Earlier this month, President Trump found the latest pressure point to extend his leverage over Canada: a new bridge connecting the country to the United States that is expected to open this year, the New York Times reported. Trump threatened to block the opening, just hours after the billionaire owner of a competing U.S.-Canada bridge met with Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary. It wasn’t that the president was particularly passionate about the new bridge.

Higher U.S. tariffs are not the main reason for a surge in Chinese exports to the eurozone, Africa and other parts of Asia, according to economists at the European Central Bank, the Wall Street Journal reported. While President Trump last year hiked tariffs on imports from countries around the world, the duties faced by Chinese businesses are higher than most other countries. That has led to a sharp fall in Chinese exports to the world’s largest economy.

Cuba's Varadero peninsula is a postcard of a tropical paradise: turquoise waters, powder-white sand and palm trees, Reuters reported. But the resort's beaches, once crowded with tourists enjoying the sand and sunshine, began to clear out shortly after Cuba announced on February 8 it was running out of jet fuel. And they may not be coming back anytime soon. A Reuters survey of hotel and travel companies, airlines and on-island tourism industry workers found virtually every sector suddenly crippled by the fuel shortage.

Statistics Canada says lower prices at the pump and easing shelter inflation helped rein in the pressure facing consumers in January, BNN Bloomberg reported. The agency said Tuesday that the annual rate of inflation ticked down to 2.3 per cent last month. Economists had expected inflation to hold steady at 2.4 per cent. StatCan said gas prices were 16.7 per cent lower year-over-year in January, largely thanks to the end of the consumer carbon price in April. That decline helped offset food inflation, which accelerated to 7.3 per cent annually in January.

The Trump administration reached a trade deal with Taiwan on Thursday, with Taiwan agreeing to remove or reduce 99% of its tariff barriers, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative said, the Associated Press reported. The agreement comes as the U.S. remains reliant on Taiwan for its production of computer chips, the exporting of which contributed to a trade imbalance of nearly $127 billion during the first 11 months of 2025, according to the Census Bureau. Most of Taiwan’s exports to the U.S. will be taxed at a 15% rate, the USTR's office said.

The central Alberta community of Gibbons’ status as a town hangs in the balance as a series of bad financial decisions have jeopardized its future and left it hurtling towards insolvency, according to the town’s mayor and council, CBC.ca reported. Town officials, including interim chief administrative officer Tim Duhamel, presented information about the town’s financial situation to Sturgeon County’s mayor and council on Tuesday morning. “We're in a terrible situation right now, unprecedented for sure,” Gibbons Mayor Rick Henderson said.

China's chief trade negotiator Li Chenggang met Mexico's Deputy Economy Minister Vidal Llerenas in Beijing on Monday, in the first face-to-face talks since Mexico imposed higher tariffs on Chinese imports, drawing warnings from Beijing, Reuters reported. The two countries conducted in-depth exchanges on bilateral economic and trade relations and other issues, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Mexico announced in December steep tariff increases on China and other countries without free trade agreements with Mexico - most up to 35%.

The GOP-led U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution on Wednesday designed to roll back President Trump’s tariffs on Canada, as a half-dozen Republicans joined Democrats in rebuking the administration’s signature economic policy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The House voted 219-211 to approve a Democratic resolution that would invalidate the emergency declaration that underpins Trump’s tariffs on Canada.

The European Union must simplify its regulations to make the bloc more competitive against the likes of the United States and China, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said ahead of summits of EU political ‌and business leaders, Reuters reported. EU growth has been persistently lower than that of the United States over the past two decades, with EU productivity and innovation, ‌particularly in fields like AI, falling short. "Let me take the U.S. example again. One financial system, one financial capital," von der Leyen said on Wednesday.