Canada’s retail landscape is entering a new chapter, according to some experts, BNNBloomberg reported. After a year of stubborn inflation, shifting consumer priorities and retail innovation, 2026 could see significant change in how Canadians shop. Donna Smith, director of Toronto Metropolitan University’s (TMU’s) School of Retail Management, says the turbulence of 2025 reshaped both spending habits and business models across the sector. “We seen inflation on a number of fronts,” the professor said in an interview with CTVNews.ca in November.

For activist hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, Nicolás Maduro’s swift exit comes at an auspicious time, the Wall Street Journal reported. A U.S. judge in November backed a roughly $6 billion bid by Elliott for Citgo Petroleum, the refining firm owned by Venezuela’s state-run company Petróleos de Venezuela, known as PdVSA, in a forced sale to satisfy creditors. Citgo, based in Houston, owns a U.S. network of refineries, pipelines and terminals that some analysts have said could be worth between $11 billion and $13 billion. The deal was controversial in Venezuela.

An American oil and gas giant is preparing to mothball one of Britain’s last remaining oil refineries after buying the business out of administration, The Telegraph reported. The Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire, one of the last five major oil refineries in the country, will not restart standalone operations after it was sold to Phillips 66 on Monday. The Texas-based oil and gas giant said that the site’s limited size meant it was “not viable in current form”, instead claiming it would integrate some smaller parts of the site into its nearby Humber refinery.

President Donald Trump signed a New Year's Eve proclamation delaying increased tariffs on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities for a year, citing ongoing trade talks, the Associated Press reported. Trump's order signed Wednesday keeps in place a 25% tariff he imposed in September on those goods, but delays for another year a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture and 50% tariff on kitchen cabinets and vanities. The increases, which were set to take effect Jan.

Italy's foreign ministry said on Thursday the United States had sharply lowered proposed duties ​on several Italian pasta makers following a reassessment of ‌their U.S. activities, Reuters reported. In October, the United States said that 13 Italian pasta companies ‌would face an extra 92% duty - on top of the regular 15% rate on most EU imports - from January 2026, accusing two producers in particular, La Molisana and Garofalo, of selling pasta ⁠at unfairly low prices. However, ‌after a review, the U.S.

Mexico's sweeping new tariffs on imports from mostly Asian countries are ​set to take effect on Thursday, in a ‌move that will largely align Mexico with the U.S. as the neighboring countries ‌place significant barriers on Chinese imports, Reuters reported. Approved by Congress in early December, the measure raises tariffs - most up to 35% - on countries without free trade agreements with Mexico, including China, India, South ⁠Korea, Thailand and Indonesia. ‌China is expected to bear the greatest impact.

U.S. President Donald Trump is set to launch a wave of new tariffs based on alternative legislation if the Supreme Court rules against his current levies, diplomats and trade lawyers say, the Financial Times reported. The US Supreme Court is poised to rule as soon as January on the legality of the president’s use of emergency powers to hammer trading partners with tariffs, leaving the centrepiece of his economic policy hanging in the balance.

With just days remaining in 2025, the wave of airline bankruptcies affecting small and mid-sized carriers shows no sign of slowing, AirGuide.info reported. Over the past several months, multiple airlines across Europe and North America have collapsed or entered insolvency proceedings. Icelandic low-cost carrier PLAY Airlines and Sweden’s Braathens Aviation both shut down operations during the fall after filing for bankruptcy within weeks of each other. Flag carrier Air Albania has also suspended all flights since early December, following Turkish Airlines’ decision to sell its 49% stake.

Venezuela started shutting wells in a region that holds the world’s largest deposits of oil in the face of a blockade by the Trump administration meant to financially squeeze the nation, Bloomberg News reported. Petroleos de Venezuela SA began shuttering wells in the Orinoco Belt on Dec. 28 as the state-run refiner ran out of storage space and inventory swelled. PDVSA aims to reduce Orinoco Belt production by at least 25% to 500,000 barrels a day, the people said. The decrease represents a 15% cut of Venezuela’s overall output of 1.1 million barrels a day.