Top stories for the morning: EU prepares duties on Boeing and bourbon, a newcomer to the S&P 500

The EU has approved a second list of potential retaliatory measures against the United States - duties on U.S. goods worth €72 billion, including Boeing airplanes, cars, bourbon, agricultural products and medical equipment. This is in response to Donald Trump's announced duties against the EU. At the same time, startup Cognition acquired Windsurf, whose team had previously partially moved to Google amid a growing "war for AI talent". In addition, Trade Desk entered the S&P 500 index, taking the place of Ansys and causing its shares to rise 14%. About these and other topics - in our review of key events by the morning of July 15.

The European Union has approved a second list of retaliatory measures targeting €72 billion ($84 billion) worth of U.S. goods - including Boeing planes, cars and bourbon - in case Brussels decides to respond to escalating trade tensions with Washington, wrote Bloomberg, citing a 206-page document prepared by the European Commission.

Additional duties may also be imposed on engineering products, chemicals and plastics, medical products, electrical equipment, wines and other agricultural products;

The list originally included €95 billion worth of U.S. goods, but was reduced after consultations with companies and EU countries. Countries must give formal approval for it to be finalized. Representatives of the European Commission did not respond to a request for comment.

The set of measures represents the EU's response to the "mirror" duties of 20% on most goods imposed earlier by President Donald Trump, as well as additional duties of 25% on cars and auto parts. The overall rate was later temporarily reduced to 10% during negotiations. Over the weekend, Trump said he would raise duties on EU goods to 30% on August 1. EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič called the measure "effectively prohibitive" for transatlantic trade. 

Artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced the acquisition of the assets of Windsurf, a developer of AI programming tools that just days earlier lost its CEO and a number of key employees to Google, Bloomberg reports.

Cognition announced on July 14 that it is acquiring Windsurf's intellectual property, product, trademark, brand and hiring its staff, but the terms of the deal were not disclosed. This is the latest development in the unfolding "war for talent" in the AI industry, where companies such as Meta, Google and OpenAI are actively competing for the best engineers and researchers.

OpenAI was previously in talks to buy Windsurf for about $3 billion, but the deal fell through. On July 11, Google announced that it had hired Windsurf co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan. According to CNBC, Google paid $2.4 billion in royalties and compensation.

"Every new Cognition employee will be on equal footing with current employees," Cognition CEO Scott Wu wrote in a letter to employees Monday. - From this day forward, we work as a unified and cohesive team. We have the same boat, and we're all in it together."

Cognition did not respond to CNBC's request for comment. Windsurf referred journalists to Cognition.

U.S. stock markets rose on Monday, with the Nasdaq ending the day at a new record high as Wall Street largely ignored renewed trade tensions and focused on the upcoming inflation report and the first second-quarter earnings data, reported Yahoo Finance.

The S&P 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended a mostly sluggish trading session up about 0.1% and 0.2%, respectively. The technology sector-focused Nasdaq Composite Index added about 0.3%, setting another all-time high at the close.

Meanwhile, bitcoin surpassed the $123,000 mark for the first time as investors were enthusiastic about the start of "Crypto Week" in the US Congress, but fell back below $120,000 later in the day. Shares of cryptocurrency-related companies also posted gains as the House of Representatives considers three key bills related to the crypto industry.

Shares of The Trade Desk rose 14% in extended trading session on Monday after it was revealed that the digital advertising company will join the S&P 500 index, reports CNBC.

S&P Global has announced that Trade Desk will replace software developer Ansys from Friday. Earlier on Monday, Synopsys said it had "received approval from all necessary regulators" to complete its $35 billion acquisition of Ansys, which was announced last year, and expects to close on or around Thursday.

Last week, monitoring software company Datadog replaced Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 as part of a quarterly rebalancing of the index. Most changes in the composition of the S&P 500 occur precisely during the scheduled rebalancing. However, if a merger or acquisition closes, a company can be removed from the index off-schedule, the channel explains.

Trade Desk's market capitalization declined significantly in 2025, with shares falling 36%. This followed a 63% increase in 2024 and a 61% increase in 2023.

Shares of companies often rise when included in major indexes, as fund managers have to revise the structure of their portfolios to reflect the changes, the channel notes. With a market capitalization of $37 billion, the company corresponds to the average level in the composition of the S&P 500 index.

Trade Desk was founded in 2009 by CEO Jeff Green and David Pickles. The company had an IPO on the Nasdaq in 2016. It is headquartered in Ventura, California, and had more than 3,522 employees as of December 31. Trade Desk's competitors include giants such as Amazon and Google.

Asia-Pacific markets began the trading day on Tuesday with multidirectional dynamics.

- As of 8:10 a.m. Singapore time (8:10 p.m. Monday U.S. Eastern Time), Japan's Nikkei 225 index was unchanged, while the broader Topix index added 0.3 percent.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index fell 0.3%, while the Kosdaq small-company index rose 0.3%.

- In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 index was up 0.7 percent.

- Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average index were down 0.06% at the open. Futures on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 fell by 0.04% and 0.03%, respectively.

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