North America

Telecommunications company Mitel Networks Corp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas late Sunday, seeking to complete a restructuring that will eliminate $1.15 billion in debt, Reuters reported. Mitel entered bankruptcy with $1.3 billion in debt. The company's debt has hampered its ability to quickly adjust to changing demands as businesses shifted to remote and hybrid work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to court documents filed on Monday.

Chinese tariffs as high as 15% on a range of US agricultural goods take effect Monday, potentially exacerbating a trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies, Bloomberg News reported. The levies announced last week are far-reaching, touching commodities from beef and poultry to grains. Along with the tariffs, Beijing also said it would completely suspend soybean imports from three US entities and also halted purchases of American logs. Beijing’s move came after the Trump administration doubled a blanket tariff on all Chinese exports.

Canada will keep in place its retaliatory tariffs against US-made products as long as President Donald Trump persists with a trade war, said Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister-designate, Bloomberg News reported. “The Canadian government is rightly retaliating with our own tariffs,” Carney said during his victory speech Sunday.

Hudson’s Bay, the Canadian department store chain founded in 1670, is preparing for a bankruptcy filing within days, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The chain became a stand-alone business following its December 2024 deal to spin off its Saks Fifth Avenue subsidiary through a combination with Neiman Marcus Group. As part of that transaction, Saks acquired Neiman Marcus for $2.65 billion, establishing a new entity called Saks Global, which also owns Bergdorf Goodman. Saks Global isn’t expected to file for bankruptcy itself, only Hudson’s Bay will.

President Donald Trump said that he may implement reciprocal tariffs on Canadian lumber and dairy products as soon as Friday, threatening again to disrupt trade with a major US partner and reigniting a fight over two industries that have long been the center of cross-border disputes, Bloomberg News reported. “Canada has been ripping us off for years on tariffs for lumber and for dairy products. 250% — nobody ever talks about that — 250% tariff — which is taking advantage of our farmers. So that’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said Friday in the Oval Office.

Canada's unemployment in February was unchanged from the prior month and new job additions was only marginally up, data showed on Friday, showing early signs of an impact of uncertainty around U.S. tariffs on hiring decisions of companies, Reuters reported. The unemployment rate for February was at 6.6% and the economy added a net of 1,100 jobs, Statistics Canada said. "I think the market will largely look past this one for a couple reasons," said Doug Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets. "First of all, the big story now is the trade war.

On the night of Feb. 21, Ben Zhou, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, logged on to his computer to approve what appeared to be a routine transaction. His company was moving a large amount of Ether, a popular digital currency, from one account to another. Thirty minutes later, Mr. Zhou got a call from Bybit’s chief financial officer. In a trembling voice, the executive told Mr. Zhou that their system had been hacked, according to a New York Times analysis. “All of the Ethereum is gone,” he said. When Mr.

China submitted a revised request for dispute settlement consultations with the United States to address new U.S. tariffs applied on goods originating in China, the World Trade Organization said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The Trump administration's latest tariff hike on Chinese imports has heightened fears of a renewed trade war between the U.S. and China, the world's two largest economies. China's revised request comes after an extra 10% duty on Chinese goods took effect Tuesday, adding to the 10% tariff imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump on February 4.