250% above the IPO price set at $33, reports Yahoo Finance. The company's market capitalization exceeded $45 billion at the end of the first trading day, with trading halted several times due to volatility.

Figma's IPO process showed strong investor interest in new offerings: the company priced above the expected $30-32 range and raised about $1.2 billion by selling 36.94 million shares (12.47 million from the company itself and 24.46 million from existing shareholders).

Figma has become another technology star amid the revitalization of the IPO market in 2025 - earlier similar success was accompanied by Circle and CoreWeave. The company previously rejected a deal to sell to Adobe for $20 billion due to antitrust objections from European regulators. Figma's revenue grew by 46% year-on-year, and its solutions are used by more than 75% of the companies on the Forbes 2000 list.

Figma's successful offering reinforced the positive trend in the IPO market, which is recovering from the April uncertainty caused by tariff policy, the publication said. 

- Japan's broad Topix index was unchanged at the open.

- The benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.7%.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index fell 1.7 percent and the Kosdaq small-company index fell 2.1 percent. 

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was falling 0.9 percent.

- Futures on the S&P 500 were down 0.2 percent, the Nasdaq 100 was down 0.3 percent and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were unchanged.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor