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The US Department of the Treasury has lifted sanctions imposed on the Brazilian supreme court justice who oversaw the conviction of the former president Jair Bolsonaro. Justice Alexandre de Moraes had been under Global Magnitsky sanctions, which target individuals accused of human rights abuses, since July. His wife Viviane Barci de Moraes – who was added the sanctions list in September – was also removed from the register on Friday. The move had been repeatedly requested by Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in negotiations with Donald Trump to roll back the 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports. The decision...

AN EX-KGB spymaster who subjected the British secret service to its worst embarrassment since the Cold War is the right-hand man of Lord Mandelson's controversial Russian friend Oleg Deripaska, the Evening Standard discloses today. Valery Pechenkin was a high-ranking officer in the KGB and a Colonel-General in its successor, the FSB. He is employed as head of security at Deripaska's company Basic Element, but the part he plays in Deripaska's affairs goes far beyond the role suggested by his job title. According to well-placed sources in Moscow, Pechenkin is one of Deripaska's strongest links to the Kremlin. The veteran spy...

Yemen-based Ansar Allah, widely known as the Houthis, continues to have a profound impact on global security. The group’s ongoing operations in the Red Sea affected an estimated US $1 trillion worth of maritime cargo between October 2023 and May 2024, and despite periodic kinetic attacks, its operations show no signs of abating. Moreover, evidence suggests the Houthis enjoy the financial and military backing of Russia and China, in addition to their established ties with Iran. This Insight explores the Houthis’ financing mechanisms, including leveraging technology to evade sanctions and the involvement of foreign facilitators with demonstrable and plausible ties...

The U.S. trade deficit widened sharply in August amid an influx of goods related to the artificial intelligence build-out and the vagaries of import tariffs, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Imports swelled 4.3% for the month, pushing the total imbalance to $105.6 billion. That marked a 13.7% jump from July and was ahead of the Dow Jones consensus estimate for $102 billion. It also was the steepest deficit since the all-time gap in March 2025, recorded just before President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” announcement of “reciprocal” tariffs against U.S. trading partners. Though the monthly total was up, the year-to-date deficit...

The United States remains Canada’s gravitational center, whether they like it or not.Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is in Strasbourg this week selling a “unique alliance” with the European Union while courting Chinese capital at home. The pitch is straightforward: President Trump’s tariffs and “51st state” taunts make Canada’s century-old economic marriage to the United States too risky. Thus, Canada should diversify toward Brussels and Beijing. One massive problem: geography, capital flows, language, and supply chains dictate otherwise. These harsh facts on the ground make the European Union option, in particular, a political fantasy. Canada cannot join the European Union....

(Artist's concept of the new Mesabi Metallics steel plant to be built in Minnesota)Monday’s news cycle brought an exciting story for both the manufacturing industry and America’s heartland: Mesabi Metallics has announced a new $15-billion steel mill to be built in Iowa, along the Mississippi River. With an expectation of being up and running by 2030, the mill will be the largest ever in the United States, being budgeted to reach approximately 10 percent of current American steel production within a couple years of startup. The statistics shared at the announcement anticipate five or six thousand construction jobs for its...

The U.S. and China agreed to lower tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods each country imports from the other and launch new talks on artificial intelligence (AI) following President Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The agreements were part of an eight-point consensus reached during Xi’s three-day state visit to Washington, D.C., which ended Friday. Under the trade agreement, the two countries will reduce tariffs on products considered “noncritical,” including agricultural and energy-related goods. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier this week that he and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer had been in New York discussing lowering those...

President Donald Trump on Friday demanded that the Federal Reserve slash interest rates or else he will cut off trade with countries with which the U.S. maintains trade deficits. Trump issued the sweeping ultimatum in a Truth Social post reacting to a much-stronger-than-expected monthly jobs report by urging the central bank and its chairman, Kevin Warsh, to “get smart” and cut rates. Read Trump’s full post: Great jobs number just announced, breaking all estimates (except mine!) by double and triple - And you haven’t seen anything yet! EMPLOYERS ADDED 162,000 JOB IN AUGUST. Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A....

With midterms rapidly approaching, Republicans had appeared to catch a break on the economy. After a year in which the war with Iran sent gas prices soaring and pushed inflation to multi-year highs, both June and July’s Consumer Price Index came in tame. Even grocery prices slipped for the first time in months. But then President Trump returned to his longtime obsession: tariffs. Indeed, last weekend, talks between the White House and Canada collapsed, and Trump immediately slapped 50 percent tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods, reviving what the Wall Street Journal called “The Dumbest Trade War...

The U.S.–Canada trade talks broke down on Aug. 21. Although both sides hold completely different views, they agreed on two common dealbreakers: bilateral coordination on Canada’s future trade deals with third countries and how deep tariff-rate cuts should go across sectors like autos, steel, and aluminum. A third, exempting U.S. companies from having to feature French-language content on streaming platforms, was resolved on Aug. 27 when the United States dropped the demand. Analysts say both sides share one other thing: the China factor, which neither names but looms over both positions.Neither the Canadian Prime Minister Carney nor U.S. Trade Representative...

The Irish Rovers sang about the biggest mixup that you have ever seen: he was christened David Anthony, but still in spite of that, his father called him William while his mother called him Pat. Picture the feelings of Lake Ontario this morning. It was christened Lac Saint-Louis by Samuel de Champlain, but it’s woken up to Canada calling it William and the US calling it Pat – or rather, Lake America (without the “of,” as Trump helpfully specified in his video on Truth Social). Although Lac Saint-Louis is surely a better and more historically founded name than Lake America,...

JD Vance Wants To Ditch The Dollar’s Reserve Status Tony Katz isn’t buying what JD Vance is selling on the dollar. “What is he talking about?” Katz said, reacting to the vice president’s recent comments questioning whether America should even want to be the world’s reserve currency. “And then why is he talking about it?” Vance has argued that reserve currency status is a raw deal — that it floods the country with “mostly useless imports,” hollows out domestic manufacturing, and effectively taxes American producers to subsidize American consumers. Katz brought in Phil Magness, the David J. Theroux Chair in...

Canada is preparing dollar-for-dollar tariffs on American goods after negotiations with the Trump administration collapsed, escalating a trade dispute that could raise prices and disrupt some of North America’s most integrated industries. The retaliation will begin September 8 and target U.S. steel, dairy products, electronics, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper. The announcement came hours after the United States imposed 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian imports. For investors, the immediate tariffs are only part of the risk. The deeper concern is that Washington and Ottawa are losing confidence in the trade framework that has connected their factories,...

President Trump announced Friday that the U.S. will wave through 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef over the next three months with the out-of-quota tariff switched off, and that "this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices." Sold by whom went unmentioned. Shipped from where, likewise. Which foreign exporters agreed to any of this is a question the announcement left for later, along with the executive order itself, which the White House says arrives within 2 weeks. Ground beef hit $6.885 a pound in July, an all-time high and 83% above where it sat in...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pulled his country’s negotiators from trade talks with the U.S. on Friday evening, just hours before the Trump administration’s new round of tariffs were set to go into effect. This decision followed weeks of intense negotiations between the two nations over President Trump’s proposed 50 percent tariffs on over $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. These new tariffs — which were originally scheduled to go into effect on Wednesday — would impact a range of goods, including wine, hockey sticks, cement, plywood and more. The prime minister has said these new policies are in “direct...

Trade talks with Canada collapsed late Friday night, setting in motion steep 50% tariffs on a wide swath of Canadian goods. The duties went into effect at the stroke of midnight. This particular time, PM Mark Carney was the one to cancel further negotiations and say, Canada would match US Tariffs dollar for dollar. Carney and the Liberals have used Anti-Trump rhetoric as a political tool to advance their agenda, basically the more they fight Trump the more popular they become in Canada for a significant percentage of the population. If you have been watching Canadian Media in the last...

President Donald Trump on Friday morning said the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported over the next three months without being subject to out-of-quota tariffs. Trump also said, “We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.” The president’s Truth Social post announcing the move did not say which companies had made those commitments, which he said came “as we work to rebuild this herd and help our ranchers.” Trump did not say who he had reached a deal with on...

At a conference I attended recently in DC, I had the chance to show a lot of my colleagues around the downtown monuments. For them, many from other countries, seeing the Lincoln, the Washington, the Capitol, was once in a lifetime – for me, it was Tuesday. At one point, a German in the group – fatigue in his voice – asked me, “Tell me… How can Americans keep voting for Trump?” The term Trump was shorthand for Americans’ embracing nationalism and rejecting globalism, which seems oh-so backwards to our European cousins. I think he expected me to dance around...

President Donald Trump announced late Tuesday a temporary pause on 50% tariffs on Canada as both countries race to finalize a trade deal. The President’s announcement came hours before a series of tariffs set to cover about $20 billion worth of imports into the U.S. from Canada were set to take effect. “I have paused the 50% tariffs against Canada, that were scheduled to kick in tomorrow morning for a three day period, based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a deal!” Trump said on social media. Canadian Prime Minister Mark...

Trade team told Americans Trump's newest tariffs would kill will for talks if implementedThe Canadian government is preparing to meet some U.S. demands — including ending bans on American alcohol sales — in exchange for tariff relief as trade talks heat up ahead of the latest tariff deadline, according to sources. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened a new 50 per cent levy on hundreds of Canadian imports by Aug. 19, citing complaints about provincial booze bans, dairy import quotas and the auto tariffs. The Canadian side is willing to offer movement on those concerns, according to industry sources...