The United States Trade Representative's (USTR) office said on Tuesday it opposed Canada's plan to enact a digital services tax (DST) and urged Canada to abandon plans for such a step, Reuters reported. "The United States urges Canada to abandon any plans for a unilateral measure and instead redouble its commitment to the rapid implementation of Pillar One of the October 8 OECD/G20 agreement and the negotiation of a multilateral convention", the USTR office said in a statement.

When Honduran President Xiomara Castro sent the bond market into a tailspin just minutes after taking office last month, it all seemed like some big misunderstanding, Bloomberg News reported. That same day, Pedro Barquero, Castro’s economy minister, rushed to clarify that she had meant to say in her inaugural address that the government should “refinance” its debts, not “restructure” them. This was plausible enough. Politicians not steeped in the intricacies of high finance have been mixing those two words up for decades.

Canadian retail sales most likely rose 2.4% in January from December, preliminary data from Statistics Canada showed on Friday, following on a 1.8% decline in December as consumers stayed home amid concerns over the Omicron coronavirus variant, Reuters reported. Retail sales totaled C$57.05 billion ($44.91 billion) in December, down from C$58.06 billion in November. For full year 2021, retail sales came in at C$674 billion, an all-time record, Statscan said. In December, sales were down in eight of 11 subsectors, representing 41.7% of retail trade.

Canadian banks have begun cutting off financial services to people linked with ongoing anti-vaccine-mandate demonstrations in Canada, an unprecedented use of financial power following an emergency order from the government, the Wall Street Journal reported. With protesters occupying the streets of Canada’s capital, Ottawa, and several border crossings blockaded until recently, the government has used emergency powers to put the nation’s financial institutions in the unusual position of using their anti-money-laundering and sanctions expertise to crack down on banking customers.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has received approval from an Ontario court of a C$125 million ($98 million) settlement to resolve claims in a class-action lawsuit alleging misrepresentations made by the bank and its former executives in 2007 and 2008, the plaintiffs' lawyers said on Friday, Reuters reported. Misrepresentations were found in CIBC's quarterly financial filings and public oral statements about the Canadian bank's investments in the United States and its exposure to U.S.

A group of Credito Real SAB bondholders has engaged Los Angeles-based investment bank Houlihan Lokey Inc. to help advise them in restructuring talks with the Mexican shadow lender, Bloomberg News reported. Credito Real has begun to reach out to bondholders and is expected to begin restructuring talks with them shortly, one of the people said. Doubleline Capital LP is among the firms with a sizable position in Credito Real’s bonds, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Canada roped in banks to help cut funding to protesters against COVID-19 mandates this week, but the requested speed and broad scope of the measures leaves financial institutions to their own devices in enforcing most of them, industry-watchers said, Reuters reported. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday invoked the rarely used Emergencies Act, imposing sweeping measures that require banks to freeze accounts linked to the protest without court orders, ask insurers to suspend coverage on vehicles used in blockades, and bring crowdfunding platforms under terror financing oversight.

Expected interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve put "limits" on Mexico's monetary policy, Bank of Mexico Deputy Governor Jonathan Heath said on Thursday at a business summit, Reuters reported. Due to the close relationship between the U.S. and Mexican economies, the Bank of Mexico's monetary policy decisions could not go counter to those of the Fed, he said. Heath said that Mexico is currently seeing low levels of private investment, hampering an economic recovery.

In a highly unusual move, the Canadian government on Monday invoked a series of emergency powers that include limits on public gatherings in a bid to end disruptive demonstrations in the capital city and along the Canada-U.S. border, the Wall Street Journal reported. The measures, announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, represent one of the most striking responses by a Western government against protests by those opposing Covid-19 vaccine mandates and social restrictions in response to the pandemic, and immediately drew fire from some Canadian leaders and civil-liberties groups.

Mexico’s financial industry will need to embrace transparency and accounting disclosure to rebuild the confidence of investors rattled by Credito Real SAB’s missed bond payment, according to Moody’s Investors Service, Bloomberg News reported. The non-bank lender’s failure to repay holders of 170 million in Swiss franc ($184 million) bonds last week will be a drag for market peers -- especially those that have limited financial flexibility or bondholder protection, analysts Felipe Carvallo and Luis Fernando Baza said in a report.