News Recap • Week 27 2025

Check the news below and make sure to visit my latest Market Recap as well.

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Macro

• Mon Canada rescinded its 3% digital services tax set to take effect this week. The move came after President Donald Trump said on Friday last week that the US would terminate its trade talks with Canada due to the new tax. If implemented, it would have applied to both domestic and foreign tech companies, therefore hitting the US particularly hard. (CNBC)
• Mon The UK economy grew by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2025, confirming a preliminary estimate. It was the fastest quarterly growth rate since the same quarter last year. (Reuters)
• Mon President Donald Trump signed a new Executive Order to end most sanctions imposed on Syria. (DeepNewz)
• Mon China’s factory activity unexpectedly returned to growth in June as the Caixin/S&P Global manufacturing index came in at 50.4 in June. It rebounded from 48.3 in May and beat expectations for 49.0. (CNBC)
• Tue Eurozone inflation edged up from 1.9% to 2% in June, exactly on target and in line with expectations. Core inflation was unchanged at 2.3% while the closely watched services inflation ticked up from 3.2% to 3.3%. (CNBC)
• Tue Trump expressed some frustration with Japan’s approach to trade negotiations with the US, but also underscored that he hopes to reach a fair agreement and would love to have Japan as a trade partner for many years to come. (Reuters)
• Tue Jerome Powell said that the Federal Reserve would have lowered interest rates this year if it weren’t for President Donald Trump’s tariff policy and the uncertainty that came along with it. (CNBC)
• Wed Private payrolls lost 33,000 jobs in June according to the latest ADP report released on Wednesday. This was a massive miss compared to the expected increase of 100,000. The market reaction was muted though. (CNBC)
• Wed The US government rescinded its export restrictions on chip-design software to China. This was announced in three separate statements by semiconductor software designers Siemens AG, Synopsys, and Cadence. (CNBC)
• Wed President Donald Trump announced a new trade deal with Vietnam, including a 20% tariff on Vietnamese goods. (CNBC)
• Thu US nonfarm payrolls increased by 147,000 in June, beating estimates for 110,000. The numbers for both April and May were revised higher as well. Furthermore, the unemployment rate actually declined from 4.2% to 4.1% while analysts had expected a small increase to 4.3%. Investors liked the data and sent both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to new all-time highs on Thursday. (CNBC)
• Thu The much-debated One Big Beautiful Bill got voted through the House on Thursday after passing the Senate earlier in the week, both with the slimmest-possible margin. The US is already running a massive budget deficit and a huge debt load but the bill is expected to make matters even worse. The administration’s stated goal, however, is to outgrow the debt and introduce some austerity measures from 2027 onward. The latter is likely to be reconsidered by that time though. (CNBC)
• Thu Bank of Japan board member Hajime Takata warned that the bank will continue hiking rates after a temporary pause. (Bloomberg)
• Fri China is reportedly planning nationwide cash handouts to families as an incentive for couples to have children. This is in stark contrast to the one-child policy that aimed to lower the birthrate from 1979 to 2016. (Bloomberg)
• Sat President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he has signed letters to 12 different countries, outlining the tariff levels they would face on goods they export to the US. The letters will be sent out on Monday as “take it or leave it” offers. (Reuters)
• Sat Elon Musk announced on X that he will create a new political party after his poll showed a large majority in favor. This comes after his falling out with President Donald Trump and harsh criticism of the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’. A new filing with the Federal Election Commission confirmed on Sunday that Elon Musk’s America Party (AMEP) is now official. (Reuters)
• Sun US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that the formerly-announced import tariffs will be reinstated on August 1, if new trade deals aren’t in place before then. This is in effect a 3-week extension of the July 9 deadline previously announced. (DeepNewz)

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Other

• Mon Mark Zuckerberg announced the creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs which will be run by some of the company’s most recent, and extremely costly, hires. (CNBC)
• Mon Robinhood announced a massive expansion into blockchain technology and crypto. The new initiatives include tokenized US stocks and ETFs for European customers, crypto staking in the US, and a new layer 2 blockchain. Robinhood stock surged 12.77% on Monday after the news and touched a new all-time high above $100 per share on Wednesday. (CNBC)
• Mon Renowned Wall Street strategist Tom Lee was appointed chairman of the board of directors of bitcoin miner BitMine Immersion Technologies. Simultaneously, BitMine announced a $250 million private placement to buy ether (the native currency of the Ethereum blockchain) and make it its primary treasury reserve asset. In other words, BitMine aims to be the Strategy of Ethereum. Shares of BitMine soared more than 3,000% this week. (CNBC)
• Tue Design software company Figma officially filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. This comes after a $20 billion takeover agreement with Adobe was scrapped due to regulatory concerns in the UK. (CNBC)
• Tue Elon Musk’s xAI raised $5 billion in debt alongside a separate $5 billion strategic equity investment. (Reuters)
• Tue Chinese AI chip startups Moore Threads and MetaX plan to go public on hopes that US export curbs will spur demand. (Reuters)
• Wed Tesla reported around 384,000 vehicle deliveries in Q2, a 14% drop from a year ago and the second straight quarterly decline. Shares rallied almost 5% after the report though, recovering most of Tuesday’s plunge. (CNBC)
• Wed Microsoft announced plans to cut around 4% of its workforce, or roughly 9,000 employees, in an effort to cut costs amid massive AI spend. Investors responded to the news by sending MSFT shares up by 1.58% on Thursday to a new daily and weekly record close. (Reuters)
• Wed Coinbase acquired token management platform Liquifi. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed. (Yahoo Finance)
• Thu Apple’s iPhone sales rose 8% in Q2 this year compared to a year earlier. This is the first time Apple has recorded growth in China since Q2 of 2023. (CNBC)
• Fri President Donald Trump said on Friday that he will begin talking with China on Monday or Tuesday about a possible TikTok deal. This came after he said on Monday that he has a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy TikTok. (Reuters)