Donald Trump faces fresh hurdles in his push to secure major investment pledges from Asian allies, after South Korea said Washington’s terms were unrealistic and a contender to lead Japan’s ruling party hinted at the possibility of reviewing the agreement, Bloomberg News reported. “We are not able to pay $350 billion in cash,” South Korea’s National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac said in a Channel A News television interview on Saturday evening, referring to Seoul’s investment pledge with Washington.

The U.S. on Monday cracked down on companies in China and other countries that use subsidiaries or other foreign affiliates to get around curbs on chipmaking equipment and other goods and technology, Reuters reported. The Commerce Department issued a new rule expanding its restricted export list, known as the Entity List, to automatically include subsidiaries owned 50 percent or more by a company on the list, according to a posting in the U.S. Federal Register. The action greatly increases the number of companies that require licenses to receive American goods and services.

The Bank of Mexico cut its benchmark interest rate to a three-year low Thursday as expected and said further reductions are possible, while it still sees inflation returning to its target next year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The five-member board of governors voted 4-1 to lower the overnight interest-rate target by a quarter of a percentage point to 7.50% in a 10th consecutive cut that brought the rate to its lowest level since June 2022. Deputy Gov. Jonathan Heath voted to keep the rate at 7.75%.

India said on Friday its officials held “constructive” talks with U.S. counterparts during a visit to Washington this week, and both sides agreed to continue discussions aimed at concluding a mutually beneficial trade deal soon, Reuters reported. "Both sides exchanged views on possible contours of the deal," the commerce ministry said in a statement. Read more.

Canada's monthly gross domestic product rebounded from three months of contraction to grow by 0.2% in July as mining, manufacturing and wholesale trade boosted growth, data showed on Friday, Reuters reported. Canada's GDP had shrunk in the second quarter by 1.6% annualized and economists were closely tracking the July GDP growth figure to get an indication of whether there will be a contraction in the third quarter. Two consecutive quarters of contraction are considered a technical recession.

Factory activity in Canada looks to have stalled, with an early estimate of sales showing a pullback in August following a recovery the previous two months, the Wall Street Journal reported. Manufacturing sales fell an estimated 1.5% from a month prior, Statistics Canada said on Wednesday. The largest declines were seen in transportation equipment and food, the data agency said. There have been signs of stability for Canadian manufacturers that have been hit hard by the sharp shift in the U.S.’s approach to trade and frequently changing import tariffs.

Mexico's headline inflation sped up in the first half of September, broadly in line with market expectations, heading closer to the upper limit of the central bank's target, Reuters reported. Consumer prices were up 3.74% in the 12 months through mid-September, statistics agency INEGI said, speeding from a prior figure of 3.49%. While the market expects inflation in Latin America's second-largest economy to reach 3.9% by the end of the year, Banxico, as the central bank is known, targets an inflation rate of 3%, plus or minus a percentage point.

British Columbia Finance Minister Brenda Bailey says that government’s plan to find $1.5 billion in savings over three years won’t be enough to “start bending the curve towards balance” as the province forecasts an unprecedent deficit of $11.6 billion, BNN Bloomberg reported.

In the days leading up to his announcement of a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick summoned to the White House a group of President Trump’s allies from anti-immigration groups to sell them on his idea, the Wall Street Journal reported. Lutnick, who is personally close to Trump, had for months been working on a different pet project: a “gold card” that would provide a path to citizenship to wealthy foreigners willing to pay $1 million.