The Latest: Trump triumphant over new tariffs regime, but concerns abound
The implementation is being portrayed by the White House as a testament to Trump's negotiating skills, even as concerns persist that the taxes will stunt the U.S. economy and increase inflation in ways that disproportionately harm working-class Americans. And while Trump has been getting his way on trade, strong-arming the European Union, Japan and other partners, he's facing at least seven lawsuits charging that he's overstepped his authority.
Meanwhile, Trump lashed out at Republican Sen. Josh Hawley after his proposal to ban stock trading by members of Congress — and the president and vice president — won bipartisan approval to advance in a committee vote. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sought to walk back his comments that Trump-branded investment accounts will be 'a back door' to privatizing Social Security. And privacy concerns mount about a new health tracking system that would share Americans' personal data with tech companies.
Here's the Latest:
Trump using Canada's recognition of Palestinian state in trade talks
Trump said Canada's announcement it will recognize a Palestinian state 'will make it very hard' for the U.S. to reach a trade agreement with its northern neighbor.
The threat posted in the early hours Thursday on Trump's social media network is the latest way he has sought to use his trade war to coerce countries on unrelated issues, and is a swing from the ambivalence he has expressed about other countries making such a move.
'Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine,' Trump posted on Truth Social just past midnight. 'That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh' Canada!!!
The Republican president said this week that he didn't mind British Prime Minister Keir Starmer taking a position on the issue of formally recognizing Palestinian statehood. And last week, he said French President Emmanuel Macron's similar move was 'not going to change anything.'
All the ways Republicans want to honor Trump, from the $100 bill to Mount Rushmore
Imagine getting the day off work for Donald Trump's birthday. Receiving a $100 bill with Trump's portrait on it. Touching down at Donald J. Trump International Airport near the nation's capital. And taking in a show at the Donald J. Trump Center for Performing Arts.
All would be possible under a series of bills Republican lawmakers have sponsored this year.
Trump is little more than six months into his second term, but some Republicans are ready to elevate him into the pantheon of American greats, proposing an ever-growing list of bills paying tribute well before his second term ends. One lawmaker even proposes carving his face into Mount Rushmore.
It's a legislative exercise that mixes flattery and politics, providing another stark reminder of the Republican Party's transformation under Trump as lawmakers from red-leaning states and congressional districts look for ways to win the president's good graces — and stay close to his supporters.
Trump's flurry of trade activity includes tariffs on Brazil and a deal with South Korea
The United States will impose a 25% tariff on goods from India, plus an additional import tax because of India's purchasing of Russian oil, Trump said Wednesday.
The new tariffs were part of a flurry of trade activity that included a series of executive actions regarding Brazil, copper and shipments of goods worth less than $800, as well as a reduced 15% tax on imports from South Korea, including its autos.
It was all a prelude to Friday when Trump's new tariff regime is scheduled to start, an event the White House has portrayed as a testament to Trump's negotiating skills even as concerns persist about the taxes hurting growth and increasing inflationary pressures.
The South Korea agreement will impose a 15% tariff, instead of the 25% Trump had threatened. South Korea would also buy $100 billion in energy resources from the U.S. and provide $350 billion for 'investments owned and controlled by the United States, and selected by myself, as president,' Trump said.
Triumphant in trade talks, Trump and his tariffs still face a challenge in federal court
Trump has been getting his way on trade, strong-arming the European Union, Japan and other partners to accept once unthinkably high taxes on their exports to the United States.
But his radical overhaul of American trade policy has not gone unchallenged. He's facing at least seven lawsuits charging that he's overstepped his authority. The plaintiffs want his biggest, boldest tariffs thrown out.
And they won Round One. Now it goes on to Round Two.
On Thursday, the 11 judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, which typically specializes in patent law, are scheduled to hear oral arguments from the Trump administration and from the states and businesses that want his sweeping import taxes struck down.
That court earlier allowed the federal government to continue collecting Trump's tariffs as the case works its way through the judicial system.
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Toronto Sun
26 minutes ago
- Toronto Sun
LILLEY: Videos of hostages show the horror Carney is effectively backing
As hostages continue to live in horrible conditions, a Hamas leader said Canada's recognition of a Palestinian state is a fruit of October 7. Get the latest from Brian Lilley straight to your inbox This image from an undated video released on Aug. 1, 2025, by the armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, shows Israeli hostage Evyatar David marking a food log on a calendar inside the Gaza tunnel where he is being held. Photo by Hamas via AP / AP The images of an emaciated Evyatar David digging his own grave in a Hamas terror tunnel should elicit outrage from the world. The video was released last week by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the elite military wing of Hamas. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account They showed the 24-year-old Israeli, who was taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, looking like a skeleton, but one digging his own grave in a dark, underground tunnel. The release of the video of David came just after the release of a video from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a fellow traveller with Hamas, of 22-year-old Rom Braslavski. The young man is seen writhing on the floor and saying that food and water must be brought to Gaza. This screengrab from a video released on July 31 by Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad shows a hostage, identified as Rom Braslavski by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, who was abducted to Gaza in October 2023 during the attack that sparked the Gaza war. Photo by Islamic Jihad Media Office / AFP via Getty Images I've seen a lot in my career, covered heinous murders, child abuse court cases, witnessed destruction firsthand, and I've stood in the Kibbutz homes that Hamas attacked and burned people alive in, when you could still smell the fire and the death. These videos shocked me, they repulsed me, I wanted to vomit. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Yet, the people who produced these propaganda videos are the ones who have benefitted from the decision by Canada – along with France and Britain – to recognize a Palestinian State this coming September at the United Nations General Assembly. The very people who would carry out horrific terrorist attacks, take hundreds of hostages and hold them in deplorable conditions are the beneficiaries of Canada's naive foreign policy under Prime Minister Mark Carney. ' Canada intends to recognize the State of Palestine at the 80 th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025,' Carney said last Wednesday. He went on to lay out a pile of conditions, including elections that will happen in 2026 – long after the vote at the UN has happened – and claims that Hamas can have no part in these elections or the future of a Palestinian state. With all due respect to Prime Minister Carney, the leaders in Gaza and the West Bank – or Judea and Samaria as it is properly known – have made these claims before to bigger countries, bigger leaders, with more to offer them, and they have broken them every single time. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Carney, by his unilateral action, which goes against a vote in Parliament on this issue just last year, has granted a PR win for Hamas. But don't take my word for it, here is what Hamas themselves said. 'The initiative by several countries to recognize a Palestinian state is one of the fruits of Oct. 7,' Hamas senior member Ghāzi Hamad told Al Jazeera in an interview. ' Without our weapons, no one would be looking in our direction.' In the past, Hamad has said that given the chance, Hamas would commit Oct. 7-style attacks over and over again until Israel was destroyed. He also has denounced the idea of a two-state solution and said the Oct. 7 attacks were carried out in part to thwart the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab neighbours. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. If you think Hamad doesn't look like he's starving in Gaza, it's because like most of the terror group's senior leadership, he doesn't live there. He and his cadre or fellow villains coordinate Hamas activities from a very safe distance in places like Beirut, Cairo or Doha. That includes releasing videos of hostages in emaciated states. Make no mistake, this Hamas video of Evyatar David, like the one released by PIJ of Rom Braslavski, are nothing but pure propaganda. If the world had its head screwed on straight these videos would have backfired by now and ramped up rage against the terrorists, instead these groups continue to garner support. As Israel delivers aid to the United Nations to be distributed, Hamas steals it and either feeds their fighters or sells it on the black market for a significant profit. Don't worry though, Canada's overstretched military, the men and women asked to fly planes in less than stellar shape just did an air drop of food aid into Gaza. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Will any of that food aid reach Evyatar David or Rom Braslavski? That's doubtful, but Canadians – especially Carney supporters – can stay smug. They did the right thing they can tell themselves, they did the humanitarian thing. In reality, they emboldened a banned terrorist group that is now taking credit for Canada's decision to recognize a Palestinian state by calling it a fruit of Oct. 7. Be careful who you endorse and who you stand next to. Read More Sunshine Girls Sunshine Girls Opinion Relationships Columnists
Globe and Mail
26 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Markets struggle to price smoke and mirrors
Just when financial markets appeared to be normalizing after this spring's tariff shocks, they've been sent another curve ball that will be fiendishly hard to price. Following news of huge downward revisions to U.S. May and June payrolls, President Donald Trump instantly fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics boss Erika McEntarfer, accusing her of 'rigged' data designed to make him look bad. Few doubt that the BLS has had long-term data collection issues that often result in big revisions that make timely policymaking difficult. But few have ever suggested they are politically biased. What Ms. McEntarfer's dismissal now introduces is not only distrust of future jobs numbers, but it may also call into question the figures released by any government statistics bodies who may fear similar accusations and retribution if they issue data unfavorable to the administration. Tarnishing what many investors previously considered the gold standard for transparency and institutional integrity will force markets toFenta re-consider questions about the U.S. from earlier in the year, ones that undermined the dollar, lifted risk premiums and scrambled traditional asset market trading patterns. There was a taste of that on Friday, with stocks, bond yields and the dollar all falling in tandem in a flurry of activity compounded by the payrolls revisions themselves, Mr. Trump's reaction to them and the early resignation of Federal Reserve Board Governor Adriana Kugler. There was no follow through, however. Monday saw much of these moves pared back as U.S. markets puzzled over how to price this rare threat of statistical bias, with murmurs of political influence in key data something investors have often reserved for China and other emerging economies. Short sellers appeared to hold fire, perhaps chastened by the sharp bounceback in U.S. stock markets from their April lows during the turbulent second quarter. Multiple other issues are also in play at the same time of course - most notably the performance of tech companies, the AI boom and a fairly healthy wider earnings season. In the rates market, the factors at play are different, but the moves since Friday also seem logical. If the weaker payroll data, trusted or not, shifts the dial sufficiently for the Fed to ease policy, then the sudden return of a fully priced-in September rate cut may well be justified - especially now that there will be one more Trump appointee on the board this year to boot. One might imagine that a Fed long familiar with big payrolls revisions will look at more than the raw tallies to assess the labor market. If they do, they'll still see a historically low unemployment rate and super resilient weekly jobless claims. That said, if the White House still succeeds in its demand for politically favorable data and steep interest rate cuts, then that could well mean that the economy will be running quite hot, which could be read by some as a boon for stocks that riff off high nominal GDP growth projections. Whether that's really just smoke and mirrors is the big question. The calculus for Treasuries and the dollar is much different. Rekindled Fed easing prospects after the payrolls and Kugler news clearly dragged short-term Treasury yields lower. The 2-30 year yield curve briefly hit its steepest in more than two years, and the snoozing Treasury volatility gauge, which had slipped to its lowest level in more than three years, experienced a sharp spike. The so-called Treasury 'term premia,' which had dissipated through July, will be watched closely now. 'Possible distrust of economic data could raise uncertainty for which investors may demand more yield compensation,' wrote Morgan Stanley's Matthew Hornbach and team on Friday. 'If the Fed cuts its policy rate in the coming quarters - whether or not investors think the economic data call for such cuts - the expectation of eventual reflation should put upward pressure on term premiums - helping the Treasury curve steepen further.' 'The less investors believe the data demand rate cuts, the more the curve should steepen ... if the Fed delivers the cuts anyway,' they added. Meanwhile, the dollar's performance is likely to hinge both on those risk premiums and on whether overseas investors continue to fret about being over-exposed to expensive U.S. assets. The dollar's bounce through the back end of July was defused on Friday, with the previously ultra short-dollar positioning now appearing to be back in better balance. Both rising speculation about politically driven rate cuts and higher risk premia may now tilt the balance toward another downleg for the dollar. 'McEntarfer's firing will further call into question the integrity of US economic data,' reckons Tim Duy at SGH Macro Advisors. 'The risk going forward is the data will in fact be 'rigged' in favor of rapid job growth and low inflation, which will clearly exacerbate market volatility.' Markets may be hesitant in moving to price all of this - but like so much else this year, the damage may be a slow burn rather than a big bang. Be smart with your money. Get the latest investing insights delivered right to your inbox three times a week, with the Globe Investor newsletter. Sign up today.
CTV News
26 minutes ago
- CTV News
Caterpillar warns of up to $1.5 billion tariff hit, profit misses on weak demand
Heavy equipment is parked at the site of Caterpillar Belgium, in Gosselies, Belgium. U.S. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe, File) Caterpillar missed second-quarter profit expectations on Tuesday due to sluggish demand for construction equipment and warned of up to US$1.5 billion hit from costs tied to U.S. tariffs in 2025. Even though the company has been able to offset the impact of supply-chain snarls and cost inflation through price hikes, a slowdown in U.S. construction spending has led to a pullback in demand for its products such as excavators and backhoe loaders. Shares of Caterpillar, often viewed as bellwether for the industrial economy, fell about three per cent in premarket trading after it also flagged a tariff impact of $400 million to $500 million in the third quarter. Sweeping tariffs on U.S. imports have impacted companies across sectors, prompting many to rejig their supply chains and localize production. Caterpillar also flagged unfavorable manufacturing costs largely due to tariffs. Including tariffs, the Irving, Texas-based company forecast 2025 adjusted profit margins in the bottom half of its annual target range. In the current earnings season, companies have reported a combined loss of $12.1 billion to $13.4 billion between July 16 and Aug. 1 for 2025, Reuters' global tariff tracker shows. A majority of these were from the industrial and manufacturing segment. U.S. President Donald Trump has said the tariffs are a response to persistent U.S. trade imbalances and declining U.S. manufacturing power, and that the moves will bring jobs and investment to the nation. Quarterly revenue in the Asia Pacific region fell two per cent to $2.89 billion. Its North American sales, which accounts for more than half of overall revenue, fell two per cent to about $8.9 billion. Adjusted profit in the second quarter fell to $4.72 per share, compared with estimates of $4.90, according to data compiled by LSEG. Its sales and revenue for the quarter fell one per cent to $16.7 billion from a year ago. The company expects its annual sales and revenue to be slightly higher than last year and compared to its prior expectations of about flat, in anticipation of demand from its energy and transportation unit. (Reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
