CNBC Daily Open: Rubio reassures Europe while U.S. CPI calms investors

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided comforting words for Europe on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference.

“We want Europe to be strong,” he said. “We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve, for us, as history’s great reminder, that ultimately, our destiny is, and will always be, intertwined with yours.”

That’s a stark contrast from U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s criticism of European democracy during the previous year’s security conference, and his observation then that a schism had emerged between the continent and America.

“The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United State of America,” Vance said.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that Rubio’s speech emphasized the importance of the U.S. and Europe working together again — as both successfully did so in the past.

Elsewhere, the U.S. consumer price index on Friday stateside also provided some balm. Consumer inflation for January rose 2.4% on a year-on-year basis, lower than the 2.7% in December, and returning to where it was after President Donald Trump fired off tariffs globally in April 2025. Core CPI came in at 2.5%, the lowest since April 2021. Economists were expecting 2.5% for both figures.

“This should be welcome news for markets, and the presumptive incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh,” said Phil Blancato, Osaic chief market strategist. “This is only one month’s worth of data, but if the trend continues it should pave a path for lower interest rates and reined in inflation.”

U.S. markets, however, on Friday made only tentative steps in either direction, perhaps still unsure of where to move amid uncertainty about the effects of AI on companies. All major indexes ended the week in the red. U.S. markets will be closed Monday for Presidents’ Day.

— CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Pia Singh and Jeff Cox contributed to this report.

Japan’s economic expansion disappoints. Fourth-quarter gross domestic product rose 0.1% from the previous three months, missing expectations of a 0.4% expansion in a Reuters poll of economists. However, it reverses the third quarter’s 0.7% contraction, meaning that Japan’s economy avoided a technical recession.

Cryptocurrency payments to suspected human trafficking syndicates surged 85% in 2025, with hundreds of millions of transactions traced on public blockchains, according to a Chainalysis report. The blockchain analytics firm said most of the activity was linked to an expanding criminal ecosystem in Southeast Asia.

TikTok’s U.S. joint venture sees it user base stabilize. Early narratives of a mass user exodus prompted by service outages and censorship concerns now appear overstated, according to new figures.

The S&P 500 was mostly flat, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked up 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.22% on Friday. Asia-Pacific markets were mostly closed on Monday for the Lunar New Year holiday.

[PRO] The U.S. dollar is losing its safe-haven status because of risks in AI stocks, said George Saravelos, global head of FX research at Deutsche Bank. Opportunities outside the U.S. are also driving investors away from the greenback.

Markets brace for more AI noise and ‘scare trading’

AI disruption jitters have ripped through global stock markets over the last couple of weeks, with sectors across the spectrum ending up in the crosshairs of investors looking to bet on which industry could be upended by the inevitable wave of agentic AI.

There will almost certainly be more of these moments this week, as some of the biggest names in AI take to the stage at the AI Impact Summit in India. Headliners include Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Microsoft’s Brad Smith, Mistral AI co-Founder Arthur Mensch and Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang.

— Leonie Kidd