Canada ditches tax on tech giants in bid to restart US trade talks
Canada has rescinded its digital services tax in a bid to advance trade negotiations with the US, the country's finance ministry has announced, days after Donald Trump ended trade talks amid a dispute over the levy.
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney and US president Donald Trump will resume trade negotiations with a view towards agreeing on a deal by 21 July, the ministry said in a statement late on Sunday.
The US has been negotiating a trade deal with Canada, one of its top two global trading partners, for months – but those negotiations appeared to hit a road block on Friday after Trump accusing Canada of imposing unfair taxes on US technology companies in a 'direct and blatant attack on our country'.
The first payments on the tax were due on Monday and would have cost US tech companies, including Alphabet, Amazon and Meta, an estimated $3bn.
This is a breaking news story, please check back for updates
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
42 minutes ago
- BBC News
Trump's aid cut risks causing 14 million deaths, report finds
Donald Trump's move to cut most of the US funding towards foreign humanitarian aid could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal on Monday.A third of those at risk of premature deaths are children, the research Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in March that President Trump's administration had cancelled over 80% of all programmes at the US Agency for International Development, or USAID."For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict," Davide Rasella, who co-authored the Lancet report, said in a statement. The funding cuts "risk abruptly halting - and even reversing - two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations," added Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global report comes as dozens of world leaders are meeting in the Spanish city of Seville this week for a United Nations-led aid conference, the biggest one in a back over data from 133 nations, the team of researchers estimated that USAID funding had prevented 91 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and also used modelling to project how funding being slashed by 83% – the figure announced by the US government earlier this year – could affect death cuts could lead to more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030, the projections found. That number included over 4.5 million children under the age of five – or around 700,000 child deaths a to Rubio, there were still approximately 1,000 remaining programmes that would be administered "more effectively" under the US State Department and in consultation with the situation on the ground has not been improving, according to UN month, a UN official told the BBC that hundreds of thousands of people were "slowly starving" in Kenyan refugee camps after US funding cuts reduced food rations to their lowest ever a hospital in Kakuma, in northwestern Kenya, the BBC witnessed a baby who could barely move and was showing signs of malnutrition, including having parts of her skin wrinkled and peeling.
Reuters
44 minutes ago
- Reuters
Asian shares rise, dollar weaker as US bill debate lingers; gold jumps
TOKYO, July 1 (Reuters) - Asian shares crept higher and the dollar languished near multi-year lows on Tuesday as markets awaited a vote over U.S. President Donald Trump's landmark tax and spending legislation. Global shares reached an intraday record on Monday on trade optimism, but a marathon debate in the Senate over a bill estimated to add $3.3 trillion to the United States' debt pile weighed on sentiment. Japan's Nikkei (.N225), opens new tab gauge of shares sank as much as 1.1% as the yen climbed. Oil fell for a second consecutive session and gold advanced. A vote on Trump's sweeping tax-cut and spending bill had been expected during the Asian trading day on Tuesday, but debate raged on over a long series of amendments by Republicans and the minority Democrats. Trump wants the bill passed before the July 4 Independence Day holiday. As global trade negotiators scramble to get deals done before Trump's tariff deadlines, investors are also anticipating key U.S. labour market data on Thursday. "Trade is front and centre this week, but alongside that, we've obviously got the fate of the 'One Big Beautiful Bill', which is currently being debated in the Senate," said Ray Attrill, head of FX strategy at the National Australia Bank. Payrolls data later in the week "does have significant bearing, I think, on sentiment towards the potential timing of Fed rate cuts," he added in a podcast. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS), opens new tab was up 0.5%, led by South Korea's Kospi gauge (.KS11), opens new tab, rising 1.8%. The dollar dropped 0.3% to 143.62 yen . The greenback slid 0.1% to $1.1794 against the European single currency and earlier touched $1.1798, the weakest since September 2021. U.S. crude dipped 0.4% to $64.86 a barrel, weighed by expectations of an OPEC+ output hike in August. Spot gold rose 0.5% to $3,319.55 per ounce. Pan-region Euro Stoxx 50 futures were up 0.1% at while German DAX futures were up 0.2%.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
After screwworm scare, US-Mexico border set to reopen for cattle imports
Mexico and the United States said they would gradually reopen the United States border to cattle imports from Mexico in July after U.S. agriculture officials suspended them in May over fears of the northward spread of the screwworm, agriculture officials in both countries said Monday. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said via X that 'key progress' had been made. She noted that more than 100 million sterile flies were being dispersed weekly and there had been no northward spread in eight weeks. The U.S. restricted Mexican cattle shipments in late November following the detection of the pest, but lifted the ban in February after protocols were put in place to evaluate the animals prior to entry into the country. But after an 'unacceptable northward advancement' of the screwworm, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a statement it was suspending them again in May. Mexico Agriculture and Rural Development Secretary Julio Berdegué said he participated in a virtual meeting with Rollins Monday and that the border opening would begin July 7. Rollins and Berdegué applauded the close cooperation between both governments. The screwworm is a larva of the Cochliomyia hominivorax fly that can invade the tissues of any warm-blooded animal, including humans. The parasite enters the skin, causing serious and life-threatening damage and lesions.
