After securing a majority government in Canada last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney faces his biggest challenge: redefining trade with the U.S. under President Donald Trump, Reuters reported. Canada, the U.S. and Mexico must agree by July 1 to keep the deal as is, insulating most Canadian goods from U.S. tariffs, renegotiate it, or hold annual reviews until its 2036 expiry. Carney, under U.S. pressure for concessions, will push for a revised deal this year that addresses tariffs against Canadian steel, aluminum and autos.
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President Trump said on Tuesday that the U.S. was considering offering financial support to the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich ally that has been contending with economic fallout from the war in Iran, the New York Times reported. The war has damaged oil and gas infrastructure throughout the Middle East, dealing a blow to economies that rely on the Strait of Hormuz to transport crude around the world. The U.A.E. is an unlikely recipient of economic support, and the fact that it has inquired about assistance demonstrates the cascading effects of the conflict.
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European Union exports to the United States dropped by more than a quarter for a second consecutive month in February, but may be exaggerating the impact of President Donald Trump's tariffs, given they follow a year-ago period when front-loading began, Reuters reported. Exports from the 27-nation European Union to the United States fell by 26.4% in February, EU statistics agency Eurostat said on Friday, following a 27.8% drop in January, and contributing to a 60% reduction in the EU's trade surplus.
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A U.S. trade court on Friday considered the legality of a 10 global import tax imposed by President Donald Trump, which several states and small businesses say sidesteps a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that invalidated most of his previous tariffs, Reuters reported. A group of 24 mostly Democratic-led states and two small businesses sued the Trump administration to stop the new tariffs, which went into effect on Feb. 24. The hearing is before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that imports from countries supplying Iran with military weapons will face immediate 50 per cent tariffs with no exemptions, announcing the threatened duty in a social media post just hours after agreeing to a two-week ceasefire with Tehran, Reuters reported.
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The Trump administration will try to resolve as many problems with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement as it can before July 1, but negotiations to rebalance the trade pact are likely to continue past that deadline, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Greer told an event at the Hudson Institute that the U.S. may need to take steps to exit the North American trade pact in order to continue the talks.
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Gautam Adani, India's second richest person, will ask a U.S. judge to dismiss the Securities and Exchange Commission's civil fraud case against him, his lawyers said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani were charged by the SEC in November 2024 with orchestrating a scheme to pay or promise to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian government officials to benefit Adani Green Energy, where both men are executives and directors.
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For more than a decade, Japanese home builders have been tiptoeing into the U.S. housing market with small, discreet acquisitions of private American construction companies, the Wall Street Journal reported. Their quiet era is over. Japanese builders have announced or closed acquisitions of 23 U.S. single-family home builders since 2020, more than double the number from 2013 to 2019. That doesn’t include the multifamily developers and construction-supply companies they have also bought. By some estimates, Japanese builders are now set to own about 6% of the U.S. home-construction market.
The workforce impact of Takeda’s recently announced reorganization has become clearer: The Japan-based pharma estimates the restructuring will affect around 634 U.S. employees, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice, BioSpace reported. Takeda began notifying employees on March 25, the same day it announced a business transformation, which includes streamlining corporate functions. However, the company noted in the WARN notice that the total number affected could change as staff pursue and accept redeployment opportunities across its global network.
Spark Networks Services GmbH, the operator of online dating platforms Christian Mingle, JDate and Zoosk, is seeking U.S. bankruptcy court recognition of its German insolvency case, Bloomberg Law reported. The company filed its U.S. case after a failed restructuring in 2024 and its primary lender and equityholder, MGG Investment Group, pulled funding in January, according to court documents filed Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Spark Networks is seeking relief under chapter 15 and aims to sell its assets while continuing operations.