Trump increases tariff on Canada to 35% from 25%, cites fentanyl

 President Donald Trump is increasing the tariff on Canada from 25% to 35% beginning on Friday, after the U.S. neighbor to the north failed to help curb the imports of fentanyl and other illicit drugs.

The White House noted Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to increase the tariff in an effort to hold Canada accountable for its role in the flow of illicit drugs into the U.S.

Additionally, Trump signed another executive order on Thursday to modify the reciprocal tariff rates for some countries to further address the United States’ trade deficits.

The action reflects Trump’s efforts to protect the U.S. from foreign threats to national security and the economy by securing "fair, balanced and reciprocal trade relationships," the White House said.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday, increasing the tariff on Canada from 25% to 35% over the country's failed efforts to curb the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images / Getty Images)

The president announced an additional 10% tariff on all countries, though he also announced higher tariffs for countries the U.S. has large trade deficits with, on April 2, and they became effective on April 9.

Trump and his team have since made several trade deals with several countries.

For instance, the U.S. struck a deal with the European Union in which the EU agreed to purchase $750 billion in U.S. energy and make new investments of $600 billion by 2028. The EU also agreed to accept a 15% tariff rate.

President Donald Trump speaks during a "Make America Wealthy Again" trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images / Getty Images)

The U.S. also made a deal with Japan, which agreed to invest $550 billion in the U.S. to rebuild and expand core American industries. Japan also agreed to further its own market to U.S. exports, and like the EU, Japan agreed to pay a baseline 15% tariff rate.

A list of modified reciprocal tariffs from the White House shows that Syria will face a 41% tariff, while Myanmar and Laos will be charged a 40% tariff.

Switzerland will be required to pay a 39% tariff; Serbia and Iraq will be charged a 35% tariff; and Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lybia and South Africa will be charged a 30% tariff.

The White House said Trump is using tariffs as "a necessary and powerful tool to put America first after many years of unsubstantiated trade deficits that threaten our economy and national security."

The Trump administration is imposing a 35% tariff on Canada for failing to address the fentanyl crisis. (Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

One threat to the U.S. is the flow of fentanyl from both Mexico and Canada, which Trump addressed with the 35% tariff on Canada.

Earlier this month, Trump threatened to impose the 35% tariff on Canadian goods on Aug. 1, after accusing Canada of failing to stop the flow of fentanyl into the country, and instead retaliating with its own tariffs.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 74 pounds of fentanyl have been seized at the northern border in fiscal year 2025.

The White House said Mexican cartels are operating fentanyl- and nitazene-synthesis labs in Canada.

The Trump administration also claimed Canada-based drug trafficking organizations maintain "super labs," in rural and dense areas in western Canada. Some of the labs can produce 44 to 66 pounds of fentanyl per week.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney greets U.S. President Donald Trump at the official welcome ceremony during the G7 Leaders' Summit on June 16, 2025, in Kananaskis, Alberta.  (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images / Getty Images)

In a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney earlier this month, Trump said it was a great honor to send a letter demonstrating the strength and commitment of the U.S. and Canada’s trading relationship. But he also pointed to a relationship gone sour, stating that the U.S. has agreed to continue working together, despite Canada imposing tariffs against the U.S.

Trump warned Canada that beginning Aug. 1, the U.S. would charge Canada a tariff of 35% on Canadian products sent into the U.S., separate from all sectoral tariffs. He also said any goods shipped in a way that evades the 35% tariff, Trump said, will be subject to the higher tariff.

Canadian Premier of Ontario Doug Ford responded on Thursday to Trump’s executive order to raise the tariff to 35%, saying, "We need to stand our ground."

"The increase in U.S. tariffs to 35 per cent is concerning, especially with tariffs still in place on steel, aluminum, autos, forestry and now copper," Ford said in a post on X. "While Canada continues to benefit from zero tariffs on all trade that’s USMCA compliant, representing over 90 per cent of our American exports, we need to do everything in our power to protect workers, businesses and communities from the impact of tariffs. The federal government needs to hit back with a 50 per cent tariff on U.S. steel and aluminum.

"Canada has what the United States needs: oil and gas, critical minerals, steel and aluminum, electricity, potash and uranium," he continued. "We’re America’s number one customer and keep millions of Americans working. The federal government needs to maximize our leverage and stand strong in the face of President Trump’s tariffs."

Ford said the Canadian government will do whatever to support its workers and businesses, as the country continues to build a more competitive, self-reliant and resilient economy.

"Canadian workers and businesses are desperate for certainty," Ford said. "Let’s work together, united, to deliver it."

Earlier this year, President Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian steel, automobiles and other goods not covered under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Canada retaliated by imposing $43 billion worth of its own tariffs against the U.S.

Trump announced the tariffs on his first day in office in January after declaring fentanyl deaths a national emergency. 

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-escalates-canada-tariffs-35-while-setting-new-tariff-rates-dozens-other-countries

TikTok took the world by storm. Now, Chinese companies are taking videos further with AI

 China’s video-heavy entertainment world has yielded a trove of data for companies — and they’re now ramping up money-making artificial intelligence tools for generating ads and film clips.

TikTok parent ByteDance holds the first and third spots in research firm Artificial Analysis’ top-ranked text-to-video generative AI models, which were launched in the last two months. Google holds the second and fourth spots, while Beijing-based short video app Kuaishou’s Kling AI ranks fifth.

Despite some consolidation in other parts of the AI industry, “competition in AI video generation models is at an earlier stage, and some Chinese companies have emerged as early leaders in this space,” said Wei Xiong, China internet analyst at UBS Securities.

“We believe AI video generation has the potential to reshape the content industry,” she said, “by enhancing production efficiency, lowering barriers to creation and unlocking new monetization models.”

With such AI tools, users can upload a single image or multiple ones, and direct the AI to generate a video clip based on them. Other tools allow users to enter text, from which the AI will generate the video clip.

More than 20,000 businesses from advertisers to movie animators already use Kling AI for generating video, the Beijing-based company claimed this week during the World AI Conference in Shanghai. The latest version, Kling 2.1, can automatically add relevant sound effects to match the AI-generated video.

It’s not just for users in China.

“Whether it’s user scale or commercial revenue, overseas accounts for the majority,” Zeng Yushen, head of operations at Kling AI, told CNBC in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. She said the company plans to enhance its support for the tool in places such as Japan, South Korea and Europe.

“This is something we’ve observed, AI big models are increasingly globalized,” she said. “People don’t seem to care which country’s product it is.”

Kuaishou claimed Kling AI made over 150 million yuan ($20.83 million) in revenue in the first three months of the year, and that daily advertising spend on generative AI tools was 30 million yuan during that time. The company has yet to announce when it will release second-quarter results. Zeng declined to share Kling AI’s model training costs.

While the reduced production cost implies a “sizeable” market, UBS’ Xiong said, “current model capabilities remain constrained by clip length, motion consistency and controllability.”

Chinese video AI companies also face competition from the U.S., beyond the Trump administration’s restrictions on China’s access to advanced semiconductors needed for training AI models.

Amazon and Google have launched tools for generating video from images or text. The releases come as Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched its video generation model Sora to ChatGPT subscribers in December — nearly a year after it had revealed its capabilities in February 2024.

However, Kling AI had already launched to the public in June 2024. Users subscribe and buy credits to generate videos.

Vidu, a rival tool from Beijing-based startup Shengshu, launched to global users roughly 12 months ago, and around March this year said it expected annual revenue of $20 million based on user subscription fees.

“Chinese firms tend to attempt to first identify a commercial ‘pain point’ ..., areas where companies will pay for services, which has been a challenge for AI applications,” said Paul Triolo, partner and senior vice president for China at advisory firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group.

He pointed to how Chinese startup 3DStyle uses generative AI to design new clothing styles and integrate them with internet-connected, automated manufacturing.

U.S. companies have also been applying AI to specific industries, Triolo said, but Chinese businesses are often able to integrate AI more quickly because they face a very competitive environment and can recruit from a “very qualified” local base of software engineers.

‘AI as filmmaker’

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has also stayed on top of the trend by releasing the latest version of its video generation AI model this week called Wan2.2. The company claimed that with the open-source model, users can control lighting, time of day, color tone, camera angle, frame size, composition and focal length.

Open source allows users to download a model for free, and customize, if not commercialize, products with it. Alibaba claimed that since open sourcing the “Wan” model series in February, the models have been downloaded more than 5.4 million times from the Hugging Face platform and a similar one in China called ModelScope.

“The age of AI in film is over. We’ve entered the age of AI as filmmaker,” said Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU School of Law. He pointed out that China’s 1.4 billion population has given local companies “enormous” amounts of video-watching data to work with.

“Just like TikTok took the global markets by storm with short videos in the mobile internet age, Chinese AI companies could well lead the Generative AI revolution in visual digital entertainment,” said Ma, author of “The Digital War: How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace.”

Avatars and gaming

Chinese companies are also building AI tools for more than just generating videos.

In the past week, Baidu announced that its newest AI-powered digital human technology — which powered sales of $7.65 million during an interactive livestreaming session of over six hours in June — would be released for broader industry use in October.

In 3D visualization, Tencent released its Hunyuan World model for creating digital panoramic images of scenes, generated from text and visual prompts. The visuals use a “mesh” file format which gamer developers can then use to edit specific parts of the image.

“Beyond supporting [Tencent’s] internal development teams, the platform demonstrates Tencent’s ambition to standardize high-fidelity game asset generation and expand its influence across China’s game development landscape,” said Daniel Ahmad, director of research and insights at Niko Partners.

Niko found that more than half of game development studios in China already use AI for content generation and reducing development time and costs.

But game development reflects broader challenges in using AI at scale for generating videos and graphics.

“While interest in AI is high,” Ahmad said, “we’ve already seen some backlash to games that have poorly implemented the technology.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/01/after-tiktok-chinese-businesses-like-kling-ramp-up-ai-for-video.html

T-Day Arrives: Trump Raises Tariff On Dozens Of Countries, With Minimum Rate Of 10%

 Almost 4 months after Liberation Day sparked a global market crash, moments ago T-Day finally arrived... and barely anyone noticed.

President Trump at the White House.

Late on Thursday, just ahead of the August 1 deadline for tariff renegotiation, President Trump announced a slew of new tariffs, including a 10% global minimum and 15% or higher duties for countries with trade surpluses with the US, forging ahead with his unprecedented effort to reshape international commerce.

First, the silver lining: baseline rates for many trading partners remain unchanged from the duties Trump imposed in April, which may ease investors’ worst fears - although with the S&P sitting at record highs it is difficult to claim anyone had any fears about anything - after the president had previously said they could even double. Yet Trump's decision to raise tariffs on Canadian goods to 35% threatens to inject fresh tensions into an already strained relationship.

Trump signed the new tariff directive just hours before his prior Aug. 1 deadline for higher tariffs to kick in on scores of trading partners. As Bloomberg reports, most tariffs will take effect after midnight on Aug 7, to allow time for US Customs and Border Protection to make necessary changes to collect the levies.

Taken together, the result will be significantly higher tariffs on goods from almost all US trading partners. The average US tariff rate will rise to 15.2% if rates are implemented as announced, according to Bloomberg Economics, an increase from 13.3%, and significantly higher than the 2.3% it was in 2024, before Trump took office.

Major industrialized economies, including the European Union, Japan and South Korea, accepted 15% duties on their products, while charges on items from Mexico, Canada and China are even bigger.

Today's announcement notwithstanding, Trump is expected to unveil separate tariffs on imports of pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, critical minerals and other key industrial products in the coming weeks. Other details are also forthcoming, including so-called “rules of origin” to decide which products are transshipped, or routed through another country, and thus would face at least a 40% rate, a senior US official told Bloomberg, adding that a decision will be made in the coming weeks.  The senior US official said there is no date yet when revised auto tariff rates would be implemented.

Thursday’s order was signed behind closed doors without the fanfare of Trump’s April tariff rollout, during which he brandished placards with rates during a Rose Garden event. Since then Trump has faced criticism for overpromising on trade deals after he and aides vowed to broker numerous agreements, with at least one pledging “90 deals in 90 days.”

In the end, imports from about 40 countries will face the new 15% rate and roughly a dozen economies’ products will be hit with higher duties, either because they reached a deal or Trump sent them a letter unilaterally setting import taxes. The latter group has the highest goods-trade surpluses with the US. 

Some of those were expected, such as a 25% levy on Indian exports that Trump announced this week on social media. Others included charges of 20% on Taiwanese products and 30% on South African goods. Thailand and Cambodia, two countries that were said to have struck a last-minute deal, received a 19% duty, matching rates imposed on regional neighbors including Indonesia and the Philippines. Vietnam’s goods will be tariffed at 20%, according to the WSJ. 

Trump’s deals with the EU, Japan and South Korea would lower duties on their vehicle exports to 15% from the general rate of 25%. 

In a separate order, Trump followed through on his threat to hike tariffs on exports from Canada, one of the US’s largest trading partners, from 25% to 35% for goods that do not comply with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. That change excludes goods that are covered under the North American trade pact he negotiated in his first term. That stood in contrast to the 90-day extension Mexico received to negotiate a better agreement. Earlier in the day, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he agreed to extend for 90 days the existing tariffs on Mexican goods. He said a 25% fentanyl tariff, a 25% tariff on cars and a 50% tariff on steel, aluminum and copper would remain in place.

Still other nations are set to be hit with even higher tariffs. Trump has pledged to hike tariffs to 50% on Brazil over its digital policies and legal action against former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally. 

The lower 10% and 15% rates are expected to apply to a wide range of mostly smaller- and medium-sized economies that Trump showed little interest in bargaining with one-on-one. He had signaled in recent days there were simply too many countries to cut individualized deals with all of them.  Some smaller states, however, were hit with the highest rates, including Syria at 41%, as well as Laos and Myanmar and 40% each, both preferred hubs of Chinese transshipments. 

The tiny African nation of Lesotho, however, which had been reeling from Trump’s threat in April to impose a 50% duty, instead received a 15% rate. That change puts the landlocked mountainous kingdom at an advantage against the far larger country that entirely surrounds it, South Africa.

One big exception from this week’s deadline is China, which faces an Aug. 12 deadline for its tariff truce with the US to expire. The Trump administration has signaled that is likely to be extended. No final decision has been made but the recent US-China talks in Stockholm were positive, the official said.

There were signs that Trump’s order took some partners by surprise. Taiwan’s cabinet said in a statement its rate was temporary, and that the US levy is expected to be reduced after more talks, which had been delayed by scheduling conflicts.

The announcement brings to a close, at least for now, months of wait-and-see about how Trump would set his country-based tariffs, which he billed as the centerpiece of his plan to shrink trade deficits and revive American manufacturing. Trump twice delayed his so-called reciprocal tariffs, first announced in April, to allow time for negotiations, first after markets panicked and then as foreign governments bargained to get better terms from the US.

“U.S. customs officials will face challenges implementing the EO, particularly with the different tariff rates now applied across the world,” said Wendy Cutler, a former US trade negotiator. “The seven day breathing period before implementation will help, but importers should expect start up problems at a minimum.”

Some analysts were worried that today's announcement will spark another round of selling similar to the post-Liberation day dump. “The reality is that we’re still going to see higher tariffs than pre-Liberation Day and we’ll start to see some economic impact of that in the months ahead,” said Shane Oliver, a Sydney-based chief investment officer at AMP Ltd. “There’s still uncertainty about China, Mexico has been delayed by another 90 days and details around sectoral tariffs are also yet to come.”

Others just can't wait to move on: “With the biggest economies having either already made a deal, had a postponement or been hit with another tariff hike that will probably be eventually negotiated lower (Canada), many traders seem to prefer to keep the focus on US NFP as the next likely catalyst for broad USD movement,” said Sean Callow, a senior analyst in Sydney

“I would have thought 10% baseline tariff was a positive surprise for risk, worth at least a little bounce on Aussie and the like, given Trump’s recent comments have referred to 15% or higher” Callow said, adding that “perhaps the main uncertainty had already been removed on the likes of South Korea, Japan, India and, for now, China.”

Asian stocks came under pressure after Trump announced the new rates, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropping 0.5%, led by losses in South Korea and Taiwan. Futures on the S&P 500 slipped 0.1% while those for European stocks retreated 0.4%. The Taiwan dollar and Korean won led declines in currency markets, while the Swiss franc edged lower after the nation’s products were hit with a 39% charge, one of the few nations that saw its rate go up. The Canadian dollar held steady in the face of higher rates.

 https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/t-day-trump-raises-tariff-dozens-countries-minimum-rate-10

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/senate-rejects-bids-block-arms-sales-israel

More tariffs trickle in

 President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that would have new tariffs on a wide swath of U.S. trading partners to go into effect in seven days — the next step in his trade agenda that will test the global economy and alliances.

The order was issued shortly after 7 p.m. It came after a flurry of tariff-related activity in recent days, as the White House announced agreements with various nations and blocs ahead of Trump’s self-imposed Aug. 1 deadline.

A few notable tariff rates that were outlined in Trump's executive order

After initially threatening the African nation of Lesotho with a 50% tariff, the country’s goods will now be taxed at 15%.

Taiwan will be tariffed at 20%, Pakistan at 19% and Israel, Iceland, Fiji, Ghana, Guyana and Ecuador among the countries with imported goods taxed at 15%.

Trump’s new tariffs at a glance

The tariffs will go into effect Aug. 7, not the Friday deadline that the president had set. The reason for this is the government needs time to harmonize the tariff rates, according to a senior official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.

The order applies to 68 countries and the 27-member European Union. Countries not listed in the order signed Thursday by Trump would face a baseline 10% tariff.

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/latest-us-inflation-ticked-higher-145442600.html

Trump Asks Bank CEOs to Pitch Fannie, Freddie Stock Offering

 

President Donald Trump is bringing in bank leaders to meet with him one by one at the White House. Beyond the economic discussion, there’s a chance at a big payday for their firms.

Trump is asking chief executive officers for their pitches on monetizing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including a major public offering of stock, according to people familiar with the matter.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-31/trump-asks-bank-ceos-to-pitch-on-fannie-freddie-stock-offerings