New York, Feb 21, 2026, 10:52 EST — Market closed
- Amazon shares ended Friday in positive territory after U.S. stocks moved on a Supreme Court decision overturning President Donald Trump’s global tariffs.
- Trump has since called for a temporary 10% tariff on all global imports, set to kick in next week—leaving plenty of trade policy uncertainty hanging over the market.
- Amazon’s AWS cloud division said a December outage affecting internal AI tools only hit one service in just one region.
Amazon.com Inc finished Friday’s session up 2.6% at $210.11, reversing the week’s final close into positive territory as tariff headlines fueled buying across import-heavy stocks.
U.S. stocks surged late after the Supreme Court tossed out Trump’s broad tariffs, sending the major indexes up into the finish. Tim Ghriskey at Ingalls & Snyder pointed out the decision might “benefit corporate bottom lines, corporate earnings,” though he added that what policymakers do next remains key. Reuters
Amazon straddles the import equation, handling its own inventory while also giving millions of third-party vendors—many reliant on overseas suppliers—a sales platform. The tariff decision, Rick Meckler of Cherry Lane Investments pointed out, injects “confusion,” something he says could rattle markets for a while. Reuters
Trump wasted no time after the ruling, slapping a temporary 10% tariff on nearly all imports worldwide for 150 days beginning Tuesday, using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. He also pushed for new probes that could pave the way for additional tariffs down the line. The order kept exemptions already carved out for certain items, like select aerospace goods and products from Mexico and Canada that meet USMCA requirements.
The Supreme Court found that Trump overstepped his bounds with the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a statute from 1977 designed for national crises. What happens with refunds from prior collections remains unclear—Trump has indicated that particular fight could drag through the courts for years.
Investors had to parse a set of fresh U.S. numbers Friday, with the Commerce Department’s BEA reporting a fourth-quarter GDP gain of just 1.4% annualized—pointing to a marked slowdown late last year. Inflation, meanwhile, came in stronger than hoped: the PCE price index climbed 0.4% for December and stood 2.9% above its year-earlier level. Excluding food and energy, the “core” PCE figure was up 3.0% from a year ago. PCE remains the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric. Bureau of Economic Analysis
Elsewhere, Amazon’s AWS found itself under renewed scrutiny following reports of two AI-related incidents in December. According to a spokesperson speaking with Reuters, one outage hit a cost-management function—just “a single service”—and was chalked up to user error. Amazon characterized the event as “extremely limited,” with the disruption confined to one of AWS’s mainland China regions. Reuters
Anything tied to AWS or spending plans tends to draw a sharp reaction from investors. Amazon, pointing to the AI arms race underway among tech giants, laid out a $200 billion capital expenditure forecast for 2026 earlier this month. That “capex” number—shorthand for big-ticket outlays like data centers and hardware—was confirmed by the company. Reuters
The tariff relief story isn’t straightforward. Penn-Wharton Budget Model economists put the potential refund exposure at over $175 billion in collected tariffs. Still, the White House has made clear it plans to look for alternative legal strategies to maintain tariff pressure on trading partners.
Looking to the coming week, Tuesday marks the launch of the 10% tariff, with traders eyeing details around Customs procedures for collections and potential refunds. Nvidia reports quarterly earnings Wednesday, Feb. 25—a bellwether for AI infrastructure appetite that has fueled moves in cloud names and big tech, Amazon included.
